The Faculty is a 1998 teen Horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez. The story involves a parasitic alien landing in small-town Ohio and turning the faculty of a High School into its puppets, followed by the students and the rest of the town.

Six students, however, manage to find out what's going on: academically-challenged football player Stan Rosado, Goth chick Stokely Mitchell, nerdy kid and school newspaper photographer Casey Connor, queen bitch Delilah Profitt, drug-dealing delinquent Zeke Tyler, and New Transfer Student Marybeth Louise Hutchinson. Together, they set out to put a stop to the aliens, armed only with Zeke's drugs (which are instantly fatal to the aliens) and their knowledge of Alien Invasion movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Among the rare successful horror-comedies (especially out of the bunch that followed in Scream's wake), both very funny and very scary. The film's writer, Kevin Williamson, also wrote the first two Scream movies, which helped it to avoid making the mistakes of many of the copycat teen horror movies of the late '90s. Expect loads of creative gore and really creative casting.

  • A Date with Rosie Palms: Not only do Casey's parents take away his phone and internet as punishment but they also confiscate his porn. Casey's Father tells him "No more flogging the bishop".
  • Alien Invasion
  • Aliens in Cardiff: Lampshaded and justified. When one character claims that it would be absurd for aliens to secretly invade via a High School in a small town and brainwash the population, another Genre Savvy charcter points out that this would attract a lot less attention than attacking a big city, which the whole world will notice. See the page quote.
  • And Some Other Stuff: Zeke's drugs are made from a mixture of "caffeine pills and some other household shit."
  • Assimilation Plot
  • Beautiful All Along: Miss Burke is an evil version of this trope. All it takes to make her look sexy is fixing her hair, dropping her glasses, and giving her a red tank top... but this occurs after she's been turned into an alien puppet.
    • Though being played by Famke Janssen certainly doesn't hurt either.
  • Big Bad: Marybeth.
  • Billing Displacement: R&B star Usher is featured prominently on the poster despite appearing in only five minutes of the movie. None of the other cast members were all that famous (at the time), while Usher is, well, Usher.
  • Body Horror: The parasite dehydrates the old Mrs. Brummel to the point where her skin falls off of her body.
    • Also,
  • Book Dumb, Brilliant but Lazy: Zeke is clearly very smart and resourceful, yet he's repeating his senior year because, instead of focusing on school, he chooses to concentrate on pursuits such as manufacturing drugs and dealing various illegal merchandise to other students.
  • Breakfast Club: The six main characters.
  • Brick Joke: During the credits, clips from the movie are used to accompany all of the lead actors except for Jon Stewart. He's shown .
  • The Cameo: By Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles, of all people.
  • Clark Kenting: The popular girl Delilah, in order to avoid being recognized by the aliens (who are targeting the most popular kids in school so that they can infect the most people), briefly disguises herself as a nerd by putting on Nerd Glasses. It works .
  • Closet Shuffle: While breaking into the teacher's lounge looking for a scoop, Casey and Delilah hide in a broom closet when they hear teachers approaching. Here, they find the dead body of Mrs. Brummel and witness the school nurse get held down and infected.
  • Combat Tentacles: The head alien has these.
  • Cool Car: Zeke drives a Pontiac GTO.
  • Dawson Casting: Surprisingly little of it for a '90s teen horror film. The oldest cast members to play teenagers were 22-year-olds Shawn Hatosy and Laura Harris. Elijah Wood, meanwhile, was 17 when he starred in this film, while Jordana Brewster was 18. Josh Hartnett was twenty,making him only about a year or two older than his character (Who is mentioned as repeating the year).
  • Did Not Do the Research: Stokely claims that Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers ends with the aliens winning. She's wrong; the humans win.
  • Drugs Are Bad: Inverted. The alien parasites are dried out and ultimately killed by the meth-like drug that Zeke makes and then sells in the parking lot. This drug is used in order to test who has been infected with the parasite.
    • Also subverted, as it turns out they weren't really drugs at all. Zeke was just using caffeine pills.
  • Dumb Muscle: Stan, much to his dismay. He feels that his heavy involvement as the captain of the football team is damaging his academic performance, and that his teachers are giving him preferential treatment just because he's a star athlete. This causes him to quit the team in order to focus on schoolwork.
  • Everybody Lives: Surprisingly there is a total of two casualties in the whole film, none of whom are the main characters.
  • Everybody Must Get Stoned: At one point in the movie, Zeke forces everybody to take his drugs so that they could find out who is being controlled by the aliens. Intoxication Ensues.
  • Evil Overlooker:
  • Evil Teacher: The teachers are the first people to get infected, and spread it from there.
  • Eye Scream: How Mr. Furlong is killed.
  • Fake American: Canadian actress Laura Harris as the Southern girl Marybeth, complete with a ridiculously over-the-top Southern accent.
  • Fake-Out Make-Out: Subverted. While breaking into the school's storeroom to steal ingredients for his drugs, Zeke cites the trope to reassure Marybeth should they be caught. However the two aren't patient, and start making out regardless.
  • Fiction as Cover-Up:
  • Fingore: Mr. Furlong is bitten by the alien specimen that Casey finds. It takes a nice chuck out of his pointer finger. Later,
  • Five-Man Band: Not the variety used on this site, but the one used in The Breakfast Club -- the princess (Delilah), the criminal (Zeke), the brain (Casey), the athlete (Stan) and the basket case (Stokely). There's also the new girl (Marybeth).
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble
    • Stan is sanguine
    • Delilah is choleric
    • Casey and Stokely are melancholic
    • Zeke is phlegmatic
    • Marybeth is supine until
  • Full-Frontal Assault:
  • Full-Name Basis: Marybeth always introduces herself by her full name, Marybeth Louise Hutchinson.
  • Genre Savvy: This is a late '90s teen horror film -- it goes with the territory.
  • Glamour Failure: In addition to the obvious lack of emotion characteristic of Puppeteer Parasites, people infected with the alien parasite can be discerned by their need to drink lots of water, as the things quickly dehydrate their hosts. This is also why Zeke's drugs are so effective against them (the drugs absorb water and dehydrate people).
  • Goth: Stokely, although by the end, she's turned into a Perky Goth.
  • Groin Attack: Near the beginning of the film, Casey gets picked up by a group of bullies, has his legs spread apart, and gets his crotch slammed into a light pole.
  • Gym Teacher Nasty: And played by Robert Patrick, no less.
  • Hannibal Lecture: Used multiple times by the pod people against the heroes, but the big one is delivered by . When confronts Casey in the locker room, tries to convince him that, by joining the aliens, he will be happy, and will no longer have to suffer through humiliation at the hands of his peers. When Casey refuses to be swayed, simply gives up, tells him that it's too late and that the aliens have already won, and comes after him.
  • High School
  • Hey, It's That Guy!!: A veritable cornucopia of recognisable faces, most obviously amongst the teachers, including the T1000, Lilith, Catherine Martell and Xenia Onatop.
  • Hollywood Nerd: Elijah Wood as the nerdy kid Casey.
  • Homage: The entire film is an homage to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Puppet Masters, with Shout Outs aplenty.
    • The drug test scene is an homage to the blood test in The Thing.
  • I Was Just Joking
  • Impaled Palm: Coach Willis stabs a pencil straight through hand and it makes a gruesome crunch when he yanks it back out again. She is understandably horrified.
  • Impostor Exposing Test: Using Zeke's drugs.
  • Ironic Echo:
    • When Zeke is selling pens full of drugs to some students, he tells them that the stuff is "guaranteed to jack you up."
    • While snooping in the teachers' lounge, Casey tells Delilah that she can be "pretty cool sometimes" (i.e. when she's not being the Alpha Bitch). Delilah asks if he's hitting on her. At the end of the film, Delilah repeats this line to Casey, whom she is now dating.
  • It Was Here, I Swear: Casey ends up in this situation when he brings the police to the school to recover body. When they open the closet, the body has disappeared and been replaced with a Recussitation Annie Doll.
  • Lens Flare Censor: In reverse. The darkness is used to cover up naughty bits. It doesn't work so well on the DVD, though.
  • Lovable Alpha Bitch: Delilah.
  • Lovable Jock: Stan especially when compared to the more jerkish football players.
  • The Mole: Played straight when gets infected. Slightly subverted with .
  • Monster Progenitor: The Alien Queen.
  • New Transfer Student: Marybeth has just moved to town from Atlanta.
  • No Ontological Inertia: Justified. After Zeke examines one of the parasites, he notices that it doesn't have all the necessary organs to sustain itself independently, and concludes (correctly) that there must be an alien queen with a telepathic link to all of her "offspring." Killing her would kill all the parasites, returning everyone to their normal selves.
  • Not Now, Kiddo: Even though the alien-controlled teachers make up a cover story for what he saw that would still realistically scare a teenager, his parents decide he needs counseling, search his room for drugs, and decide to remove his phone, internet and even his Porn Stash (which they seem bizarrely completely okay with). Because that's parenting.
  • Off With Her Head:
  • Orifice Invasion
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
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