Summer School

July. 22,1987      PG-13
Rating:
6.6
Trailer Synopsis Cast

A high-school gym teacher has big plans for the summer, but is forced to cancel them to teach a "bonehead" English class for misfit goof-off students. Fortunately, his unconventional brand of teaching fun field trips begins to connect with them, and even inspires ardor in some.

Mark Harmon as  Mr. Freddy Shoop
Kirstie Alley as  Ms. Robin Elizabeth Bishop
Courtney Thorne-Smith as  Pam House
Dean Cameron as  Francis 'Chainsaw' Gremp
Gary Riley as  Dave Frazier
Shawnee Smith as  Rhonda Altobello
Fabiana Udenio as  Anna-Maria Mazarelli
Ken Olandt as  Larry Kazamias
Robin Thomas as  Vice Principal Phil Gills
Kelly Jo Minter as  Denise Green

Similar titles

Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth
In this horror parody, a masked serial killer menaces the town of Bulimia Falls with various sharp objects. Attention-seeking television personality Hagitha Utslay is soon on the scene, reporting on the ever-growing body count. Former mall security guard Doughy shows up to protect the teenage population, but he's clearly not much help, allowing the murderer to pick off even more hapless kids as numerous scary movies are referenced.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth 2000
Scary Movie
HULU
Scary Movie
A familiar-looking group of teenagers find themselves being stalked by a more-than-vaguely recognizable masked killer! As the victims begin to pile up and the laughs pile on, none of your favorite scary movies escape the razor-sharp satire of this outrageously funny parody!
Scary Movie 2000
Waiting for the Moon
Waiting for the Moon
Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.
Waiting for the Moon 1987
Hairspray
Max
Hairspray
Pleasantly plump teenager Tracy Turnblad auditions to be on Baltimore's most popular dance show - The Corny Collins Show - and lands a prime spot. Through her newfound fame, she becomes determined to help her friends and end the racial segregation that has been a staple of the show.
Hairspray 2007
American Pie 2
Max
American Pie 2
After a year apart - attending different schools, meeting different people - the guys rent a beach house and vow to make this the best summer ever. As it turns out, whether that will happen or not has a lot to do with the girls. Between the wild parties, outrageous revelations and yes, a trip to band camp, they discover that times change and people change, but in the end, it's all about sticking together.
American Pie 2 2001
Napoleon Dynamite
Prime Video
Napoleon Dynamite
A listless and alienated teenager decides to help his new friend win the class presidency in their small western high school, while he must deal with his bizarre family life back home.
Napoleon Dynamite 2004
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
Max
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
A nutty inventor, his frustrated wife, a philosopher cousin, his much younger fiancée, a randy doctor, and a free-thinking nurse spend a summer weekend in and around a stunning - and possibly magical - country house.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy 1982
Superbad
Prime Video
Superbad
Two co-dependent high school seniors are forced to deal with separation anxiety after their plan to stage a booze-soaked party goes awry.
Superbad 2007
When Calls the Heart
Hallmark
When Calls the Heart
Elizabeth Thatcher, a cultured young teacher in 1910, fears leaving her comfortable world in the city. But when she accepts a teaching position in a frontier town, she finds new purpose and love with a handsome Royal Canadian Mountie.
When Calls the Heart 2013
The Jane Austen Book Club
Prime Video
The Jane Austen Book Club
Six Californians start a club to discuss the works of Jane Austen. As they delve into Austen's literature, the club members find themselves dealing with life experiences that parallel the themes of the books they are reading.
The Jane Austen Book Club 2007

You May Also Like

The Hugga Bunch
The Hugga Bunch
A puppet film about a young girl on a quest to save her grandmother from being put in a home. She gets visited by Huggins from Huggaland. She travels through the mirror and visits the bookworm. The bookworm tells of a tree the produced Young Berries that will help keep her grandmother young. These berries are protected by a wicked queen. She'll need all the friends she can gather to get the berries back to her grandmother in time!
The Hugga Bunch 1985
Worth Winning
Max
Worth Winning
Taylor is a man who has no problems with women. So confident is he that he accepts a challenge from his friends: he has to secure proposals of marriage from three women of their choice.
Worth Winning 1989
My Tutor
Prime Video
My Tutor
High school senior Bobby Chrystal fails his French class, which will block him from entering Yale. His rich, authoritarian father hires an attractive 29-year-old to tutor Bobby over the summer and help him pass a make-up exam. While Bobby's friends lead him away into strange excursions aimed at losing their virginity, Bobby finds all the extracurricular activities he needs with his new tutor.
My Tutor 1983
Death Spa
AMC+
Death Spa
Michael's health club is beseiged with a series of terrible murders involving killer saunas and other grisly devices. Michael's wife killed herself a while before and her brother holds Michael responsible. Michael needs to stop the bloodshed before he loses all of his clients.
Death Spa 1988
Memory: The Origins of Alien
AMC+
Memory: The Origins of Alien
The untold origin story behind Ridley Scott's Alien - rooted in Greek and Egyptian mythologies, underground comics, the art of Francis Bacon, and the dark visions of Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger. A contemplation on the symbiotic collaborative process of movie-making, the power of myth, and our collective unconscious.
Memory: The Origins of Alien 2019
The Three Musketeers
The Three Musketeers
Athletic adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic adventure about the king's musketeers and their mission to protect France.
The Three Musketeers 1948
Wildcats
Max
Wildcats
Molly is a high school track coach who knows just as much about football as anyone else on the planet. When a football coach's position becomes vacant, she applies for the job, despite snickers from fellow staff members and her former husband.
Wildcats 1986
Accidentally Engaged
Prime Video
Accidentally Engaged
When unsuccessful actress Clarissa returns to her hometown for a wedding and tries to impress her old friends by claiming she's dating big time celebrity Chas Hunter, she suddenly finds herself in a comically false engagement when her lies go public and Chas decides to join the festivities in a stunt to escape bad press.
Accidentally Engaged 2016
Ernest Saves Christmas
Paramount+
Ernest Saves Christmas
When Santa Claus decides to retire and pass on his magic bag of Christmas surprises to a new Saint Nick, he enlists the aid of a hilarious assortment of characters. A perky teen runaway and hapless taxi driver Ernest P. Worrell must convince a skeptical kiddie-show host to take over the post of Father Christmas.
Ernest Saves Christmas 1988
The Endless Summer
Prime Video
The Endless Summer
Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer is one of the first and most influential surf movies of all time. The film documents American surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they travel the world during California’s winter (which, back in 1965 was off-season for surfing) in search of the perfect wave and ultimately, an endless summer.
The Endless Summer 1966

Reviews

Actuakers
1987/07/22

One of my all time favorites.

... more
CommentsXp
1987/07/23

Best movie ever!

... more
Beanbioca
1987/07/24

As Good As It Gets

... more
Ezmae Chang
1987/07/25

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

... more
chimera3
1987/07/26

My mom introduced this movie to me and my brother and sung its praises like no other. She told us that this was done by Carl Reiner, father of the legendary Rob Reiner. Like with so many other movies that came out of the 1980's, this is one that will never be forgotten. In addition, this is a unique high school movie that will leave you in stitches because you laugh so hard. Then again, that's always been Carl's claim to fame: make you laugh so hard that you forget about a bad day.It all begins with Freddy Shoop (Mark Harmon before he joined "NCIS"), a devil-may-care gym teacher who is laser-focused on going to Hawaii for summer vacation. Then comes the principal and practically forces him to teach remedial English for summer school. There goes the summer vacation and he has to teach a motley crew of students who don't exactly have the best academic records in the world.Two of the students he has to teach are horror movie fans who know their way around special effects and the like. You also have pregnant Rhonda (Shawnee Smith before she was in "Saw" and just before she was in "The Blob"), as well as a foreign exchange student and a surfer girl who likes Shoop more than a typical teacher and student should. Everyone has their own story to tell and he has to deal with it.Probably one of the best scenes in the movie is when Shoop decides to leave and the students make a stand to get him back by scaring the living daylights out of a temporary substitute with the help of their horror movie aficionado classmates, essentially scaring her off. They then go down to the beach, still in their horror movie attire, and plead to Shoop to come back. He concedes, of course, and the students eventually take a formal English test (the fill in the bubble kind, of course), proving the cynical principal wrong in so many ways.Needing a good laugh? Had a bad day? Sit down and watch "Summer School." It's one of the craziest comedies to ever come out of the 1980's and I guarantee you will watch it over and over again.

... more
Scarecrow-88
1987/07/27

Spirited, fun-loving gym coach (Mark Harmon, never more charming or high energy) is saddled with high school kids stuck in summer school due to terrible grades in English, needing to get them to pass a test at the end so he can reach tenure. While the vice principal (a well cast stick-in-the-mud Robin Thomas) doubts Harmon can do it, the kids, through bribing (Harmon agrees to grant them favors if they will allow him to teach them English!), start to actually study and learn progressively. Meanwhile Harmon continues to ask fellow teacher Kirstie Alley (never more yummy) out on a date, unimpeded by her constant rejection towards him.An electric cast of familiar faces in young roles, a splendid sunny coastal setting, sense of humor that aims to please, breezy direction that makes the most of the formula plot, and some delightful homages to the slasher films of the 80s (this was around '87 as slasher films were riding the high soon to wane in the next few years) really keep the film appealing. It is a cult comedy that is anchored (and boosted) by Harmon's winning personality (he is mostly known as a dramatic actor with more effort toward intensity and sincerity which makes this character a welcome change of pace for him) with memorable duo of horror make-up aficionados, Chainsaw and Dave (Dean Cameron and Gary Riley, quite a pair), leaving a zany impression. But the cast is filled with faces those who grew up with television and movies in the 80s and 90s know: Patrick Labyorteaux (Little House on the Prairie; Heathers; Ghoulies III: JAG) as football player needing to lift his grades to make the team, Courtney Thorne-Smith (Melrose Place; Ally McBeal) as teenage surfer infatuated with Harmon, Kelly Jo Minter (after this she was in both The Lost Boys and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5) as dyslexic student trying to get her driver's license, Ken Olandt (April Fool's Day was right before this and he also starred in Leprechaun a few years later) as underage stripper who sleeps during summer class, Shawnee Smith (Saw; Who's Harry Crumb?) as pregnant teenager Labyorteaux takes a shine to, Richard Steven Horvitz as allergy-plagued dork who is burdened with being the black sheep in terms of not passing class (he has made a career as a voice artist), foxy foreign exchange student Fabiana Udenio who eventually strips to bikini and is an object of lust for the horror film geeks to drool over, and hulking Duane Davis who goes to the bathroom on the first day and returns the last to take the test (and passes with the highest grade!).Memorable scenes include the cast frightening a sub for Harmon with a splatter scene right out of a Freddy movie (the make-up effects are epic!), Harmon losing his girlfriend to a Hawaii trip as he must stay behind in order to remain employed, fireworks setting Harmon's couch on fire during a party at his house, Harmon's early teaching methods (which included field trips to an amusement park and the library), the summer school ending exams which had all the students rushing to just finish them, and the driver's exams where Cameron and Minter have their share of problems. Harmon and Alley have good chemistry, and his efforts finally pay off at the end...and how Harmon tries to disable Courtney's crush on him comes with some complications. Harmon's simply infectious, and NCIS fans might want to take a look at this to see a more laid-back and easy-breezy personality quite different from the rock of Gibraltar he inhabits on the long-time military action show.

... more
welshkay-1
1987/07/28

This is just a great comedy/summer movie. It's light -- though with some serious moments -- and just a lot of fun. Mark Harmon as Freddie Shoop is so believable, and likable, as the lost-at-sea-but-with-a-good-heart teacher forced to teach summer school. His class of misfits is great, believable and likable too; a cluster of perhaps damaged souls and "outsiders" going through a tough time in anyone's life – high school. Shoop is a bit of a slacker, in his own right, and manages to get himself into some awful situations, that in real life could go horribly wrong. But in the film world he's allowed to work them out and turn them -- and his young charges -- right. The situations are hilarious -- some, painfully so. And Robin Thomas as the sneaky-bastard vice principal Mr. Gills is truly unlikeable, in a very fun way. Kirstie Alley's Ms. Bishop is sedate and sensible -- the perfect foil for Shoop. And, of course, there's Wondermutt. What a great dog – and the perfect "mascot" for this film. Everything about this movie works, and I highly recommend it. It will make you laugh and feel better about life.

... more
ILoveCheapHorrorFlix
1987/07/29

Jethro Gibbs he is not in this movie. Mark Harmon is an all around fun grown up who hasn't grown up. Even though this movie was filmed in the 80s, the only real way to tell was Pam's uncles awful mullet, a bit of clothing, and the free sunglasses. This movie could've been filmed yesterday and you probably wouldn't even notice. Courtney Thorne-Smith is painfully sexy, Kirsty Allie coming in second. The acting is surprisingly good, and there are minimal obvious errors and goofs. This movie is fun, easy to watch, and a real "brighten up your day" kinda film. Mark Harmon, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Kirsty Allie, and Wonder Mut...all on the beach. What more could you want? Thumbs up twice for this gem!

... more