Hollywood’s Entertaining Portrayals of Higher Education

For as long as I can remember I loved the idea of University. I don’t know what it was about the idea of studying or working on campus that struck a chord yet here I am, 20 years later still here. My obsession with campus life was not just shaped by my own interests in Science and Technology but also the media I consumed.

TV and Film have long portrayed the College lifestyle with a mixture of stereotypes and tropes, from the stuffy Tweed-clad Professor to the frat boys playing pranks on each other. Homegrown British media tends to be a little more sedated with the classical Oxford look and people studying the classics. Whilst there are well known classics of the ‘genre’, it is some lesser known works that have always stuck with me over the years.

Urban Legend (1998)

Fictional Campus: Pendleton University, USA

Famous Alumni: Joshua Jackson, Tara Reid, Robert Englund (and Jared Leto…..)

IRL Inspiration: Filmed at the University of Toronto.

Prospectus: A B-grade slasher movie riding the popularity of Scream, Urban Legend follows a group of students at Pendleton, a fictional private New England campus. College locales have long been a backdrop for horror movies, with an endless supply of naive young adults set…