Cutting Class (1989)

Before the shop teachers could get a hold of me, before I was in college and my parents finally had time to be at home, this was the film that taught me "righty tighty, lefty loosey." Unfortunately that was about all it was good for at the time. Still, at least it had an effect on someone who watched it. At least it taught an unsupervised little 9-year-old boy something that he's used the rest of his life. Yeah, other than that it's a throw-away film. I mean, you have a famous actor making a movie that famous actors NEVER seem to be in and that on itself is interesting and cool... ...but otherwise it's a throw away film. You watch it late at night, you watch it on a rainy Sunday afternoon...and otherwise you forget all about it until you mention to your friends from the 80s that, Brad was in it and then suddenly they click on that light and are moderately shocked he'd be in a trash thriller. I can't tell you to stay away from it, because it does entertain and I can't tell you to watch it because, well, it is kinda a junker.

**_Brad Pitt stars in this flick about a killer on the loose at a high school in SoCal_** A student (Donovan Leitch Jr.) returns to high school in the Los Angeles area after spending time in a mental asylum and tries to renew friendships with a couple students (Jill Schoelen and Pitt). Havoc ensues. "Cutting Class” (1989) combines high school dramedy in the mold of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982) with 80’s horror like “Christine,” the “Prom Night” flicks and the first couple of “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies. “The Rage: Carrie 2” came out ten years later and it’s probably the best example of this genre, although this one throws in bits of humor plus a whodunnit angle à la “Scream.” “The Faculty” also comes to mind. I bring up those movies because, if you like them, you’ll probably appreciate this curiously obscure film. It was Pitt’s second theatrical release after “The Dark Side of the Sun” from the year prior. Meanwhile brunette Jill Schoelen is reminiscent of Demi Moore, just more winsome (you might remember her from “The Stepfather”); and redhead Brenda James is worth mentioning as Colleen. I shouldn’t fail to mention Roddy McDowall as the amusing principal. The first half is great for this type of flick since it’s well done and includes all the entertaining staples. Unfortunately, the second half starts to lose its mojo wherein the mayhem gets sloppy. The film runs 1 hour, 31 minutes, and was shot in Malibu Canyon, Calabasas (the neighborhood), and Norwalk (the high school), the latter of which is 17 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. There’s also a sequence at The Old Place in Cornell, which is just southwest of Malibu Canyon. GRADE: B