I was reminded today of how popular the article was when I first posted this Canadian actress in The Faculty. I guess it was because she in the pilot film for that Teenage Witch thingy.
I guess it wasn’t widely known at the time that she had already appeared topless at age 18 in an obscure Canadian film called Best Wishes Mason Chadwick (1995). Not merely obscure, but VERY obscure. To this day, it only has 32 votes on IMDb, and I don’t think it has appeared in any format since VHS.
Her next nude appearance was in an incredibly silly 1997 sci-film called Habitat (0% Tomatometer, 32% Popcorn Meter), which is almost as obscure as Mason Chadwick. At least that one came out on DVD, so we have Tuna caps.
I personally consider Habitat a masterpiece nearly on the level of Road House. As you may know, I love bad movies and this one is truly bad. Not brain-dead bad like Last Days of Disco or 200 Cigarettes, but fun bad, so bad you can’t believe they were serious, like Plan 9 From Outer Space.
I loved every minute of this thing, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The acting can’t be believed, the art direction and f/x are atrocious, the plot makes no sense, every character is a cliche, there is no continuity, they made up their own science when they needed it for the plot, the music sucks, and the dialogue is about as bad as any movie ever written. Even the credits are bad, because they are bright green against a bright orange desert landscape.
In other words, this movie is great!
It’s the future, after the ecological disaster, and people can’t go out into the sun.
Balthazar Getty is the star, the guy you would hire if you wanted Charlie Sheen in the 90s, but couldn’t afford him.
He plays a kid who is having some trouble fitting into his new community. He has some problems at home with his parents, too. His mom is a hippie space cadet with a Ph.D. in microbiology, and his father is a house. I’m not making this up. His dad is a genius scientist who has determined a way to accelerate evolution a billion years, and now exists as disembodied atoms. He has become one with nature, and has joined with the atoms in the house to create a living habitat for his family, safe from the ecological disaster outside. You think the kids made fun of you because your dad had an accent? Imagine what they’d say if your dad was a suburban 3/2 without one single good walk-in closet.
Ol’ Balty is a mutant, which seems like it should be expected from the offspring of an eternally stoned woman and a split level ranch house. Because of his unique genes, he alone among all the people of earth can go outside in the sunlight. Perhaps he inherited his dad’s aluminum siding.
He’s also a potato. We know this because Laura Harris says to him, “Remember when our science teacher told us that the Irish potato famine could have been avoided if there was just one external strain of potato that could have been introduced to strengthen the native crop. Well, the human race is the same way, and you’re that potato, aren’t you?”
Back to Balty’s troubles in the community. The local phys ed teacher is a bully and a fundamentalist Christian fanatic who finds it difficult to relate to a kid whose mom is a half-naked stoned hippie and whose dad has shingles and a porch. So he and the local youth bullies, unaware of Balty’s mutant powers, tie him out in the sun to die. When Balty simply returns with a nice tan, the phys ed teacher then assumes he is some kind of satanic avatar.
Oh, yeah, the girlfriend of the head local bully falls in love with Balty and, by the way, the phys ed teacher is her dad. Small world.
Finally Balty defeats the bullies, aided by his once-pacifist friend who bops the head bully with a log. Balty’s dad defeats and kills a bunch of people who are trying to destroy him, including the coach. Dad then figures out a way to give the magical sun-immune powers to the girlfriend and she decides that she and Balty will “wander the earth” together. She doesn’t seem too upset about her own dad’s death. Then Balty’s dad figures out a way to turn Balty’s mom into pure energy, and together they float off into the ionosphere. Balty and his girl look up to the heavens and wave, and the girlfriend says “bye”. This really cracked me up more than anything else in the movie. “Bye, disembodied atoms, I’m really gonna miss you, even though we’ve never actually met, and you don’t actually have any ears to hear me or eyes to see my wave.”
Great, great movie. I don’t know if any of you like to toke it up once in a while, and I certainly would not advise you to engage in any illegal activities. But if you do like the occasional doob, I strongly suggest you rent this before firing up your next one. You can’t go wrong, except you might die from giggling.
1998 brought The Faculty, a so-so horror film that had many familiar faces in the cast (even Jon Stewart!), and took in a respectable $40 million at the box office.
The Faculty is basically the 11 millionth iteration of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the first one with a completely happy ending. You know the movie. You all could write the dialogue.
“Come with me. Join us. In a world of perfect peace. No unhappiness. No rejection. No foul-smelling cat litter … ”
“No, no. I like the human way. I believe in the inalienable rights of man. I want to smell the rain and feel refreshed by Dr Pepper. I want to feel the excitement of wondering who killed J.R. I want to visit Six Flags again.”
These aliens are always so dumb. I mean they land in some upper-middle class community in Northern California, where everyone is materially comfortable, and striving for self-actualization. The only people they manage to get on their team are the loser guys who look like Evil Ed, guys who hope to get back for years of brutalization by the football team. One of those guys doesn’t exactly make a good poster boy for the program. It’s not like the cheerleaders are going to sign up for the Alien Mind Control once they hear Evil Ed is in.
Hey, you Aliens, take a tip from your ol’ Uncle Scoopy. Go to places where life is hell. Go to Ngorno-Karabac, go to South Chicago, go to South Sudan. You won’t need to force people or trick people to join you there. They will go willingly into your mind control program because anything is better than what they have now.
Laura was naked in this one, at least in theory, but the scene was so dark that you will get eye-strain trying to see a nipple.
That was basically the end of her nudity at age 21, with one minor exception. Seven years later she offered a fleeting glimpse of her butt as she put on her clothing in a film called A Friend of the Family, another Canadian effort that virtually nobody has seen. She was “topless” as well, but her nipples were covered with flowers, and those daisies had a magic property that kept them over her nipples no matter the position or movement of her body.
She’s 49 now, and still working. IMDb says she is in a 2026 film from Canada, Remarkably Bright Creatures.
