February 10, 2016

Sometimes, there are characters in genre pictures that are so darned righteous and awesome, you can’t stop thinking about them or their amazing feats long after the movie is over. This column is dedicated to those cinematic bad-asses that keep us coming back for more. And although SUMMER SCHOOL is a comedy and not necessarily a horror film, it does feature Chainsaw and Dave; 2 characters that I’m sure a lot of us were a lot like in high school. Sadly for all of us, however, we didn’t have a Mister Shoop. So this week, we’ve got to give all our respect to one of the greatest cinematic teachers and masters of the academic arts, Freddy Shoop!

In the 1987 Carl Reiner comedy classic, Mark Harmon plays Freddy Shoop, an easy going gym teacher with not much to worry about. He’s only a short few months away from making tenure. His students love him, his peanut butter loving dog is the best companion a guy can ask for and he’s about to take a summer vacation to Hawaii with his smoking hot young girlfriend. Alas, the school’s English teacher magically wins the lottery and promptly quits on the spot. With no one left to substitute for remedial English summer school classes, the desperate and weasely Vice Principal Phil Gills (Robin Thomas) blackmails Shoop into staying behind to look after the class.

Naturally, this is a class made up of kids that all failed their state exam, forcing them into retaking this course over the summer. But while the rest of the world may look at these kids as losers, I like to think of them as the underdogs in the same way that Freddy Shoop is a kind of underdog in the traditional, 80’s cinema kind of way.

At first, he has no idea how to teach, so he decides to orchestrate a series of field trips to the local petting zoo and amusement parks, because what better way to get an education than by having a few life experiences? Gills doesn’t agree and so he’s forced to figure out a way to reach these children. He does it by offering to grant them each a wish. You see, most of them are there because they just don’t have the type of support in their friends and family that Shoop gladly offers.

Denise (Kelly Jo Minter) needs help passing her driver’s test. Kevin (Patrick Labyorteaux) needs someone to work out with in case he gets back on the football team. Rhonda (SAW alum Shawnee Smith!) needs a Lamaze partner. Pam (Courtney Thorne-Smith) needs a place to crash for a while. And so, being the good natured fellow that he is, Mister Shoop sacrifices all his free time to help out his students.

Chainsaw (Dean Cameron) & Dave (Gary Riley) probably take the most advantage of this situation as they request rides to and from work, a special screening of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and an epic July 4th party at Mister Shoop’s place right on the beach. He complies to all of these requests and then some! He even tells Gills that THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is actually a new film from the district about the proper use of power tools.

But the students get greedy and at one point try to blackmail Shoop into granting them all second wishes in exchange for their efforts to study more, something they should have wanted to do on their own and not because their teacher is bribing them. “Look – for the past 4 weeks I’ve given up all of my free time. Had my body used for a tackling dummy, had my house crashed, my couch set on fire, my goldfish murdered, my butt thrown in jail and my car wrecked.” He storms out and decides his tenure, his career and everything that comes with it just isn’t worth it.

When threatened with a new substitute teacher, the kids realize the error of their ways and decide to win back Shoop anyway they can. Chainsaw and Dave, being the lunatics they are, not to mention pretty kick ass FX artists in their own right orchestrate a bloody classroom massacre for the next substitute teacher to walk in on, hence insuring that Shoop is the only one fit for this crazy job. (Or perhaps more accurately crazy enough for this job?)

He finally agrees and that’s when everyone really starts working harmoniously with each other to pass that blasted test! Regardless of whether they pass or not, the bottom line is Shoop sacrifices just about everything because he recognizes that these are all good kids not getting a fair shake. Maybe they don’t believe they can pass that test, because up until now everyone has told them they’re failures?

I have to point out that Jeff Franklin’s screenplay for SUMMER SCHOOL is pretty much flawless. From start to finish, I think it’s one of the smartest, funniest, most engaging and perfect scripts to come out of this era of late 80s comedies. There have been threats for years, now, of a remake, in particular from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison productions, but how can one improve on what’s already a perfect little movie? A big part of its success also lies in the performance, charisma and charm of Mark Harmon who for the last 13 years has fronted CBS’s hit drama NCIS. The entire movie, we truly are rooting for him to hook up with fellow teacher Robin Bishop (Kirstie Alley) because he’s a good guy, unlike that damned Gills.

Mister Harmon and more importantly Mister Freddy Shoop, for giving it your all, genuinely caring and looking out for these kids, we think that you’ve very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very much earned the following hashtag.

#RESPECT

1000 words on the nose. You can count it.