Back to School

Continuity mistake: At the least swim meet, Chaz is shown diving before Jason Melon. Howver, after Jason dives, it then shows Chaz "up next" - and his hair is completely dry.

Continuity mistake: The college, Great Lakes University, is presumably pretty far north and the movie takes place in January. All of the characters are dressed appropriately in winter coats, except for in the diving scenes, where it's warm, sunny, and perfect for getting a tan.

Other mistake: After his wife has a party at their house, Thorton Melon (Dangerfield) decides to have a swim in his pool. The camera shows Melon as he is about to dive into the pool from the edge. The camera cuts away and a much "thinner" Melon is seen doing a flip into the water. Watch carefully as the "thinner" man makes his dive. You can clearly see his hairpiece fly off the top of his head.

More mistakes in Back to School

Trivia: In the opening montage of shots, showing Thornton Mellon's progressive rise to the top, one of the final shots is actually that of Al Czervik, the role Rodney Dangerfield played in Caddyshack.

Trivia: When Mellon does the "Triple Lindy", you again can see the thinner body double's hairpiece flop in the wind to reveal a bald spot.

Trivia: The swimming pool scenes were filmed at an aquatic club at the bottom of a hillside hotel property in Industry, California. The entire pool area was torn down in 2005 and the ground levelled with dirt everywhere so now if you drove by there, you would never know it ever existed.

Thornton Melon: Listen, Sherlock. While you were tucked away up here working on your ethics, I was out there busting my hump in the real world. And the reason guys like you got a place to teach is 'cause guys like me donate buildings.

Thornton Melon: Please, try to understand. I don't have the background for this. I mean, the high school I went to, they asked a kid to prove the law of gravity, he threw the teacher out the window.

More quotes from Back to School

Question: What poem is Diane reading to her class that makes Thornton say, "Yes, yes!"?

Answer: She was reading, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," by Dylan Thomas.

raywest Premium member

Answer: She was reading from the novel Ulysses by James Joyce.

Question: I have always been curious about one thing in this movie - when Thornton was taking the oral examination, if he answered all of Dr. Barbay's questions right, why did he only get a D? How did Dean Martin not question that?

Answer: We don't know that he answered all the questions right, just that he answered the last one right. Based on Barbay's upset response to that correct answer, it is likely Thornton was at the edge between a wrong answer giving him an F and a correct answer giving him the D he got.

jimba

Answer: It should also be noted he got all D's and just 1 A. So it wasn't just Barbay that gave him a D.

Bishop73

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.