Killing Mr. Griffin

Plot synopsis:
Brian Griffin is a strict high school English teacher at Del Norte High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico who never accepts late homework and is demanding of his students. When Mark Kinney, one of the students in his class, plagiarizes a paper Mr. Griffin makes him beg to be allowed back into the class. However, instead of allowing him back in, Mr. Griffin decides to make him repeat the class next semester. Fellow students in the class include David Ruggles, Jeff Garrett, Betsy Cline, and Susan McConnell. Mark suggests kidnapping Mr. Griffin, and convinces David, Jeff, and Betsy to join in on the plan as a way of scaring him and getting revenge because they feel he has treated them poorly.
The group decides to use Susan, who is least willing to participate in the plot, to distract Mr. Griffin by requesting a conference with him after school. Since Susan is one of his better-performing students with a serious approach to her studies, Mr. Griffin willingly does so, allowing her to walk him to his car afterwards. Jeff, David and Mark forcefully place a bag over Mr. Griffin's head and tie him up, replacing the bag with a blindfold as they take him to a remote spot in the mountains. Betsy, thanks to a speeding ticket, arrives in the parking lot after the boys have left with Mr. Griffin. Susan was supposed to ride with Betsy, but does not want any further part in the scheme and Betsy leaves without her. Mark tells Mr. Griffin to beg but he refuses, so the students decide to leave him alone there until midnight.
Susan and David defy the group and go check on Mr. Griffin. The two find him dead as a result of coronary arrest after being unable to take his medication for angina. Mark convinces the rest of the group to cover up the death. He instructs Susan, who was the last one known to the police to see Mr. Griffin, to tell them Mr. Griffin kept looking at his watch during the conference and left with a pretty woman. Jeff, Mark, and David bury the body in the mountains. Betsy and David also drive Mr. Griffin's car to the airport, but the officer who gave Betsy a ticket sees her there. Worried that the officer might later identify the car as Mr. Griffin's, Jeff and Betsy move the car into Jeff's garage so he can repaint it before they hide it elsewhere.
Mark's ex-girlfriend, Lana Turnboldt, has a picnic with her fiancé at the secluded place in the mountains, where they discover Mr. Griffin's medicine bottle. The police investigate, and find Mr. Griffin's body buried nearby. However, police do not find the ring Mr. Griffin was wearing when he died as David had taken it. Irma Ruggles, David's paternal grandmother who lives with him, discovers the ring and refuses to give it back to him, believing the ring to be that of David's father who had left him. David tells Susan he took the ring and his grandmother found it, but they are unsuccessful at retrieving it from her, so Susan tells Mark about the situation because she feels he would know what to do. Irma Ruggles is later murdered, and a neighbor refers to the suspect as a boy in a brown sweater. Susan makes the connection, knowing that Mark has a brown sweater he wears all the time, and that Mark would stop at nothing to get what he needed – in this case, the ring.
Susan plans to tell the police all that the group has done. Before she can inform the police, Mark, Jeff, and Betsy tie Susan up, and Jeff and Betsy leave to hide Mr. Griffin's car. Mark sets her curtains on fire but Susan is saved by Kathy Griffin, Mr. Griffin's wife, who came over to her house with a detective for an interview. The detective catches Mark as he attempts to leave the house through a window. Several days later, Susan's mother tells her that all of those involved will face varying criminal charges, with her lawyer attempting to get Susan off with no charges in exchange for testimony. Mark will face three trials, one each for the deaths of Mr. Griffin and David's grandmother, and one for the attempted murder of Susan. Kathy Griffin leaves Susan a note that her husband had written before his death, praising Susan for her work and recognizing her potential.

Tags: revenge

Review:
Very Reasonable Teen Thriller.
Mr. Griffin (Jay Thomas) is a bitter high-school teacher, who pushes his students to the limit and is hated by most of them.
When he humiliates the popular student Mark Kinney (Scott Bairstow) is his class, Mark convinces his friends to play a prank on Mr. Griffin.
The group manipulates Susan McConnell (Amy Jo Johnson), using her to attract the teacher to the parking area after hours.
They kidnap, blindfold and take him to an abandoned boat house nearby a lake, and trying to frighten him, they leave him tied on a chair alone in the desert place without his heart pills.
Mr. Griffin dies and when his body is found, the group panics."Killing Mr. Griffin" is a very reasonable teen thriller.
It is not a masterpiece or an awful movie, as written in many reviews, but a slightly above average story with a good moral lesson in the end.
I believe the intention of the writer is to show the consequences of the steps each one of us decide to follow in life, no matter who the person is.
The character of Mr. Griffin is very nasty and arrogant, being impossible to feel any sympathy for him.
The Brazilian title is ridiculous, and the VHS released by "Europa Filmes" shows a picture of the body of Mr. Griffin in a grave with the students around, inducing the viewer that the genre of this movie would be horror.
My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "O Terror Ronda a Escola" ("The Terror Rounds the School").
Pleasantly Surprised..
This movie really did surprise me, I expected it to be horrible.
I watched it with my sister because she has a star crush on Mario Lopez and honestly expected to be bored out of my mind.
Yet again, a t.v. movie managed to prove me wrong.
It's not that I thought it was wonderful, it wasn't.
It was predictable, stereotypical, and the writing was occasionally weak.
But in general the actors managed to capture the emotional soul of the character, which in my opinion will make any movie worth watching.
While it's not the best movie created by any stretch, it keeps your attention without requiring in depth thought, and if you just feel like sitting back and watching a movie for a good time, this is a good one to watch..
Too good to be true..
I must say that this was one of the finest made for TV movies I have ever seen.
It was a part of the post Scream teen movie boom, but this one was actually good (unlike I've Been Waiting For You" and "Teaching Mrs. Tingle") The acting was surprisingly good by the cast of up and comers (it was great to see Michelle Williams pre Dawson's Creek) the script was intense and the direction made us feel we were part of the scheme.
If you liked "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (both movies were based on the books by Lois Duncan)  you'll get a kick out of this one too.
It's not a slasher story, but a story about covering up secrets and how they can ruin your life.
Amy Jo Johnson is terrific in the lead, and Scott Bairstow is creepy and sinister.
Too good to be a TV movie.
Too good to be a TV movie.
It should have at least got a limited theatrical release!.
HOW DECISIONS IN OUR LIFE CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING.
Looking at this film, I am reminded of my life in school, and teenage years when everything seems possible, and nothing could possibly harm us.
Invincible, we would dare to do some ridiculous things, take risks that were on the edge of becoming potentially dangerous, maybe even lethal.This television film tells of this thin line of what is right and wrong, doing on a dare, taking a risk, something goes horribly wrong and these youngsters will have to live with those decisions forever.
Youth following the voice of the leader, the basketball star, the budding bigshot.
The young people in the film did a great job in their characters, it is a solid film, and seen through the eyes of one young woman, who is sucked into a world where she thinks it would be cool; oh how one decision can change our life forever.I think it's more a film for those who survived adolescents, who survived high school and college and can look back and think - oh the mistakes I could have made, wow, some guardian angel must have been sitting on my shoulder..
Adequate, but read the book instead.
Poor Lois Duncan.
She's written many good-to-excellent thrillers aimed at the teen set, but their video adaptations almost never do them justice.
"I Know What You Did Last Summer" was turned into a teen slasher flick; "Gallows Hill" was butchered into "I've Been Waiting for You", and "Don't Look Behind You" (one of Duncan's best, about a girl whose family enters Witness Relocation) was turned into a vehicle for "Dallas" has-been Patrick Duffy!
Only "Summer of Fear", aka "Stranger in Our House", managed to survive intact (though you still have to put up with the dog/horse plot switch, as well as Linda Blair's scary perm).The "Killing Mr. Griffin" movie, sad to say, is a middling effort, not at all worthy of the excellent source material.
Most of the characters survive the transition to the screen, but are watered down and robbed of their distinctive traits.
Mr. Griffin himself, a well-meaning guy who has trouble relating to kids in the book, is simply a jerk here.
But worse is what happens to Mark Kinney.
In the book, it is slowly and frighteningly revealed that Mark is actually a sociopath, whose history of violence and ability bend the group to his will is even more troubling than what happens to Mr. Griffin.
But in the movie, Mark is just another troubled kid who is reacting to the pressure his parents have put on him to succeed.
Too bad, because his original incarnation is much, much scarier.If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it, as well as the other books I've mentioned above.
It would be a much better use of your time..
Not as good as the book.
It is more realistic and the charcters' motivations are better presented.
Their back stories are absent in the film.
In real life, any student would have broken down much earlier.
The acting, especially Tori's, is not good at all.
However, the end was much more dramatic and exciting than in the book..
My class just finished watching this movie after having read the book.
They preferred the book much more.Charles thinks Jeff does not resemble the character from the book.
The characters are not nearly as complex as in the book.
Where's Irma?
We want Irma!
Ms. Griffin is barely shown and her character is not developed at all.
Mark's home life should have resembled that of the book more.
This would make his motives more believable.
The final scene in the book is much more dramatic than in this movie version..
For a weeknight network movie...
you could do worse.
'Killing Mr. Griffin' isn't a remarkable film, and the production values could best be described as "B+." However, it is saved by its willingness to tread into the darker territory of high school peer pressure and cliques with reasonable verisimilitude (unlike, say 'Cruel Intentions' or 'She's All That') and strong performances on the part of the lead cast, especially Amy Jo Johnson as Susan McConnell.
Despite her lovely looks and renown for her breakout role as Valley Girl Queen Bee and Pink Power Ranger, Johnson is more than convincing as a socially awkward "Plain Jane" bookworm who nonetheless won't miss a sudden chance to join the cool kids and who tragically casts aside childhood loyalties and moral scruples along the way.
The frame story also works wonders to that effect, providing the character introspection that would otherwise have been lost in the screen adaptation.Nevertheless, the writers seem to have treated the adaptation of the source material a bit hastily in some respects.
Mr. Griffin is here portrayed as an anti-social jerk as opposed to the somewhat brash drill sergeant and ultra-strict grader he was in the book, and so it's somewhat more difficult to have empathy with respect to his ill fate.
The script also loses texture relative to the novel by its abandonment of the very well-done psychiatric dimension to the character of Mark Kinney (probably due to the difficulty of adapting his or the other characters' backstories in a single-shot film) and its under-exploitation of the Shakespearean parallels in the original plot.Overall it's reasonably entertaining, certainly better than your average 'Movie of the Week,' and it's definitely a treat if you're a fan of Amy Jo Johnson, but if you've got time to kill consider reading the novel..
dont even waste your time.
As bad as a movie can get.the acting was truly terrible, and it didnt help that i saw this on dvd, and nearly every 15 minutes the screen faded in and out like the cheesy tv movie it was.no suspense, no action, no real drama.
i wasted over an hour of my life, for a movie that was classified as horror!actually horror is a good word to describe this waste of time..
Cheesy High-School Thriller..
Mr. Griffin is an English teacher at a high school.
None of the students like him as he always seems mean and horrible, so to teach him a lesson some of the students from his English class, plan to kidnap him for a little while.
When they end up leaving him for a couple of hours though, Mr. Griffin dies and now they have the police on there trail, to find out what really happened to him.
The cast in the movie includes, Amy Jo Johnson, Mario López and Michelle Williams (Who looks a little strange here.) and they give okay performances.Killing Mr. Griffin is a lot like the Kevin Williamson movie Teaching Mrs. Tingle, which I actually liked more.
(More exciting.) Killing Mr. Griffin came out first though and is based on the novel by Lois Duncan (I know what you did last summer films, etc.) and it's not to bad.
It's not a proper thriller really, it's more like a cheesy thriller with not much suspense.
If you like teen thrillers then you may just enjoy this.
It sure isn't brilliant, but I guess it's quite good..
For me, the book is much better, but the film version isn't too bad..
I read the book a while back, (a few months ago), and I thought it was pretty fantastic the way author Lois Duncan created such vivid characters for a high school story.As for this TV-film version, it was interesting to see what the characters might look like, but overall to me I didn't enjoy as well as the book of course.
But I did enjoy it at least seeing it on film and how some things are different than the book.To this day, its nothing really special, but I only watched it once, and its really nothing to watch a second time.
Because as for a TV-film, you don't expect much..
Students play a prank on a teacher that goes wrong.
Although I'm way past the high-school age, I still liked this movie.
I do believe that people in high-school would give it a higher grade though.The actors are alright, the story is alright, but the believable manipulation and "wanting to be part of the crowd" made this movie better than average.I give it a 7..
The book was better!.
The book was better!.
The book was better!.
This was still an ok movie but the book was a lot better.I'm one of those who hate to read a book but in this case I suggest read the book.
The movie was still good but when they say based on they mean just the main idea.They left out some pretty good scenes from the book out!They added people and left out others.
The acting in this movie was great but the movie could have been better..
it's a good film so see in a boring afternoon but nothing else..
The character of Mr. Griffin is the best.I thing the worst character is Kinney´s girlfriend...it's the classical no-minded blonde cheerleader.Also Mario López acts well...but I specially liked the McConnell girl..she is so fragile but sweet.
Also I think Mr.Griffin´s death is a little stupid...Including the supposed "premeditative murder" of Kinney..That´s all i have to say.
Bye. Quite an enjoyable ride but didn't expect much....
Jack Bender (the director of this TV movie) is the reason why I watched this movie.
I knew this movie was going to be a cheesy teen thriller without gore and violence that we see in any Hollywood films.
I wasn't really expecting any of it because I never really cared much for who's performing in this or how the story would flow along because I knew most of stuff sucked in this movie.
I'd rather to say that I did enjoy the film, I owed it big to Jack Bender who directed the film.
I liked it because I loved how the film's pacing went with those some weird and crazy camera techniques which is done by Jack Bender.
It was not director of photography who come up with those kind of techniques, it was the director because director of photography is only responsible taking shots of camera use that the director is intending for so all of that really owe big to Jack Bender.
Plus I love relentless camera tracking movements, it's what kept me going, I like to get my head spinning from it.
I watched the film because I love Jack Bender's direction and he did great job in Alias and Lost.
For Alias...Phase One is the best episode, hands down.
And for Lost...Live Together, Die Alone is his best directed episode..
OH MY GOD!!!!.
This movie was the bomb!!!
Michelle Williams is such a hottie, especially in that little geek cover-up.
I want a woman just like that to tour with me in Southeast Asia.Anyone have her number?The *acting* was generally third-rate, though.
Except for Jennifer Hammon, who is a thespian to be watched.
A rising star, indeed..
Great Lifetime Movie!
***SPOILERS***   ***SPOILERS*** This is one of my favorite Lifetime movies!
A lot of my favorite actors and actresses are in it.
Some include Amy Jo Johnson, Mario Lopez, Michelle Williams, and Scott Bairstow.
The only bad part about the movie is that its pretty predictable.
Also, the end is unlogical.
When the teens admit to killing Mr. Griffin, Amy's character (Susan McConnell) is allowed to go home.
In real life, that would have never happened..
"A stupid prank gone horribly wrong!.
CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS!!!That is the basic story of this film from the author of 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'.
A group of high school students are fed up with their mean Englishteacher Mr Griffin.
One example of how he's mean is that he refuses to let astudent enter the classroom just because he's "ten seconds late" Anotherexample is that he's gets annoyed with the way a female student is readingline's from one of Shakespeare's plays, he gets fed up and tells her to sit down.
When the student starts to cry Mr Griffin simply makes her more upset by saying that she isn't trying hard enough.
In one scene Mr Griffon's wife ( says to him "You're hurting your students more than you realize." But Mr Griffin insists that he's only trying to teach his students something.
Well he should have listened to his wife.
Well Mr Griffin's students decide to teach him a lesson.
They plan to kidnap him and frighten him.
So they kidnap, blindfold him and take him to a deserted location.
However one of the students takes Mr Griffon's heart pills (that fell out of his pocket) and hides them without the other students noticing.
The students then abandon him and come back later to find him dead.
Now panic stricken the students bury him and try to cover up the fact.
But of course nether Mr Griffin, nor the truth will stay buried for long and the students find themselves in a vortex of trouble and lies.
Then the rest of students find out that one of them had hidden Mr Griffin's heart pills.
That's when they decide to reveal the truth or at least one of them does.Well I've certainly had trouble with some teachers in the past but I've never dreamt of kidnapping a teacher that I didn't like.
At the end of this film we see one of the students confessing what really happened and is then allowed to gohome.
But we never learn if the other students were punished or how they were punished.
Well I believe the student who hid the pills should be charged with manslaughter and imprisoned, while the rest should be released on a good- behavior-bond.