Cultural Representations of Higher Ed, No. 2

I am working backwards through this list. Here are films 301 to 350, which are, again, generally ridiculous.

The first post in this series, covering films ranked 351 to 400 is available at: https://academeblog.org/2013/07/09/400-films-about-higher-education-or-at-least-set-on-campuses-351-400/

The rankings are my own and in most cases somewhat arbitrary: that is, these are all obviously bad films, but I am not sure that I have the expertise to make fine distinctions in their degrees of badness.

The descriptions of the films are paraphrases of summaries found in a half-dozen print and online film guides. I compiled the list about a decade ago, and it needs some updating.

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301. Johnny Be Good: a lame comedy about the cutthroat world of recruiters for big-time college sports teams.

302. Million Dollar Legs: a racehorse is the salvation of a financially strapped college.

303. Sweetheart of the Campus: a jazz band is the salvation of a financially strapped campus.

304. Hi, Neighbor: an entertainer saves a college by turning it into a summer resort.

305. Jocks: college tennis teams converge on Las Vegas; not much tennis.

306. Crazy Legs: a nerd becomes a triathlete in order to impress a young woman.

307. Beach Ball: a college band dresses in drag to win contest prize money that will forestall repossession of their musical instruments.

308. H.O.T.S.: rival sororities challenge each other to a game of “strip football.”

309. Knockouts: sorority girls and biker girls face off in a wrestling match.

310. Campus Man: the struggle of a college student to publish a calendar featuring college men in beefcake poses.

311. College Kickboxers: martial arts with a campus slant.

312. Kick or Die: martial artists patrol a campus terrorized by a rapist.

313. Freckles Comes Home: When he comes home from college, Freckles discovers that gangsters have stolen his girl and the town.

314. Danger Woman: secret agents seeking atomic secrets pursue a professor.

315. Gotcha!: a college student on a European vacation gets entangled in espionage.

316. Skyhigh: vacationing college students find a videotape and then find themselves being pursued by agents from both sides of the Iron Curtain.

317. Exposed: in this confused political suspense story, Nastassia Kinski stars as a woman who is, by turns, a farm girl, a college student, a waitress, a pianist, and an international fashion model.

318. Soak the Rich: a college student falls for a politically radical classmate who despises her wealthy father.

319. Double Identity: a college professor turned criminal desires to reverse courses after falling in love.

320. Hold ’em Yale: neighborhood thugs try to find a “nice” girl a college boy.

321. The Dream Makers: James Franciscus is a professor who forsakes the ivory tower for a brief but fantastic career as a record company executive.

322. Get Yourself a College Girl: a music student is ostracized after her professors find out that she is supporting herself as a pop singer.

323. Geraldine: a college professor writes a hit song but almost loses the royalties to it.

324. Naughty, but Nice: a music professor becomes a successful songwriter for Tin Pan Alley.

325. Sweet Liberty: a film production of a professor’s book turns a college town on its ear.

326. So Fine: Ryan O’Neal is a professor who forsakes the ivory tower for his father’s clothing business and ends up inventing jeans with see-through backsides.

327. Breakthrough: college students, a CB radio, and evangelicalism.

328. College Swing: Gracie Allen inherits a college and invites her show-business friends to help her run it.

329. Collegiate: a Betty Grable vehicle about a playboy’s being put in charge of a failing women’s college.

330. Midnight Madness: an Animal House knock-off about an all-night scavenger hunt.

331. Spring Break: Animal House knock-off set in Fort Lauderdale.

332. Incoming Freshmen: Duck!

333. P.C.U.: an anything but p.c. lightweight farce.

334. Revenge of the Nerds: goofballs turn the tables on their tormentors.

335. Assault of the Party Nerds: an Animal House knock-off.

336. Preppies: college students on academic probation have to choose between studying and having sex.

337. Higher Education: a low-reaching comedy.

338. Frat Brats: wild sorority sisters get the best of other students who look down their noses at them (a trite summary but the plot is not Dickensian).

339. Dr. Alien: a curvaceous professor selects a nerd for sexual experiments with

extraterrestrials.

340. The Party Animal: a college student makes a Faustian bargain for sex.

341. Doctor Detroit: Dan Ackroyd is a straightlaced professor who impersonates a gangster.

342. Stitches: medical students who are prone to hijinks try to force their dean into retirement.

343. Gemini: a garish film adaptation of the play, focusing on a college student from a workingclass family who is struggling to define herself sexually.

344. Illusions within Girls: a French film about a handsome professor who teaches sex education at a women’s college.

345. French Bumpers: college students focus on inventive ways to pick up women.

346. The Seniors: college students decide to open a sex clinic and make a fortune.

347. School Spirit: a dead college student comes back to life for a day and tries to fill the whole twenty-four hours with sex.

348. Re-Animator: an adaptation of a story by H.P. Lovecraft, in which a scientist tries to resurrect the dead and turns his picturesque New England university into an ironic setting for the macabre.

349. Dr. Frankenstein on Campus: A descendant of the mad doctor is at the center of mind-control experiments at a Canadian university.

350. The Food of the Gods: a professor’s experiments result in supersized rats that create havoc on his campus.