School Spirit

Proof I haven't seen every great film from the 1980s (a half empty/half full comment if I ever made one). This has to get credit for casting former child star Tom Nolan as a college hellraiser while he was in his late 30s. He is Billy Batson (shazam!) and gets killed in a car accident after dashing to get a condom. His ghost has 24 hours left on earth so, naturally, he heads to the girls shower. There are actually a couple of good laughs in here and the requisite nudity. Larry Linville is the stuck up college president and gives a rather spirited (boooo!) performance, even taking quite a few hard looking pratfalls. Features several songs by The Gleaming Spires, a New Wave band that had future big time screenwriter Leslie Bohem in it. Also featured my favorite exchange heard this year so I had to add it to the IMDb.

Nurse 1: I never saw anyone brain dead with a hard on.

Nurse 2: I guess you never met my boyfriend.

School Spirit, noooo!!!! The concept alone makes me wanna vomit, much less naming

a movie after such a heresy. Alas, the title is a charming play on words, as a young man who is killed in a car wreck en route to his first lay returns from the dead to.. to what?? Get some, I guess? Okay, he's a ghost. Sure, that's fine, we've seen it before and we'll see it again, it's an accepted film staple. But, a ghost that can make himself visible at will???!! NO!!! That's wrong! That's completely wrong, that defies the very principle of being a ghost! When you are a ghost, people can't see you! They can't touch you (unless you bond with them on some very emotional level like in that crap movie Ghost), they can't smell you, you are a GHOST! And you stay that way! You can't just snap your fingers

(or, in this case, wiggle your fingers on your head like Curly used to do on The Three Stooges) and become a living, sentient being again. That defies even basic religious precepts! Add to that the ridiculous notion that God would allow you a second chance on Earth just to "tap it".. jeez, this was rotten. Found it in the "mature" section, though suitable for 12 year olds. Minimal t&a but mass quantities of 80's frizzskank and terrible cliches. Also features poor old David Ogden Stiers as the dean.. From those goofy Armitraj brothers, who brought us Nine Deaths of The Ninja and innumerable other no-budget flicks.

When horny Young college student Tom Nolan gets hit by a truck he ends up brain dead in hospital with a hard on, but is able to return to life for a 24-hour period so he can try and get laid in this non sensical and stupid comedy. It's just an excuse for him to spy on naked college girls in a shower room and the entire movie is full of lame jokes. It was one of the first films from Roger Corman's new distribution company, Concorde Pictures Inc, which he formed after selling New World Pictures and features copious amounts of female nudity but no hot sex scenes or any remotely funny performances. It had some potential to riff on the horror genre, but the fact that the lead character is dead and a ghost has almost no bearing on the plot.

My review was written in October 1985 after a Times Square screening.

"School Spirit" is a weak, low-budget comedy that arrives way too late in the overdone teen fantasy cycle. Announced as an Almi PIctures release last year, film debuted instead from Roger Corman's new distribution company in April 1985 in Atlanta.

Tom Nolan (imagine Michael J. Fox as a 6-foot-tall football player) toplines the overage-looking cast as Billy Batson (no relation to Captain Marvel), a college student who is killed in a car crash while rushing heedlessly home from a drugstore with an all-important condom to be down with campus beauty Judy (Elizabeth Foxx). His late uncle Pinky appears in the hospital as a transparent ghost to take Billy to heaven, but our hero, discovering that a hand motion (reminiscent of Curly's shtick for the Three Stooges) can materialize him as flesh-and-blood, escapes to stay on Earth one more day. Object: get laid.

With chintzy special effects, the pic's ghost gimmick is extraneous, mainly used for an obligatory scene of eavesdropping (invisibly) in the girls' shower room to ogle various siliconed cuties. Grainy photography, muffled sound recording and dinky production values all indicate that the picture was ground out carelessly as just another title for market.

Cast is sunk by the material, but executes the praffalls acceptably. Only surprise is the presence of a Corman mainstay of 15 years ago (in all those Filipino women's prison pictures) Roberta Collins as the perennially drunken wife of the college president.

This film essentially begins with a college student named "Billy Batson" (Tom Nolan) desperately trying to seduce a beautiful coed student by the name of "Judith Hightower" (Elizabeth Foxx). However, just when he almost achieves his goal, he discovers that he has no protection. So, since Judith refuses to go any further without it, he hurries to procure some. Unfortunately, along the way he has a fatal car accident which, as one might expect, ruins his plans. But then, as luck would have it, just at the moment his soul leaves his body, he is met by his uncle "Pinky Batson" (John Finnegan) who was sent from heaven to guide him into the proverbial light. It's then revealed that, much like his nephew, Uncle Pinky gets easily distracted by members of the opposite sex which results in him running after an attractive woman instead of taking care of the business at hand. However, just prior to that, he shows Billy how to become visible again. So, armed with this knowledge, Billy then goes back to college to use this new ability to further enhance his sexual appetite. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this film had most of the necessary ingredients for a good teensploitation comedy. What it didn't have, unfortunately, was any humor. To that effect, despite all of the attractive ladies--and there were plenty of them in this film- none of them were able to rescue this dismal picture from its rather boring state. That being said, although I don't consider this to be a bad movie necessarily, I must say that I was a bit disappointed with it overall and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.