Customer Reviews

Killing Mr Griffin [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

With lots of star power (Scott Bairstow, Amy Jo Johnson, Michelle Williams, and more), Killing Mr. Griffin occasionally hits home because it contains realistic elements of teenage life--at any rate, the life of an awkward, smart, unpopular teenage girl, Susan, who is dying to be popular. Amy Jo Johnson plays this part well. After her teacher, Mr. Griffin, humilates her in class, Susan agrees to be part of a prank that is operated by some of the popular kids, including the guy she has a crush on. The kids want to humilate Mr. Griffin, like he humiliates his students. But the prank goes horribly wrong, and the students spend the rest of the movie living with the consequences of having to keep a terrible secret. Susan is especially haunted by what has happened. Her friend Maya (Michelle Williams) and her family suspect she is hiding something, and Susan is conflicted between doing the right thing and keeping her "good girl" image. It's a bit scary at times. Sometimes even a little *too* dark and edgy. It isn't the best film out there, but it is an interesting story and features talented actors, which more than make up for the dreariness of the plot.

Finally! A Lois Duncan movie that actually is LIKE the book.

For most people that have seen the movie and read the book probably think I'm crazy. I've heard many times that the movie is NOTHING like the book.

NOT so!

Even Lois Duncan liked it herself and was proud to have her name on it.

The movie follows a silent, shy girl named Susan that is far from popular. She daydreams about David, a popular boy in what I call the "in-crowd". Things start heating up when Mr. Griffin, a tough, no-nonsense teacher, brings the in-crowd to their knees. Play time and slacking is over when you hit his classroom.

Of course, the in-crowd doesn't like it and the leader, Mark, convinces the others in the group (ala followers) to play a...vengeful prank on Griffin: kidnap him and make him crawl like he does to his students. But they need a decoy: Susan, who is one of Griffin's better students. Susan, dazzled by the attention of the in-crowd and David, falls into their whims and agrees to help with the prank. But things suddenly go wrong. Yep, of all things Griffin ends up dead by accident--or is it? Now the rest of the movie the group tries to cover up the crime. But, of course, their plans go wrong.

The movie, I believe, captured the essense of Lois Duncan's original novel. It has some differences (major to minor), but the point of Duncan's book is there. Unlike like other movies based on Lois Duncan's novels, (I Know What You Did Last Summer and I've Been Waiting For You for example) Lois Duncan's point of writing the original novel is not thrown away to make a cheap teen slasher flick. And that alone gets kudos in my book.

Rent it and see.

Killing Mr. Griffin could as well be true. A lot of people would go through anything just to fit in. But could you lose everything you know and understand in the process? An understandable movie about Responsibility, and Mistrust in the way of fitting in.

Mr. Griffin is a strict teacher. Maybe too strict. Five seniors at the school Mr. Griffin teaches at think so. When revenge is the first thought that comes to mind, Mark, David, Jeff, Bree, and Tori set out to find a way to get back at Mr. Griffin for what he's done, but no one is volunteering for bait. When Susan McConnell is put under the spotlight for what seems a harmless prank, she decides to go for it. Besides she gets a couple of satisfactions to go with it. One, she gets to fit in. Two, she can get Mr. Griffin back at embarrasing her in class, and Three, she can hang out with David, the guy she has a crush on. When Susan sees what doesn't seem like an inoccent prank, she goes to where they have left poor Mr. Griffin tied up, and hostage. But Mr. Griffin isn't moving. He isn't even breathing. He's dead. After trying to figure out what happened to Mr. Griffin, the six are faced up against the biggest decision of their lives. Tell what happened, or keep it a secret.

An amazing story. The characters may have been mixed up a little bit, but it still made a great story. Lois Duncan did well with the book, but I think the movie was better. In the book you weren't as sorry for Mr. Griffin as you were watching the movie. Jay Thomas gave an awesome portrayal of the overlystrict Mr. Griffin. I think they kind of mixed Susan and her friend Maya up on accident. Susan was supposed to be the loner with glasses, and not exactly attractive. But Susan was very attractive in this movie. It was kind of hard to believe she couldn't get a boyfriend. Like someone said before, Tori and Bree were a split up of Betsie in the book, but I don't think Betsie was exactly that "I'm so cool" kind of girl in the book. The boys were portrayed great. Snobbish, not exactly serious.

A great movie to the book which I also recommend. This time I recommend the movie first. Than read the book. Either way, Mr. Griffin will die twice. 5 stars without a doubt.

Lois Duncan's Killing Mr. Griffin was an interesting novel in its own right, but this made for television movie manages to improve on the original. Amy Jo Johnson, the pretty young actress many may recognize as the former Pink Power Ranger, stars as Susan McConnell. Susan is a good student, yet she is shy and awkward around the popular crowd. She is especially shy around Dave (former "Saved by the Bell" player Mario Lopez), the handsome jock she has a crush on. Mark, the leader of the group Dave hangs with, is bent on becoming student body president and the most popular guy in high school. After being humiliated by Mr. Griffin, the notoriously strict English teacher, Mark develops a plan to get revenge. They will kidnap Mr. Griffin as a prank to humiliate him as he has humiliated students. Susan is unwittingly sucked into the plan by her feelings for Dave and her desire to become popular. Dave is pressured into using Susan's obvious feelings for him to a nasty advantage. The plan to kidnap Griffin goes almost as planned...but then he dies unexpectedly, and things spin out of control. The climax of the film is better than that in the novel, with just enough suspense to keep viewers hooked. Overall, this movie was excellent, and serves as a grim reminder of what peer pressure is capable of. The only qualm I had was that it was not a theatrical release. Highly recommended.

I had to remind myself that I checked out "Killing Mr. Griffin" because Michelle Williams was in it and I had thrown all of her movies that I had not seen into my queue because she has done some fairly interesting Independent films since "Dawons's Creek." However, this made for television movie predates those dates. It was not really at the top of the queue, but I have a lot of movies on short, long and very long wait ahead of it and was looking for a horror film for Saturday night and this is what arrived.

The heroine of the film turns out to be Susan McConnell (Amy Jo Johnson, from "Felicity"), who used to be the favorite student of Mr. John Griffin (Jay Thomas), her English teacher. But her approaching senior year, boys, or other indeterminate issues related to teenage angst have set her back. The class is discussing and reading aloud Shakespeare's "Tragedy of Julius Caesar" and Amy's reading of the title role at the start of the assassination scene lacks the arrogance that Mr. Griffin demands. A few harsh words from the teacher send Amy back to her seat in tears. It is after this point that we learn that Amy is one of his better students. This is a surprise because the way he treats her is indistinguishable from the way he treats Mark Kinney (Scott Bairstow), a student with arrogance oozing from every pore who does not like being forced to apologize to his teacher before the class.

Mark exercises the divine right of the Big Man on Campus to take down the teacher who pointedly asks him, "Has anybody ever told you 'no' and really meant it?" So he gathers his small group of fans and gets them to go along with what he describes as a prank: they will kidnap Mr. Griffin, humiliate him the way he has humiliated them, get him to beg and videotape it. Either Griffin will treat them right, or the video will makes its way around the school. Mark gets his best bud Dave Ruggles (Mario López) to get Susan to be part of the plot. She does not want to, but changes her mind when she is the target of the teacher's barbs. Susan delivers the teacher to the trap, but when he is attacked his first words are for her to run to safety and her second thoughts kick in at that point. We are encouraged to have such thoughts about Mr. Griffin when he chats with his wife about what he is trying to accomplish in the classroom, but when class is in session he just seems like an angry burnout who is incapable of making a connection of convincing his students that he cares about either them or the material. Just film one of his classes and the principal is going to show this guy the door.

Short version of what happens at that point is that Mr. Griffin ends up dead and the only people who do not know who did it and how it ended up happening are the characters in this movie. So Susan and her classmates think they are in a mystery, when this 1997 television movie is just another teenage horror show. Susan ignores several obvious clues until she finally finds proof positive. Does this mean that the film will try to overstep its limitations to come up with an important or at least intrinsically interesting way of turning the tables? No it does not, and if you have not agreed to with this rating by that point then the coda provided by Susan's father will certainly have you reaching for your remote to at least spare you from wasting time on the credits.

I have used this video after reading the book in my Literature class. The many decisions made by all the people in the book, make for a lively discussion. The Language concern I had initially wasn't an issue. The movie is just as good as I remember it from several years ago.

Movie was okay but we bought it to go along with the book and there are hardly any similarities. Good movie to use to talk to teens about peer pressure.

The product was well used but this is only to be expected as it was an ex rental tape. I paid for express delivery which the supplier did but the US postal service was pretty slow. I was on holiday in Florida and had the tape sent to my resort and it arrived in the afternoon we left. Still I got it in the end. Bought it for my daughter who is a teacher and I have had no complaints yet. With the exception of the US postal service everything worked out just fine

As far as TV movies go, "Killing Mr. Griffin" is a pretty good teen-oriented suspense film and a definite improvement on the 1978 book Lois Duncan wrote. In the book, there's no main character to empathize with, but in the movie, Susan McConnell (played by Amy Jo Johnson) is the leading protagonist, who is targeted by a group of popular classmates and asked to assist them in a senior prank played on Mr. Griffin (Jay Thomas), the harsh English teacher at Del Norte High School. Things go wrong, though, when Mr. Griffin accidentally dies on them due to his heart condition, and now all six teens must try and cover up his death.

Most of the book's characters are the same in the movie, except for Tori and Bree (Mindy Spence and Jennifer Hammon), who are kind of a combination of Betsy Cline, the cheerleader in the book. Tori is probably the closest thing to Betsy, though--she's basically a blonde rah-rah. But in the movie, Tori is Mark Kinney's (Scott Bairstow) girlfriend, whereas in the book, Mark was pretty much a loner. He's also much more popular and charismatic in the movie--and not all that bad-looking either. ;)

The remaining two guys, Dave Ruggles (Mario Lopez) and Jeff Garrett (Chris Young), act as Mark's sidekicks, but Dave is more in the spotlight than Jeff, because he's the one to lure Susan into their kidnapping scheme. Michelle Williams from "Dawson's Creek" even makes a few appearances as Susan's close friend, Maya (another made-up character for the movie).

If you've read "Killing Mr. Griffin" by Lois Duncan, then you might want to give this movie a try. In my opinion, it's much better than the book. It's more organized plot wise, has good character development and a somewhat better ending. Rated PG-13 for some violence and sensuality.

This NBC-TV movie surprised me. Writers Kathleen Rowell and Michael Angeli are very adept in creating both scenes and dialogue that seems realistic: the mousy girl who wants to be popular; the teens who find themselves Svengalied by a handsome rich boy; how a boy interferes in the relationship between two blossoming young women. And some really credible performances, mainly from Amy Jo Johnson, Scott Bairstow, and Mario Lopez.
Jay Thomas Mr. Griffin is a difficult character to empathize with, but in view of what teachers have to put up with in school, one can understand his cynicism. However, one cant' excuse his cruely in humiliating students in front of their classmates. He is also an extremist. But...he doesn't deserve what happens to him.
Bairstow as Mark gives us a teen of arrogant self-delusion; a narcisstic liar; and an obviously psychotic personality. Johnson and Michelle Williams are great in showing the special bond between two good friends.
There's not a lot of action in the movie, but it really doesn't need it; the key here is what happens when people's lives aren't important to the callow youths who can't accept the responsibility of their acts.
A sharp, tidy thriller.