DEAD MAN'S CURVE

US, 1997, 91 minutes, Colour.
Matthew Lillard, Michael Vartan, Randall Batinkoff, Keri Russell, Tamara Craig Thomas, Dana Delaney.
Directed by Dan Rosen.

Dead Man's Curve is a very black comedy. The writer-director (directing his first film) wrote a similar film, The Last Supper, in which students taunt one another into death. Here the setting is a campus, like films set in colleges or on school campuses with black comedy, like Heathers. Reference is also given to the 1957 film, The Strange One (End as a Man), set in a cadet school.

The film creates a legend about an agreement at a university that if someone's room-mate commits suicide, they automatically get an A pass. Two very rich students, played by Matthew Lillard (echoing his similar sadistic kind of performance in Scream) and Randall Batinkoff taunt their fellow students. They are idle, wealthy, sadistic, monstrous. The plot involves a scholarship student who comes to room with them and who is goaded into forcing one of his friends to commit suicide. The complex plot also involves a callous girlfriend, a simple girlfriend who is persuaded she is pregnant and, distraught at the seeming suicide, kills herself. There are various plot twists as well as acerbic one-liners about American society, students, wealth, class. There are many cruel moments in the film as well.

Dana Delaney appears as the psychologist who gives the information about the pass given to room-mates of suicide students. The film leaves a nasty taste in the mouth - while it is very clever, very funny at times, highly ironical and critical.

1. The impact of the film? Its target audience? College and university students?

2. The film as black comedy, taken to the limits, life and death? Issues of studies, standards, ambitions? The slogan of "Winning silver is not winning gold" on the poster? The irony of the behaviour of the rich? Poorer students and their becoming victims and then learning to play the system? The comedy sequences, theatre of cruelty, the one-liners and the wit?

3. The college campus, rooms, classrooms, psychologists' rooms? The exteriors, especially the cliff for the suicides? The musical score?

4. The title, the dead men in the film? The regulation about suicides?

5. The portrait of Tim and Rand, idle, old friends, sharing the room in the college, their relationship with Chris? Their friendship with Emma? Chris and his dilemma, their solutions? The rule about suicides? Tim and his evil influence on Chris, persuading him, badgering him, taunting him to drive Rand to suicide?

6. Rand, his relationship with Natalie, her telling him she was pregnant? His abusive attitude towards her, his committing suicide? His disappearance from the scene, no body found? His later reappearance on the cliff, the false denouement ? The irony of his having done a deal with Chris and the final destruction of Tim?

7. Tim, considering himself as leader, his offensive behaviour to everyone, to the disabled person? His friendship with Rand? Behaviour with Natalie? With Emma? His goading of Chris? The aftermath of the suicide? He and Chris getting their A mark? His continuing to meddle? The revelation about Emma, his seducing her, Chris watching in hiding? The build-up to the suicide attempt? Rand's reappearance, the further irony of Tim and Rand with their plan, Tim's death? Emma being forced to be an accessory?

8. The two girls, Natalie, Canadian, simplicity, her love for Rand, her being persuaded that she was pregnant, her committing suicide? The fact that she was not pregnant? Emma, her relationship to Chris, her becoming as callous as Tim and Rand? The end and her having to collude in the murder of Tim?

9. The psychologist, her information about the regulations and suicide? The adults on campus, the police and their threats, the investigations? The security guards?

10. The plausibility of the plot, the behaviour of the central characters, the nature of a college campus and its pressurised kind of living, ambitions and demands? The background of a college functioning normally? The atmosphere of menace, the law, morality?

11. An ironic look at the ambitions of Americans, lack of moral principle, no holds barred, matters of life and death?