Product Details

• Actors: Tom Everett Scott, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Poppy Montgomery, Lochlyn Munro, Randy Pearlstein
• Directors: Alan Cohn
• Writers: Adam Larson Broder, Anthony Abrams, Michael Traeger, Mike White
• Producers: David Gale, Gale Anne Hurd, Maggie Malina
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Paramount
• VHS Release Date: August 3, 1999
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305256896
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,022 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Well, it's a good idea. Dead Man on Campus had the potential to be a classic dark comedy: Two students at a prestigious university are flunking out; however, due to a provision in the school's charter, if they had a roommate who committed suicide, they'd both get straight A's as a form of reparation for grief and trauma. So, to stay in school, they seek out the most depressed student on campus and transfer him into their three-person dorm room. Unfortunately, rather than satirizing the real issues--academic narrow-mindedness, parental pressure, the obsessiveness of late adolescence--the movie is a compilation of frat-boy clichés and jokes that want to be in bad taste but are actually quite tame. The leads (Tom Everett Scott and Mark-Paul Gosselaar) are pleasant and the soundtrack (produced by the Dust Brothers) has some very hip selections, but after a snappy opening-credit sequence, the movie stumbles along, aimless and sluggish. Alyson Hannigan (American Pie, Willow on TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has a small role and is her charming geeky self. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Morbidly Funny, October 15, 2000

By 

Greg Hughes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Man on Campus [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I was expecting this movie to be pretty stupid, but I was quite surprised. This story actually made me laugh out loud in places, and I had a constant smile on my face.

Two students are in a predicament. They face expulsion from college unless they can take advantage of a loophole that will grant them perfect grades: the traumatic death of a roommate.

So the two students come up with a plan. They go through a list of possible candidates (the most unstable students on campus), ask them to move in, and then attempt to drive them into committing suicide. Things don't go as smoothly as they expect.

You will probably recognise the two main characters from other "wacky" comedies from the past. To me, "Dead Man on Campus" is like a combination of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Weekend At Bernie's". The two students, caught in a dilemma of their own making, attempt to use the easy way out: (someone elses) suicide.

Although the premise is bizaare and macabre, I found "Dead Man On Campus" one of the least offensive of the "college comedies".

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First of all...I really liked this movie., February 13, 2000

By 

Rick Gagliano (Milwaukee Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Man on Campus [VHS] (VHS Tape)

First of all...I really liked this movie. I am sure some of you are saying..."what you got to be kidding", well, no I am not. This story is based upon an age old falsehood that states "if your college roommate kills them self in college, the surviving roommate gets a 4.0". Here you have Gosselaar (the old ZAK on `Saved by the Bell') partying like crazy in college and living with Scott, who is easily distracted by Gosselaar. Well the distractions take their toll and both Gosselaar and Scott are headed for collegiate non-return status, when they hear the 4.0 story. Now if you have been on a college campus as long as I have, you will come across a great deal of students who claim this is true and that it has happened to a friend of theirs at some college...well, you are mistaken..it never happened and never will. But that doesn't mean you can't make a movie out of it. If you like offensive jokes, off-the-wall humor and can handle laughing out loud (in public) at scenes that you should not be....then this movie is for you. Bottom line...if your roommate is depressed, then go ahead and take them to see this film, they will laugh so hard that they will forgot their worries (at least for a few moments.)

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Come on man! Just kick me in the junk!, September 27, 2001

By 

Chen (Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Man on Campus (DVD)

I don't remember when I first heard about this movie, but I remembered it sounded funny and telling myself to see it one day. Well, come Yom Kippur, I ventured over to the video store to find me some movies to see, and hello! I saw this, and, debating awhile, decided to check it out. Remember when I said I thought it would be funny? Strike that. This movie is super funny! And it does it without too many low-brow jokes that, even though I love, you can see in any teen movie these days. Even when the movie does stoop low, it somehow does it with class. The actors are great, and pull off the strange charictors perfectly: Matt, the "deppressed" musician, Buckley, who thinks Bill Gates is after his brians, Cliff who's a bit crazy, and the main caraictors Cooper and Josh, who everyone suspects are gay. I noticed some people below didn't like this movie. But hey, some people can't tell good movies when they see them.