There are plenty of violent, right-wing action-movie franchises littering video-store shelves, but few as creepy as the Substitute series, which shamelessly exploits adult anxiety about young people by pitting its mercenary-educator protagonist against legions of evil high-schoolers. The fourth entry in the series, The Substitute: Failure Is Not An Option, at least attempts to compensate for its premise's reactionary nature by making its villains gun-loving white supremacists even more militaristic and creepy than its hero. Treat Williams once again stars (having taken over for The Substitute's original substitute, Tom Berenger, after the first film), his sensitivity established early on when he seems slightly chagrined to learn that a masked soldier he's killed is only a gawky teen. Sent by an old military buddy to go undercover at an elite military school, Williams soon learns of a murderous white-supremacist sect called the Werewolves. The Werewolves are secretly led by a beefy, ultra-right-wing bigot (Patrick Kilpatrick), whose diatribes against "multiculturalism" become unintentionally comic well before he delivers the immortal line, "Sow your multiculturalism… in hell!" But, while slicker and snappier than previous entries, Failure is still listless, dimwitted, and formulaic, alternating familiar action sequences with windy dialogue about the nobility of fighting and half-hearted speeches attacking the Werewolves' racism. The teens' employment of a Korean man as an advisor suggests a certain degree of self-awareness, as does a scene in which Williams attacks a belligerent student with a pair of chalkboard erasers. But such moments are few and far between, overshadowed by clunky exposition and a romantic subplot involving Angie Everhart as an overgrown army brat. At this point, the only way to save the series might be to play up its pulpy, exploitative, and ridiculous aspects to comic effect, in the manner of Bride Of Chucky. But director Robert Radler seems content to go through the motions, making a film that feels less like a proper sequel than a mediocre pilot for a Substitute syndicated TV series.