You Two Again?

 

‘You Two Again?’ is a Red Stripe movie, catalogue number RS-120, that was released in 1996.  It is 47 minutes long.  This movie is currently available as a ‘Red Stripe Original’ at www.roue.com. I believe that the movie was released in the US by OHHTEEKAY but I haven't been able to confirm that.

There is a lot I like about Red Stripe movies but almost two-thirds of them are schoolgirl stories (I am compiling the statistics and I will post them when I’m done) and that type of movie is seldom among my favourites.  In addition, most of the Red Stripe schoolgirl movies are F/ff and many are filmed on the same classroom set (St. Stripes Academy) so they all tend to run together in my memory.  This movie features a cast of three including Miss Brown as the teacher/disciplinarian, and Barbie Mel as Kate, a Prefect.  Lucy Bailey plays Emma, the Head Girl and I believe that this is the only film that she made for Red Stripe.  I always think the title of this movie makes it sound like it should be a sequel to some other movie but it is one of the earliest St. Stripes movies and the first to feature Miss Brown so I don’t believe that it is a sequel of any earlier movie.

The movie opens with Miss Brown siting at her desk working on a lesson plan.  There is a knock at the door which she opens to find two students who she tells to wait.  She returns to her desk but very soon she calls the two girls in.  It appears that the two girls have cheated on a biology exam so Miss Brown has them sit at a desk and write answers to two questions from the exam that she has written on the blackboard.  Kate is unable to answer questions that she got right on the exam, and she does eventually admit that she had copied Emma’s answer on the exam. This is not her first infraction so she knows exactly what will happen. 

Miss Brown sends Kate to fetch a chair.  Then she sits down on the chair and takes Kate over her knee for a 2-minute hand spanking. Afterward Kate stands in the corner while Miss Brown looks at Emma’s paper.  Emma has answered the first question correctly but not the second and she had answered the second question correctly on the exam.  So, it’s a hand spanking for her as well.  There is an editing error here since Miss Brown is shown saying ‘get over my knee’ twice, from two different angles.  She receives the same spanking as Kate then she is sent to stand next to her.

Fade to black and when they return Miss Brown is standing at her desk and she tells the two girls to move the student desks and chairs out of the way.  Then she sends Kate to fetch a stool and place it in the centre of the room.  Miss Brown picks up a long ruler (maybe 24-inches and it sounds like it is a heavy metal ruler) off her desk and we all know what is coming next.  Miss Brown shows Kate the ruler (and the camera goes out of focus as she does this).  Kate bends over the stool and Miss Brown gives her 12 hard slaps with the ruler.  Change places and Emma receives the same but she jumps around a little more.  Then its back to the corner for both of them.

Near the 19-minute mark of the movie, Miss Brown suddenly announces that there is another reason why Kate and Emma were called to see her, they have been bullying the other students.  There is another editing error in the midst of this discussion where a few lines of dialogue are shown twice.  The two finally admit that they had been bullying some younger students so Miss Brown tells Kate to stand facing the blackboard and she administers another hand spanking.  After a couple of minutes, she picks up a large leather paddle and continues the spanking with that implement.  Another minute or so with the paddle then Miss Brown tells Emma, who is watching from the corner, to pass her the cane.   Kate bends over the desk and Miss Brown gives her two dozen strokes of the cane.  The cane strokes are hard and the pace is leisurely.  There is a sound problem is this scene, a reverberation or echo, that obviously occurred during filming.  After the caning Kate is sent to stand in the corner again.  Kate’s punishment, including the hand spanking, paddling and caning, has taken close to 10 minutes.

Now, Emma is called to stand in front of the desk and the same sequence is repeated, starting with the hand spanking and followed by the paddle. The only difference is that Miss Brown uses two paddles, one rectangular and one oval shaped, during the paddling.  Finally come the 24 strokes of the cane but the pace of this caning is even a little slower than Kate’s.  Most of the sound problems suddenly disappear after a cut at the mid point of Emma’s caning.  Emma is clearly struggling by the 18^th stroke and the last six are a little slower but, if anything, harder that the early strokes (which certainly weren’t light).  Emma’s punishment takes about 4 minutes longer than Kate’s even though they both receive the same punishment.  After the end of Emma’s caning, the two girls are sent away   

I think this would be a better movie if it were at least 5 minutes shorter and if there had been some variation between the punishments that the two girls receive (after all, Emma is the head girl).  The action is good, although Emma’s caning may, if anything, be a little excessive, but there is just too much repetition between the two sets of punishments.  Much of the lighting seems to come from a window so there are often dark shadows on faces when the characters look away from the window.  There is also some noise on the soundtrack but most of that may have been created during the digitization of the original movie.