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Films about Higher Education,
Ranked Best to Worst:
The Complete List of 400 Films
I hope that the rankings that follow provoke considerable disagreement--mild
or vehement. Suggestions for additions are also welcome
The rankings are mine; the brief synopses are sometimes mine and sometimes
close paraphrases of various guides, including the Blockbuster Guide to
Movies and Videos, Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide, Mega
Movie Guide, Videohound Golden Movie Retriever, and Pauline Kael's 5001
Nights at the Movies.
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
: Burton and Taylor, boozy and still
boozing; professorial ambitions, pretenses, and politics, all in unsparing
black and white.
- Wild Strawberries
: Ingmar Bergman's meditation on mortality, focusing
on an elderly, former professor.
- Madadayo
: Kurosawa's meditation on mortality, focusing on an elderly
former professor.
- Butley
: Alan Bates is a middle-aged professor trying to forestall a
mid-life crisis.
- Good Will Hunting
: A working-class kid from South Boston realizes his
potential at M.I.T.
- The Freshman
: Matthew Broderick is the title character who is duped
into a scheme to smuggle exotic animals by mob boss Marlon Brando.
- Lucky Jim
: the film adaptation of the Kingsley Amis novel that exposes
the quickly entrenched hypocrisies in the new, red-brick universities of
post-war Britain.
- The Paper Chase
: John Housman's portrayal of the stern, intimidating, and
relentlessly demanding Professor Kingsfield remains the most enduring aspect
of a film that otherwise might seem a period piece.
- Horse Feathers
: the Marx Brothers wreak havoc on higher ed.
- Animal House
: a delightfully and sometimes brutally comic take on
relentless self-abuse among fraternity low-lifes, this film remains a guilty
pleasure even though it tramples almost every standard of politically correct
behavior and even though it's very bittersweet to laugh at John Belushi
behaving in the manner that eventually killed him.
- Educating Rita
: Julie Walters is a very non-traditional student who tests the complacency of a British professor played by Michael
Caine.
- Breaking Away
: a bicycle race helps "townies" to define
their place in a college town.
- Reuben, Reuben
: Tom Conti is a drunken poet falls for Kelly McGillis,
a college student whom he meets at one of his readings--a smart comedy that
avoids pretentiousness.
- The Adversary
: a film by Satyajit Ray about a university student who
is forced to support his family with menial work after his father dies; there
is a poignant contrast between the hopefulness of his university experience
and the grimness of his working life in Calcutta.
- The Organizer
: Marcello Matsroianni is a professor who organizes a
strike by exploited textile workers.
- The Freshman
: a Harold Lloyd classic in which he stars as the
unlikeliest of gridiron heroes.
- The Big Chill
: college friends reunite to mourn a suicide and to
figure out how much or little things have changed among them.
- The Return of the Secaucus Seven
: a John Sayles film about a reunion
weekend at a college.
- The Graduate
: Dustin Hoffman is a recent graduate who gets involved
with his girlfriend's mother.
- Carnal Knowledge
: the Sexual Revolution and the sexual evolution of
two college friends into middle age.
- The Group
: in this film adaptation of the novel by Mary McCarthy, a
group of eight women form bonds during college that persist through the years
that follow, despite the very different directions that their lives take.
- A Rumor of War
: the film adaptation of the memoir by Philip Caputo,
juxtaposing college life during the Vietnam era and battlefield experiences in
the war itself.
- Kent State
: a superior made-for-television dramatization of the events
leading up to the shooting of student protesters by the Ohio National Guard.
- R.P.M
.: Anthony Quinn portrays a sociology professor who becomes the
president of a university shaken by protests and, rather than suppressing the
students, attempts to understand and to accommodate their sensibilities.
- I Never Sang for My Father
: a professor tries to come to terms with
his now ailing and always difficult father.
- By Nightfall
: Marcello Matsrianni is a university professor who
suddenly has to share his residence with both his mother and his
granddaughter.
- Friends
: a South African film about three women--representing the
affluent, British liberals, the working-class, reactionary Afrikaners, and the
oppressed Zulus--who meet at a university.
- The Way We Were
: provides a portrait of political activism on the
college campuses of the 1930s.
- Black Holiday
: a university professor is exiled to an isolated island
after rebelling against Italian fascism.
- Soldier of Orange
: Rutger Hauer stars in this treatment of the effects
of World War 2 on a half-dozen students at a Dutch university.
- The White Rose
: German university students try to resist Nazi
oppression but are tragically overmatched.
- The Mortal Storm
: a Jewish professor and his family confront the rise
of anti-semitism in the early years of the Nazi regime; Jimmy Stewart plays
the professor's sensitive younger son and Robert Stack, in contrast with his
carrer-defining portrayal of mob-buster Elliott Ness, plays a vicious Nazi.
- Dekalog 8: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
: a Polish film in which a
Polish professor of ethics and a visiting American professor lead a Socratic
discussion of the nature of evil in the Holocaust.
- Time Stands Still
: Hungarian college students try to come to terms
with Hungary in the post-Uprising years of the late 1950s.
- The Decline of the American Empire
: a Canadian film about the ways in
which academic talk becomes personal.
- First Love
:: a sensitive South Korean film about a college student's
infatuation with her drama professor.
- The Sterile Cuckoo
: Liza Minelli stars in this story about the sexual
initiation of a self-conscious college student.
- Higher Learning
: John Singleton's exploration of racism on campus.
- School Daze
: Spike Lee's uneven but sometimes inspired musical about
homecoming weekend at an Black college.
- Oleanna
: in this film adaptation of David Mamet's play, William H.
Macy is a professor who is accused of sexually harassing one of his students.
- Lianna
: a John Sayles film about a woman who returns to college to
escape a bad marriage and falls in love with a female professor.
- The Henderson Monster
: Jason Miller and Christine Lahti co-star is
this issue pic about an arrogant university scientist who discovers how to
create new species in his laboratory.
- Marathon Man
: Dustin Hoffman is a graduate student at Columbia who
stumbles into a deadly conspiracy involving former Nazis. Very suspenseful,
but a nightmare for anyone with a fear of dentists.
- The Midnight Man
: Burt Lancaster is a undercover cop posing as an
ex-con who gets work as a campus security guard--all so that he can
investigate the murder of a female student; a dense detective story with a
mundane surface.
- Take One False Step
: William Powell is a professor who is framed for
murder.
- A Kiss before Dying
: a psychopathic college student murders for money.
- A Jolly Bad Fellow
: Lee McKirn stars as an egotistical college
professor who invents a poison that allows him to eliminate everyone whose
presence he finds distasteful--which includes just about everyone he meets.
- Soul Man
: a college student "passes" as Black in order to
get and keep a scholarship to law school.
- The War between the Tates
: Richard Crenna and Elizabeth Ashley are a
professor and his wife whose marriage is turned on its ear by his affair with
one of his students.
- Been Down So Long It Looks like Up to Me
: Barry Primus is a
free-spirit who has trouble fitting in at a conservative college.
- Adam at 6 A.M.
: Michael Douglas is a college professor who tries to
regain his sense of purpose by working for a summer as a laborer.
- American Friends
: Michael Palin, in a straight dramatic role, is a UK
professor in line for a college presidency when he falls in love with a
much-younger American.
- In Custody
: an Indian film adaptation of Anita Desai's novel about a
professor's thwarted attempts to record a great Urdu poet's recitations of his
work.
- More
: a German college student embraces the Paris counterculture of
the 1960s.
- The Rubber Gun
: a researcher at a university is distracted by
Montreal's "scene."
- Getting Straight
: Elliott Gould is a Vietnam vet who returns to
graduate school and finds that his values conflict with both written and
unwritten university policies.
- Middle Age Spread
: a professor achieves professional success while his
personal life goes south.
- Another Woman
: one of the "serious" Woody Allen films, this
one about the unexpected consequences of a philosophy professor's
eavesdropping on the sessions in a therapist's adjoining office.
- Do You Remember Love
: Joanne Woodward is a middle-aged college
professor who is stricken with Alzheimer's.
- Night into Morning
: Ray Milland is a professor who loses his wife and
his son and slips into alcoholism.
- The Gambler
: James Caan is a professor who can't stop betting.
- Blue Chips
: Nick Nolte is a ruthless college basketball coach.
- Rudy
: a predictable but nonetheless moving story about a
working-class, under-sized walk-on who pursues his dream of playing football
for Notre Dame.
- Saturday's Hero
: John Derek is the son of immigrants who seeks
assimilation and success on a football scholarship.
- The Last Game
: a young man is determined to play college football even
while taking care of his ailing, disabled father.
- Saturday's Millions
: a young Robert Young is a poor football star with
a rich girlfriend.
- Foolin' Around
: Gary Busey in an Oklahoma farmboy who heads off to
college.
- The Revolutionary
: Jon Voight is a college student who becomes caught
up in radical politics.
- Fandango
: college students consider their futures during the
Vietnam-era--a better film than one might expect starring Kevin Costner, Judd
Nelson, and Sam Robards.
- A Small Circle of Friends
: a somewhat overreaching treatment of the
experiences of a small group of college students during the Vietnam era.
- 1969
: Robert Downey, Jr., and Kiefer Sutherland co-star in this
sometimes uninspired buddy flick set in the psychedelic era.
- The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart
: a title by and for video-store
browsers on hallucinogenic drugs.
- The Harrad Experiment
: a dramatization of the changing sexual mores on
campus.
- Harrad Summer
: the sequel to the "Experiment."
- The Activist
: a college student becomes pre-occupied with the protests
against the Vietnam War.
- Summertree
: Michael Douglas is a student who wants to avoid military
service during the Vietnam War.
- L'Invasion
: a professor and his wife have their sensibilities mauled
by antagonistic student activists who take over their home.
- Murder in Mississippi
: a made-for-television film dramatizing the
murders of three college students promoting civil rights in Mississippi.
- Heart of Dixie
: Ally Sheedy is a young woman at a Southern university
who feels compelled to become involved in the civil rights movement.
- The Pursuit of Happiness
: Michael Sarrazin is a politically radical
college student who is sentenced to prison for vehicular manslaughter.
- The Reincarnation of Peter Proud
: Michael Sarrazin is a professor who
becomes obsessed with the idea that he came to a bad end in a previous life.
- The Deadly Tower
: Kurt Russell portrays Charles Whitman, who turned
the commons at the University of Texas at Austin into a killing field.
(Whitman's autopsy showed that he had a large brain tumor.)
- Forgotten Prisoners:The Amnesty Files
: in this made-for-television
film, Ron Silver is a professor who investigates mistreatment of prisoners in
Turkey for Amnesty International.
- Nothing Personal
: Donald Sutherland is a professor who files a lawsuit
against a company that profits from the slaughter of baby seals.
- UMC
: a melodrama about the professional and personal lives of the
staff at a university medical center--the basis for the long-running
television series Medical Center.
- First Steps
: a made-for-television film about a bio-engineer who is
determined to help a paraplegic student walk before her graduation.
- Split Image
: James Woods is a deprogrammer who tries to rescue a
college student from a religious cult.
- When He's Not a Stranger
: a young woman is the victim of date rape on
a college campus.
- A Reason to Believe
: another treatment of the subject of date rape.
- For Your Love Only
: Nastassia Kinski is a college student whose affair
with a professor exposes her to blackmail.
- A Kiss before Dying
: a psychopathic college student murders for money.
- Creator
: Peter O'Toole is a professor obsessed with trying to clone
his deceased wife.
- The Changeling
: George C. Scott is a college professor who buys a
haunted mansion.
- The Evil Dead
: a cult film about college students who confront demons
in a remote cabin.
- Night of the Creeps
: a wild homage to B-movies in which college
students are the staple victims--in this instance of extraterrestrials who lay
eggs in their brains and turn them into zombies.
- Compulsion
: rich college students Leopold and Loeb set out to prove
that they can commit the perfect murder.
- Rope
: two pretentious college students commit a thrill killing and
then hold a dinner party.
- Those Were the Days
: William Holden is a man looking back fondly on
his college years in turn-of-the-century America, when a college man could
avoid jail time by romancing the judge's daughter.
- Breaking Home Ties
: in this film based on a Norman Rockwell painting,
a young man leaves home for college and discovers that his family has trouble
dealing with his absence.
- Confidentially Connie
: Van Johnson is a poorly paid professor whose
family is pressuring him to find another line of work.
- The Blot
: a professor struggles with his poverty and, more
specifically, with the fact that his neighbor, a cobbler, has a higher income
than he has.
- Spencer's Mountain
: Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara head a rural family
struggling to provide their oldest son with a chance to go to college.
- The Secret Life of John Chapman
: in this made-for-television film,
Ralph Waite is a college president who is finds a renewed sense of purpose in
unexpected circumstances.
- The Male Animal
: a witty farce in which Henry Fonda is a self-absorbed
professor on a crusade to protect the concept of academic freedom who almost
loses his wife to her old college sweetheart.
- The Feminine Touch
: Don Ameche and Rosalind Russell star in this
comedy of manners about a professor who is only theoretically an expert on
jealousy.
- A Woman of Distinction
: Rosalind Russell is a dean, and Ray Milland, a
visiting scholar from the UK.
- The Petty Girl
: romance follows for a straightlaced professor after
she agrees to pose for an illustrator.
- The Pilgrim Lady
: a staid college professor writes a racy novel under
a pseudonym and discovers how hard it is to keep her secret.
- Lost and Found
: George Segal and Glenda Jackson are largely lost in
this treatment of a conventional Midwestern professor and his difficult
spouse.
- Tall Story
: Perkins plays a basketball star, and Fonda, a coed
inatuated with him.
- Girl Crazy
: a Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney musical set at a college
in the Southwest.
- Pigskin Parade
: Judy Garland sings and dances about college football.
- Good News
: a post-war musical extravaganza about campus romance and
the build-up to the big game.
- Charley's Aunt
: Jack Benny vehicle about a college student who
disguises himself as a fellow student's aunt.
- The Nutty Professor
: the original, Jerry Lewis version.
- The Nutty Professor
: the Eddie Murphy re-make.
- Simon
: a bizarre "think tank" sets out to demonstrate that a
professor can be convinced that he's a space alien.
- A Chump at Oxford
: Laurel and Hardy attend Oxford.
- College
: Buster Keaton is a serious student who tries to become a star
athlete in order to win a young woman's heart.
- Speak Easily
: Buster Keaton is a professor who mistakenly believes he
has inherited a fortune and gets involved with entertainers and hoodlums.
- Back to School
: Rodney Dangerfield is a successful businessman who
goes back to college to convince his son that anyone can succeed in college.
- Old Man Rhythm
: a successful businessman goes to college with his son.
- The Undergrads
: a college student rescues his grandfather from a
retirement home, and the old man decides to matriculate.
- The Absent-Minded Professor
: Fred MacMurray is a professor who
stumbles upon "flubber," a material that defies gravity and makes
things bounce.
- The Absent
-Minded Professor: Harry Anderson's re-make.
- The Guyver
: a mediocre college student stumbles across a magical
helmet that transforms him into his favorite comic-book action hero.
- The Gladiator
: Joe E. Brown drinks a potion that changes him from a
wimp into a big-man-on-campus.
- It Happens Every Spring
: Ray Milland stars as a chemistry professor
who accidentally discovers a mixture that makes baseballs curve.
- The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
: Kurt Russell plays a college student
whose brain has been computerized.
- Now You See Him, Now You Don't
: the sequel to The Computer . . .
- The Strongest Man in the World
: the third film in the series set at
the fictional Medfield College.
- 18 Again
: octogenarian George Burns switches bodies with his
college-freshman grandson.
- Desire Diabolique
: a woman take a potion that transforms her into her
fiance, a professor.
- The Girl Most Likely To
. . .: an ugly coed becomes beautiful and gets
back at all the men who have previously rejected or ignored her through
plastic surgery--co-written by Joan Rivers.
- Up in the Cellar
: a disturbed college student who loses his
scholarship through a clerical error revenges himself against the college
president a by seducing his wife, his daughter, and his mistress.
- Real Genius
: a Martha Coolidge-directed comedy in which bright science
students prevent their laser research from falling into the wrong hands.
- Interface
: a computer game gets out of hand.
- Mazes and Monsters
: a Dungeons and Dragons game gets out of
hand--starring a very young Tom Hanks.
- Gor
: a professor enters into a world run by wizards and warriors.
- Paper Man
: computer hackers devise a credit scam that leads to a
series of killings.
- The Misadventures of Mr. Wilt:
a college professor in a bad marriage
becomes the chief suspect when his wife disappears--a comedy.
- Throw Momma from the Train
: a creative-writing instructor is drawn by
an odd student into a darkly comic bargain to commit murder for each other.
- How to Be Very, Very Popular
: Betty Grable's final film about two
belly dancers who witness a murder and hide out in a coed dormitory.
- She Loves Me Not
: a nightclub entertainer witnesses a Mob hit and
hides out at a men's college.
- D.O.A.:
a creative-writing professor tries to find the source and
antidote to his poisoning before it kills him.
- Man to Man
: a 1930s film in which the premise is that a college
student is dismissed from college when it is discovered that his father is
serving a prison term for murder.
- The Glass House
: in this adaptation of the Truman Capote story, a
college professor is imprisoned for manslaughter.
- Johnny Apollo
: a young man's graduation coincides with his father's
imprisonment for embezzlement.
- Columbo Goes to College
: in this made-for-television film, the
persistent detective investigates the murder of a criminology professor.
- One the Killing Starts
: a professor schemes to get away with murdering
his wife.
- Meet Nero Wolfe
: Wolfe and Archie Goodwin investigate the death of a
college president.
- Murder Goes to College:
a p.i. and a reporter try to solve a murder on
a college campus.
- Torso:
police investigate the mutilation-murders of two college
students.
- Murder 101
: in this made-for-television film, Pierce Brosnan is a
professor whose class brainstorms the perfect murder--a crime for which he is
subsequently the chief suspect.
- Grand Slam
: a college student becomes involved in an elaborate heist.
- American Tiger
: a college student is accused of murder and pursues the
real killer with the help of an exotic dancer.
- Fade to Black
: a college professor happens to videotape a murder for
which he then becomes the main suspect.
- The Billionnaire Boys Club
: rich college students indulge in organized
crime.
- Less than Zero
: a college student returns home and realizes just how
seriously self-destructive his hometown friends are.
- Open Admissions
: a made-for-television film adaptation of the play by
Shirley Lauro about a Black student who needs remedial work.
- Final Shot: The Hank Gathers Story
: a bio-pic about the Loyola
Marymount basketball star who chose to risk death from a diagnosed heart
ailment rather than quit the hardwood.
- Grambling's White Tiger
: a white quarterback plays for the Black
college's historically elite football team.
- Trouble along the Way
: John Wayne is a controversial football coach
hired to save a Catholic college by making it a football power.
- The Iron Major
: the dramatization of the life of a disabled veteran of
the First World War who became an inspirational football coach.
- Footsteps
: Richard Crenna is a driven and hard-driving college
football coach
- One on One
: Robby Benson stars as a scholarship athlete who confronts
some of the hard realities and transparent hypocrisies of college basketball.
- Running Brave
: Robby Benson stars as Billy Mills, a Sioux athlete who
became a collegiate and Olympic track-and-field champion despite the conflicts
caused by the biases of both Whites and Native Americans.
- Everybody's All-American
: Dennis Quaid is the title character who
tries to cope with life after his playing days are long over.
- The Program
: an expose of the hard realities of college football.
- What Price Victory
: Mac Davis confronts the realities of big-time
college sports.
- A Yank at Oxford
: Robert Taylor is an American jock who has more than
a little trouble fitting in.
- Oxford Blues
: Rob Lowe in Robert Taylor's role.
- Hold That Coed
: John Barrymore is a politician whose future comes to
depend on the outcome of a football game.
- Gentlemen Are Born
: a group of college graduates face the hard
economic conditions of the Great Depression.
- Happy as the Grass Is Green
: a college student agrees to accompany a
friend back home for a family funeral and finds his perspective unexpectedly
broadened by the experience.
- Peter's Friends
: a Kenneth Branaugh film about college friends who
continue to socialize after their lives diverge; not one of his stellar
efforts.
- St. Elmo's Fire
: college friends try to move on with their lives
without letting go of each other.
- Love Story
: the great tear-jerker about the doomed love affair between
two college students.
- These Glamour Girls
: a well-off college student in the 1930s invites a
dime-a-dance girl to spend a weekend socializing with his pretentious friends.
- Loving
: a made-for-television film about life in a university town,
with an emphasis on romance--the pilot for the short-lived daytime soap opera
of the same name.
- Joy in the Morning
: an earlier take on the subject of Loving.
- Our Time
: a 1970s college romance set in the 1950s.
- Take Care of My Little Girl
: Jeane Crain and Mitzi Gaynor are sorority
sisters in this melodrama about campus life.
- Girls' Dormitory
: a campus romance.
- The Affairs of Dobie Gillis
: a lighthearted take on campus life in the
early 1950s.
- Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble
: Andy Hardy goes to college.
- Andy Hardy's Double Life
: more of Andy in college.
- Mr. Belvedere Goes to College
: a genius learns that there's knowledge
to be found outside of books.
- Blondie Goes to College
: the Bumsteads decide to pretend they're
single when they return to college.
- To Love Again/The Seduction of Miss Leona
: Lynn Redgrave is a
professor who falls in love with a handyman.
- Like Mom, Like Me
: in this made-for-television film, Linda Lavin is a
professor who becomes a single mother when her husband deserts her and their
daughter.
- Is There Life Out There?
: Reba McEntire is a working mother who
returns to college.
- With Honors
: Brendan Fraser and Joe Pesci represent respectively the
university environment and the mean streets in this exercise in the exchange
of knowledge.
- The All
-Nighter: a college senior hopes to define her career
goals and to establish a long-term relationship, all in the final few weeks
before graduation.
- Class of '44
: the college-years sequel to Class of '42.
- September 30, 1955
: college students mourn the death of James Dean.
- The Boy Who Had Everything
: an Australian film about a college student
who gradually discovers that his life is a good deal more complicated than he
had thought.
- The Children Nobody Wanted
: a college student struggles with being a
foster parent.
- Man, Woman, and Child
: an established professor and his family must
adjust to the news that he has a ten-year-old illegitimate son who is coming
to live with them.
- Betty Coed
: Jean Porter is a stage actress who struggles with her
decision to get a college degree.
- She's Working Her Way through College
: Virginia Mayo is a burlesque
queen who decides to enroll in college.
- Start Cheering
: a Hollywood star goes back to college.
- Dancing Coed
: Lana Turner is a dancer who returns to college in a
convoluted effort to advance her career.
- Cinderella Jones
: a Busby Berkeley film about a ditz who enrolls in
college to find a smart husband and thereby secure an inheritance.
- Mother Is a Freshman
: a mother and daughter enroll in college at the
same time and fall for the same professor.
- Kilroy Was Here
: a former G.I. named Kilroy goes to college and is
plagued with witticisms about his name.
- The Alumni Reunion
: a woman tries to find a new job or even a new
career for her husband at his college reunion.
- Class of '63
: at a college reunion, a woman struggles with the choice
of staying with her husband or resuming her relationship with a former lover.
- Campus Honeymoon
: a male and female student pose as a married couple
to gain access to better campus housing.
- Mugssy's Girls
: Ruth Gordon is the sorority's unconventional
housemother.
- Call Her Mom
: Connie Stevens is a "shapely" waitress who
creates a sensation when she agrees to become a fraternity's housemother.
- Fraternity Row
: an expose of fraternity life in the 1950s.
- The Hazing
: a film that explores the premise that even the best
fraternities are Delts at heart.
- For Men Only
: the hazing death of a fraternity pledge rocks a small
college.
- Strange Behavior
: a very off-centered film about a series of murders
in a Midwestern college town.
- A Love to Remember
: a made-for-television film about how a cruel
practical joke the colors the experiences of a group of college students.
- A Life for a Life
: psychological experiments at a university, suicide,
and murder.
- Mind Games
: a sadistic psychology student torments a family already
unraveling because of all sorts of emotional issues.
- Three in the Attic
: three young women imprison a college lothario in
an attic.
- Drive, He Said
: a college student's life gets complicated when he has
an affair with the dean's wife and becomes involved in both campus politics
and political protests.
- The Strawberry Statement
: campus radicals occupy buildings and press
their demands.
- The Time Is Now
: in this made-for-television film, a college president
is murdered shortly after meeting with student radicals.
- Forgotten Commandments
: a college student enters into a triangle that
leads to murder.
- Cuckoo Bird
: a triangle involving a professor, his wife, and his
mistress.
- Threesome
: a triangle involving three dormmates.
- Summer Lovers
: a triangle involving a college student and two women on
a Greek island.
- First Affair
: a made-for-television film about an inexperienced
college student gets involved with the husband of one of her professors.
- Forbidden Nights
: an American professor at a Chinese university
violates the code of conduct for foreigners when she falls in love with one of
her students.
- Nightingales
: a treatment of the personal and academic lives of eight
student nurses brought together in a university residence hall.
- College Confidential
: a researcher creates controversy by surveying
her students about their sex lives.
- Consenting Adult
: a college student "comes out of the
closet."
- Didn't You Hear
: a college student who feels that he isn't allowed to
be himself retreats into a fantasy world.
- Listen to Me
: a high school debating champion finds college more
contentious.
- The Kid with the 200 I.Q.
: Gary Coleman is a diminutive genius who
enters college at a very young age and has to find a way to fit in.
- Freddie Steps Out
: a college student's life changes after he finds an
abandoned baby.
- Fluffy
: Tony Randall is a professor who sets out to prove that he can
domesticate wild animals, including a lion.
- Big Man on Campus
: out of intellectual curiosity, a college student
moves in with a hunchback.
- Hero for a Day
: a campus security guard is mistaken for an influential
alumnus.
- The Steagle
: a professor reacts to the Cuban missile crisis by
deserting his family for the life of a revolutionary.
- T.A.G.: The Assassination Game:
a college strategy game becomes
shockingly real.
- High Time
: a middle-aged man enrolls in college after his wife's death
and falls for his French professor.
- Encounters in the Night
: Donna Mills and James Brolin co-star in this
film about a bored housewife who returns to college and becomes increasingly
obsessed with sexual fantasies.
- Paranoia
: Carroll Baker is a wealthy widow who gets involved with a
college student with more than a passing an interest in drugs and sexual
experimentation.
- Life 101
: a somewhat lifeless initiation story.
- Fresh Horses
: a rich college student dumps his pretentious girlfriend
for a very idiosyncratic young woman from the other side of the tracks.
- Where the Boys Are
: perhaps the prototypical spring-break movie.
- Ocean Drive Weekend
: college students head for the ocean as a reprieve
from their studies.
- Fraternity Vacation
: neither farce nor drama.
- 5 against the House
: college buddies scheme to steal from a Vegas
casino to pay off their debts--makes Oceans 11 seem like King Lear.
- Summer City
: an excursion turns terrifying for a group of university
students--Mel Gibson's film debut.
- Sorority House
: a young woman from a modest family lies about her
background to fit in among her uppercrust sorority sisters.
- Thirteen Women
: Myrna Loy is a half-Japanese and half-Indian woman who
gets her revenge against the members of a sorority that rejected her.
- Sorority Girl
: a Roger Corman film about a sorority reject's revenge.
- The House on Sorority Row
: sorority sisters kill their horrid
housemother and are haunted by their guilt.
- Love and Kisses
: Ricky Nelson wants to get married before he
heads off to college.
- One Way Ticket
: the daughter of a prison guard leaves with her convict
lover in the trunk of her car when she heads off to college.
- How I Got into College
: a young man pursues a young woman while
ostensibly pursuing an education.
- The First Time
: a freshman who thinks he's a "player" falls
in love.
- Freshman Love
: a film about the love lives of college freshmen.
- Happy Together
: roommates in a coed dorm learn a lot about each other
and a lot about themselves.
- The Love-Ins:
a college professor become the guru to a hippie cult.
- Heat of Desire
: a French film about a professor who is transformed by
a week in a Barcelona hotel with a young woman.
- New Girl
: a farce with dramatic pretensions about a college student
who escapes a dangerous situation by dressing in drag and finds that he can
pass as a coed.
- Little Sister
: as a prank a college student dresses in drag, is
invited to join a sorority, and falls for one of his "sisters."
- Nobody's Perfect
: a college student dresses in drag and tries out for
the women's tennis team, all to be closer to a young woman with whom he is
hopelessly infatuated.
- Ski Party
: two college students dress in drag to spy on and learn from
a fellow student who's a real "player."
- College Holiday
: Jack Benny is a hotel owner who seeks to balance his
books by attracting college students on holiday.
- Louisiana
: the son of a sharecropper sings his way through college.
- Do You Love Me?
: a romantic farce set in a college music department.
- Freshman Year
: college freshmen adjust more quickly to college life by
staging a musical variety show.
- C'mon Let's Live a Little
: a singer returns to college and falls in
love with the daughter of the dean.
- For Those Who Think Young
: college students frequent a nightclub that
features celebrity has-beens.
- College Humor
: Bing Crosby is a singing professor dealing with
infatuated co-eds and jealous football players.
- Eleven Men and a Girl
: the daughter of a college president connives to
lure star football players to the college.
- Mr. Doodle Kicks Off:
through the connivance of college
administrators, a wealthy donor's son becomes a star football player.
- Maker of Men
: a college football coach must deal with the fact that
his son has chosen to play for one of his school's chief rivals.
- The All
-American: a college football star confronts life after
and off the gridiron.
- Glory Days
: in this made-for-television film, Robert Conrad is a
middle-aged man who returns to college in order to fulfill his dream of
playing college football.
- Return to Campus:
a middle-aged man returns to college to try to
relive the best years of his life.
- Father Was a Fullback
: Fred MacMurray is a college football coach with
as many problems as inspirational quips.
- College Coach
: Pat O'Brien straightens out a cocky football player.
- The Spirit of Notre Dame
: a star player has to learn the value of
teamwork.
- The Big Fix
: gangsters try to rig college basketball games.
- Corsair
: a former college football star turns to bootlegging.
- Pardon My Stripes
: a college football player loses a package of money
that belongs to a gangster.
- Chasing Dreams
: a college student finds his focus through playing
baseball.
- The Big Leaguer
: a college baseball star is determined to get his shot
at the major leagues.
- Let's Go Collegiate
: a college crew needs a new rower after one of
them is drafted into the army.
- Spiker
: the best college volleyball players in the country vie for
spots on the Olympic team.
- Rose Bowl
: a small university hopes to balance its books by competing
in big-time collegiate athletics.
- The Water Boy
: Adam Sandler stars as the unlikely linebacker who
transforms a hopelessly hapless college football team into a winner.
- Necessary Roughness
: Scott Bakula stars as the quarterback of a
hopelessly hapless college football team that finds its heart and wins.
- Gridiron Flash
: a convict gets a chance to go to college on a football
scholarship.
- Hold That Line
: a college student discovers vitamins that transform
him into a football star.
- The Monkey's Uncle
: a financially strapped college is depending on its
brightest student to produce victories on the gridiron and prize-winning
inventions.
- Life Begins in College
: the Ritz Brothers aren't quite the Marx
Brothers--but this film may hold the record for the number of gags involving
footballs.
- Hold That Line
: the Bowery Boys try college football.
- Bonzo Goes to College
: the chimp proves himself not only as a star
football player but also as a star student.
- Fast Break
: Gabe Kaplan imports New York players to revive the
basketball program at a Nevada college.
- The Air Up There
: Kevin Bacon goes to Africa to find a dominating
basketball player who can propel his college team to greatness and save the
college.
- Johnny Be Good
: a lame comedy about the cutthroat world of recruiters
for big-time college sports teams.
- Million Dollar Legs
: a racehorse is the salvation of a financially
strapped college.
- Sweetheart of the Campus
: a jazz band is the salvation of a
financially strapped campus.
- Hi, Neighbor
: an entertainer saves a college by turning it into a
summer resort.
- Jocks
: college tennis teams converge on Las Vegas; not much tennis.
- Crazy Legs
: a nerd becomes a triathlete in order to impress a young
woman.
- Beach Ball
: a college band dresses in drag to win contest prize money
that will forestall repossession of their musical instruments.
- H.O.T.S.
: rival sororities challenge each other to a game of
"strip football."
- Knockouts
: sorority girls and biker girls face off in a wrestling
match.
- Campus Man
: the struggle of a college student to publish a calendar
featuring college men in beefcake poses.
- College Kickboxers
: martial arts with a campus slant.
- Kick or Die
: martial artists patrol a campus terrorized by a rapist.
- Freckles Comes Home
: When he comes home from college, Freckles
discovers that gangsters have stolen his girl and the town.
- Danger Woman
: secret agents seeking atomic secrets pursue a professor.
- Gotcha!
: a college student on a European vacation gets entangled in
espionage.
- Skyhigh:
vacationing college students find a videotape and then find
themselves being pursued by agents from both sides of the Iron Curtain.
- 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.
- Soak the Rich
: a college student falls for a politically radical
classmate who despises her wealthy father.
- Double Identity
: a college professor turned criminal desires to
reverse courses after falling in love.
- Hold 'em Yale
: neighborhood thugs try to find a "nice" girl
a college boy.
- The Dream Makers
: James Franciscus is a professor who forsakes the
ivory tower for a brief but fantastic career as a record company executive.
- Get Yourself a College Girl
: a music student is ostracized after her
professors find out that she is supporting herself as a pop singer.
- Geraldine
: a college professor writes a hit song but almost loses the
royalties to it.
- Naughty, but Nice
: a music professor becomes a successful songwriter
for Tin Pan Alley.
- Sweet Liberty
: a film production of a professor's book turns a college
town on its ear.
- 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.
- Breakthrough
: college students, a CB radio, and evangelicalism.
- College Swing
: Gracie Allen inherits a college and invites her
show-business friends to help her run it.
- Collegiate
: a Betty Grable vehicle about a playboy's being put in
charge of a failing women's college.
- Midnight Madness
: an Animal House knock-off about an all-night
scavenger hunt.
- Spring Break
: Animal House knock-off set in Fort Lauderdale.
- Incoming Freshmen
: Duck!
- P.C.U.
: an anything but p.c. lightweight farce.
- Revenge of the Nerds
: goofballs turn the tables on their tormentors.
- Assault of the Party Nerds
: an Animal House knock-off.
- Preppies
: college students on academic probation have to choose
between studying and having sex.
- Higher Education
: a low-reaching comedy.
- 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).
- Dr. Alien:
a curvaceous professor selects a nerd for sexual
experiments with extraterrestrials.
- The Party Animal:
a college student makes a Faustian bargain for sex.
- Doctor Detroit
: Dan Ackroyd is a straightlaced professor who
impersonates a gangster.
- Stitches
: medical students who are prone to hijinks try to force their
dean into retirement.
- Gemini
: a garish film adaptation of the play, focusing on a college
student from a working-class family who is struggling to define herself
sexually.
- Illusions within Girls
: a French film about a handsome professor who
teaches sex education at a women's college.
- French Bumpers
: college students focus on inventive ways to pick up
women.
- The Seniors
: college students decide to open a sex clinic and make a
fortune.
- School Spirit
: a dead college student comes back to life for a day and
tries to fill the whole twenty-four hours with sex.
- 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.
- Dr. Frankenstein on Campus
: A descendant of the mad doctor is at the
center of mind-control experiments at a Canadian university.
- The Food of the Gods
: a professor's experiments result in supersized
rats that create havoc on his campus.
- Dogs
: David McCallum is a jaded professor who survives the predations
of a pack of murderous dogs roaming his campus.
- Nightwish
: a professor and his students seek the truth about a
supposedly haunted house and let all sorts of bad spirits loose upon the
community.
- The Misadventures of Merlin Jones
: the title character is a brainiac
who plays around with parapsychology.
- The Monkey's Uncle
: the sequel to The Misadventures . . .
- Not Quite Human II:
the robotic main character heads off to college.
- Now You See Him, Now You Don't
: a student's invention of a potion that
permits invisibility may rescue his cash-poor college if he can keep it out of
the hands of the criminals who shadowing him.
- Beauty and the Robot
: Mamie Van Doren is a stripper that a computer
picks to chair a college science department.
- Black Friday
: a college professor gets a brain transplant and turns
into a serial murderer.
- A Shot in the Dark
: a college student becomes an amateur detective
when a series of murders occurs on his New England campus.
- College Scandal
: two murders rock a college campus.
- Extortion
: detectives investigate the murder of a "college quiz
examiner."
- The College-Girl Murders
: Scotland Yard investigates unusual
poisonings.
- Sweater Girl
: murders shock a college town in the years before World
War 2.
- American Tiger
: a college student is accused of murder and pursues the
real killer with the help of an exotic dancer.
- Final Exam
: a college student struggles to keep up with his studies
and tries to identify a serial killer.
- Psychic
: a clairvoyant college student and a serial killer.
- Pieces
: Christopher George is a hardened detective trying to stop a
serial murderer who's killing coeds.
- Death Goes to School
: a professor tries to stop a strangler on campus.
- Spraggue
: a professor chases an evil doctor.
- Splatter University
: a new sociology professor becomes preoccupied
with identifying a knifer.
- Pranks
: summer work-study students refurbishing a dormitory are killed
off one by one.
- The Dorm That Dripped Blood
: a campus clean-up campaign turns gory.
- Popcorn
: a horror-film festival turns gory.
- Happy Hell Night
: a fraternity house is haunted by a madman with an
ax.
- House of Death
: a sorority house is haunted by a madman with a
machete.
- Silent Scream
: college students rent an old mansion with a secret
resident maniac.
- Night School
: women are turning up horribly murdered at a Boston
college.
- The House on Sorority Row
: another slasher pic.
- Sorority House Massacre
: an escaped mental patient has a grudge
against sorority girls.
- April Fool's Day
: a slasher pic about college students on a deserted
island with a serial murderer.
- The Folks at Red Wolf Inn
: a college student on vacation falls into
the clutches of a family of cannibals.
- Bowery at Midnight
: a Jekyll-Hyde story featuring a college professor.
- Hellmaster
: a mad scientist experiments on students.
- The Crawling Hand
: a college student finds and is terrorized by the
dismembered hand of a former astronaut.
- Blood Cult
: devil worshippers at a Midwestern college.
- Burn, Witch, Burn
: a professor who is skeptical about the occult has
to save his wife from a diabolical cult.
- Children of the Night
: college students and vampires.
- Dead Men Walk
: a college professor confronts a vampire who is his
"evil twin."
- The Ripper
: a ring transforms a professor into the reincarnation of
Jack the Ripper.
- I'm Dangerous Tonight
: Aztec blood rituals change an innocent coed
into a vampy killer.
- Ghoulies Go to College
: Ghoulies go to college.
- Frankenstein:
The College Years: the monster turns out to be a
good dancer and an even better football player.
- My Swedish Aunt
: an Italian film about a college student who begins an
affair with an uncle's new bride.
- Count the Ways
: a professor who is engaged to marry the dean's
daughter falls in love with a beautiful coed.
- First Love
: the love affair between two college students is on the
rocks because of her attraction to an older man.
- Kingsgate
: a strident melodrama about a student who has an affair with
a professor.
- Elliot Fauman, Ph.D.
: a professor's risks a grant proposal by getting
involved with a prostitute.
- After School
: a young priest and faculty member at a Catholic college
falls in love with a female student.
- An Uncommon Love
: a college professor falls for one of his students,
who pays her tuition by working as a prostitute.
- A Night in Heaven
: a college professor has an affair with one of her
students, who pays his tuition by working as an exotic dancer.
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