This sort of movie is the Holy Grail for fans of pre-fame celebrity
embarrassments. Not only is the star in question now a bona-fide A-list
sex symbol, the film in question is terrible beyond belief and packed
full of hilarious moments, made even funnier by the presence of a baby-faced
future megastar.
Brad, in his first non-TV role, stars as the sexily titled Dwight Ingalls.
Despite the name, Dwight is actually considered quite the catch around
his small town high school. He’s the bad boy rebel, with a penchant
for driving fast, wearing tasteful striped shirts and totally rad Hi-Tec
sneakers with the tongues poking out. What a sexbomb.
Paula certainly thinks so. She’s the goody-two-shoes heroine who
dates Dwight, even though she refuses to indulge in any hanky panky until
his grades improve. Dwight inexplicably doesn’t seem to mind this
sexual blackmail and things are ticking along nicely until the reappearance
of Brian Woods throws their peculiar relationship into disarray. See,
Brian was also a student at the school, and once a friend of Dwight’s,
until his father died in a mysterious car crash. The cops couldn’t
prove Brian cut the brakes, but just to be sure they sent him to a mental
hospital for a few years.
And now…he’s back. And worse…he’s flirting with
Paula.
Dwight doesn’t take kindly to this, and in true high school slasher
style, people start to turn up dead. But who’s to blame? Is Brian
really batshit crazy? Or is the increasingly demented Dwight killing
people to frame his love rival? Or are the killings the work of one of
the barely-sane faculty members, including Roddy McDowall as a perving
principal with a creepy hard-on for Paula and an eye-rolling war veteran
janitor who seems to have stepped out of a Scooby Doo cartoon?
Well, sadly the answer is depressingly obvious. It’s Brian. He’s
batshit crazy after all. Don’t worry – that’s hardly
going to spoil what little amusement you can glean from the plot of this
movie. No, the entertainment value here comes in the shape of some woefully
ineffectual murders (one teacher is cooked in a kiln, another is attacked
with a blatantly rubber axe) and a climactic fight between Batshit Brian
and Dwight, where they battle to the death in the school workshop using
a remarkable arsenal of power tools and cleaning products. During the
course of the fight, Brad’s head is trapped in a vice – a
memorable and rib-tickling image that probably justifies a purchase on
its own.
Brad survives, by the way, just in case any female fans were
worried by the very notion of his beautiful bone structure being popped
like an overripe melon.
And how does Pitt the Younger acquit himself in this testing role? Badly,
is the answer. He’s thoroughly awful though,
curiously, you can see him starting to use many of the same tics, smirks
and gestures that have since earned him millions of fans. In fact, Cutting
Class actually works best if you view it on a sort of post-modern level
and
imagine this was the only movie Pitt’s True Romance character,
Floyd, made before he abandoned acting and became a full-time stoner.
Need to know: Crazy Brian was played by Donovan Leitch,
son of Sixties folk singer Donovan. He also starred in the 1988 remake
of The Blob (see: Steve McQueen) and
was a featured dancer in the infamous breakdancing flick, Breakin’ 2:
Electric Boogaloo.
Honourable mentions: Brad also had a small role in the 1991 TV movie,
Two-Fisted Tales, a spin-off from the popular HBO anthology series, Tales
from the Crypt (see: Bob Hoskins, Jada
Pinkett-Smith). Based on another
EC Comics title, Two Fisted Tales had a western slant to its horror,
and the pilot movie included three stories, Showdown, Yellow and King
of the Road, in which Brad played “Billy”. The pilot was
a failure, and the stories were chopped up and re-broadcast as episodes
in the Crypt series. In the same year he also had his small but pivotal
role in Thelma & Louise, liberating Geena Davis’ neglected
G-spot before liberating her purse, and stardom beckoned.
Availability: Cutting Class can be found on DVD in bargain bins across
the land.
