Five preppie misfits at a school for sons of the rich and influential outwit Colombian terrorists holding the campus hostage. It could have been harmless junk on the order of Taps, the 1981 film about a student takeover of a military academy that gave its greenhorn cast (Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise) a leg up on stardom. Instead, Toy Soldiers emerges as a violent and unactable example of the genre.

Sean Astin stars as Billy Tepper, the rebel ringleader at school. Until the Colombians came along, Billy and his pals Joey (Wil Wheaton), Snuffy (Keith Coogan), Ricardo (George Perez) and Hank (T.E. Russell) had to divert themselves by sneaking the furniture of the dithering headmaster (Denholm Elliott) onto the campus lawn. But now terrorist leader Luis Cali (Andrew Divoff) says he will kill one hostage every day until his drug-kingpin father is released from prison.

Screenwriter and first-time director Daniel Petrie Jr. pours on the carnage and crudity. But it would take a defter touch than Petrie's to mix fart jokes and phone-sex gags with the sight of bodies being riddled with bullets or dropped from choppers. Save your pity for the capable Louis Gossett Jr., saddled with the thankless role of the dean, a part that calls for him to watch in misty-eyed admiration while his twit students save the day.

“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."