Crew
Director – Alan Holleb, Screenplay – Geoffrey Baere, Producers – Ashok Amritraj & Jeff Begun, Photography – Robert Ebinger, Music – Tom Bruner, Special Effects – Ken Solomon, Production Design – Peter Knowlton. Production Company – New Horizons.
Cast
Tom Nolan (Billy Batson), Elizabeth Foxx (Judith Hightower), John Finnegan (Pinky Batson), Larry Linville (President Robert Grimshaw), Nick Segal (Gregg Constable), Daniele Arnaud (Madeleine Lavatoire), Frank Mugavero (Lasky), Toni Hudson (Rita), David Byrd (The Boss), Marta Kober (Ursula Grimshaw), Roberta Collins (Helen Grimshaw), Jay Scorpio (Professor Sylvester)
Plot
At Lavatoire College, bad boy Billy Batson is making out with Judith Hightower in the dean’s office but has no protection. He races off to get some condoms only to crash on the way back. He comes around in hospital to be greeted by his late Uncle Pinky who informs Billy that he is now dead and has come to guide him to the hereafter. While Pinky is distracted by a nurse, Billy sneaks off to get back to Judith. She is hoping to get a recommendation from the dean and Billy tags along, looking for the opportunity to score with her. Billy’s actions cause chaos, while The Boss from the afterlife decrees that Pinky must bring Billy back before midnight.
School Spirit was a release from Roger Corman’s New Horizons. Director Alan Holleb had started working for Corman making Candy Stripe Nurses (1974), although School Spirit would be his second and last film to date.
School Spirit was a particular confluence of 1980s fads. National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and Porky’s (1982) has started off the frat rat comedy based around teens partying, trying to score and so on. At the same time, the era had seen a revival of the Light Fantasy film – comedies set around the afterlife, heaven, ghosts, angels, reincarnation and return from the dead – with the likes of Heaven Can Wait (1978), Oh Heavenly Dog (1980), The Heavenly Kid (1985), Maxie (1985), Hello Again (1987) and Chances Are (1989), among others. There had been some unholy marriages between the frat rat comedy and the light fantasy film – such as Meatballs III: Summer Job (1987) with Sally Kellerman as an angel come down to help a nerd lose his virginity.
I am not at all a fan of looking back on older works and viewing/condemning them with contemporary moral standards. That said, there is a substantial amount of School Spirit that comes across as embarrassingly cringey today. Tom Nolan’s persistence with trying to make out with Elizabeth Foxx frequently travels beyond what would be considered acceptable modern limits. There is the invariable scene not long after Tom Nolan discovers his powers where he indulges the old schoolboy fantasy of invisibly walking into a girl’s locker room during which Alan Holleb’s camera lingers and lets us watch the girls shower. The most irredeemable scene is where ghost uncle John Finnegan comes across a sleeping girl and starts undoing her top and pyjamas even as she keeps brushing his advances off.
There are slapstick sequences – an extended one that involves the invisible Tom Nolan humiliating pompous Nick Segal by causing his soda to fizz up in his face, pouring his yoghurt over his head and unzipping his fly. The film climaxes on a party sequence where everybody is tossed down a waterslide, including pompous dean Larry Linville being forcibly thrown against his will. Tom Nolan’s dilemma of being dead is resolved with a lame cop out ending.
School Spirit does have the oddity of a protagonist named Billy Batson, meaning that someone is clearly a fan of Captain Marvel/Shazam – see Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) and Shazam (2019).
Trailer here