The alien environment of high school and college takes centre stage in The Faculty and Night of the Creeps

The Faculty and Night of the Creeps are available to rent, buy or stream.

What do you get if you place The Breakfast Club, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Night of the Creeps into a gigantic 90s blender? The answer is the classic schoolroom sci-fi/horror The Faculty (1998). The critics were largely indifferent to Robert Rodriguez’s high school alien romp on its release – they were obviously watching a different film to me! Thankfully, despite not receiving any critical fanfare upon its arrival, The Faculty has since earned cult status for its delightfully different take on body-invasion horror.

By its very nature, school is an alien environment for many kids and teens, the long, dull corridors full of indifference and rejection. While many young people sail through the friendship dramas, relationships, and popularity contests that school offers, others find school life a nightmare with no escape.

For Casey Connor (Elijah Wood), it’s an obstacle course of pain, bullying and jibes. But things are about to get a whole lot more awkward, rough and dangerous when Casey discovers a slimy secret sitting at the heart of school life – one that, if left unchallenged, may bring down the whole world one slug at a time! With the help of the stuck-up Delilah (Jordana Brewster), her jock boyfriend Stan (Shawn Hatosy), loner Stokely (Clea DuVall), drugs king Zeke (Josh Hartnett) and innocent Marybeth (Laura Harris), this is one school assignment that’s gonna get really weird before the bell rings.

Many would argue that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was written with school life in mind; after all, most teens’ personalities and peer group allegiances change as they adapt their beliefs, behaviours and ideas to fit in with those around them.

The Faculty not only celebrates classic horror but also reflects the school’s alien environment with a deliciously modern spin on body-invasion horror. Some will argue that The Faculty is just a ’90s version of Fred Dekker’s 1986 Night of the Creeps, and it is undoubtedly a homage, but it is also so much more. The Faculty is a high-octane, intelligent, rambunctious and engaging dissection of high school politics and the power of the peer group in teenage life.

Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps would take Animal House (1978), The Blob (1958), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and Dawn of the Dead (1978) before sprinkling in a bit of John Hughes to create a decadent cinematic cocktail of B-Movie science fiction/horror.

Dekker’s directorial debut would suffer from a limited theatrical release, but by the time it hit the local video shops, Night of the Creeps had found its audience. It was in my local Blockbuster in 1994 that I, too, discovered Dekker’s movie. As I arrived home with my bundle of VHS treasures, I had no idea what to expect, but when I switched on the TV and inserted the tape into my video player, I was in for a wonderful surprise.

Opening in 1959, a strange alien capsule crash-lands on Earth, and then we jump forward to pledge week 1986, where Chris (Jason Lively) and J.C. (Steven Marshall) are labelled college outcasts at every turn. But they are pretty settled with that; after all, who wants to join some weird and toxic fraternity?

However, it’s not long before hormones and, yes, girls get in the way as Chris falls head over heels for Cynthia Cronenberg (Jill Whitlow) – a girl who prefers the more popular college boys. And so Chris and J.C. decide they need to join a fraternity as soon as possible. Little do they know their world is about to turn upside down and inside out as college life and alien life converge in an ocean of slippery slugs, rotting corpses and infested humans hell-bent on world domination. Like The Faculty, Dekker’s delightful B-movie romp, is as much about the alien environment of college as it is the invasion at its heart. An environment where young adults desperately attempt to reinvent themselves by running as far away from their high school as possible!

Night of the Creeps carries a tongue-in-cheek charm that earns it a place in the ’80s Horror Hall of Fame. Dekker’s movie is a delightful mashup of the horrors he grew up watching. Like all directorial debuts, it isn’t perfect, but it is a delightful late-night 80s B-movie horror that deserves far more praise.