Dr. Phillium Benedict

""Same old noble Pete. Always standing up for the rights of children.""

- - Dr. Phillium Benedict

Dr. Phillium Benedict is an evil character who appears in the first Recess film, Recess: School's Out. He serves as the primary antagonist of the film. He was voiced by James Woods. Phillium Benedict is the former principal of Third Street Elementary School & former Secretary of Education. He used to be the best friend of current principal Peter Prickly and the boyfriend of current groundskeeper Muriel Finster.

History
Starting up in his first year as principal of Third Street Elementary during the spring of 1968, he plans to abolish recess in order to keep students in their class to raise test scores. This doesn't seem to work well to anyone in campus (including Prickly and Finster) and many of the parents laid down a protest against the school unless recess is reinstated. Benedict refuses to give up his plan, leading to Prickly reporting to the Superintendent about the situation. Though the Superintendent assures the people that Benedict's plan will never be carried out in this district, Benedict still refuses to back down, leading the Superintendent to replace Benedict with Prickly as the new principal. Benedict then assumes that Prickly turns his back against him to get the job as principal, though Prickly states that he never intends to do such a thing. Benedict refuses to listen and broke up his friendship with him, leading Muriel to finally end her relationship with Benedict for his lack of understanding and his hatred of recess.

Upon quitting his job as a teacher, Benedict swore revenge against Prickly, and went into politics. During the following years in his political career, he was elected as Secretary of Education, and used the opportunity to abolish recess again, only this time it was nationwide. This was foiled by the President, who saw through the plan and fired Benedict for it.

Benedict's Revenge
Having failed for the last time, Benedict then plans to get rid of summer vacation by any means.

After stealing a Tractor Beam from a U.S. Military Base, Benedict and his henchmen took over 3rd Street Elementary School and used it as their homebase, since it was closed for the summer, and since it was the last place on Earth authorities would look. He also rigged the lock of the school to shock and transport anyone carrying the keys into the school in case someone did actually attempt to investigate, and had the scary-looking bald henchman pose as Prickly just to ensure no one got suspicious. He also had the scientists conduct frequent tests at the school involving miniature tractor beams in the Cafeteria, one of which TJ accidentally witnessed while fuming about how his summer was going. He also had the Auditorum altered to be the main control room for the tractor beam.

He decided to make the Principal's office as his main office, which was fitting due to his being a former principal. Benedict eventually had the first head scientist detained after the latter's attempt at moving the moon shut down unexpectedly due to the tractor beam having bugs in the system and promoted his second command into the position. Shortly afterwards, TJ and his gang ended up being forced to expose themselves due to Mikey having an unexpected and uncontrollable urge to belch, as well as the vents giving way to their weight. After TJ was captured, he attempted to explain to TJ that he was running a "night school", although TJ was not easily fooled. He eventually learned that TJ and Prickly had managed to sneak into his office and found his walky talky, although not before TJ alerted them that Benedict's plan was to get rid of summer vacation after stumbling on a mural (presumably painted by Benedict and his men) depicting the end of Summer Vacation. Phillium then explained how he planned to accomplish this goal: on Lunar Perogee, he will fire the tractor beam at the moon to alter its orbit with the intention of causing the entire Earth to freeze over into an ice age and eliminate summer, thus eliminating the need for Summer Vacation. He later explains to the kids that his main motivation for this, shortly after they invaded the school as a last stand, was because the top three highest countries in the world with test scores (Canada, Iceland, and Norway) were also three countries with a cold climate, which meant they couldn't play ball, so the only other method was to study in his mind. Despite the team up between the children and the teachers under Finster's command and cutting through most of his men, as well as being punched by Prickly, he still managed to activate the Tractor beam. The plot ultimately failed when TJ threw his lucky baseball to Vince and had him throw it at the reactor core of the Tractor beam. Benedict was later arrested by the police (with the policeman, when Benedict tried to protest that he was a former secretary of education, sarcastically responded that he was also the "former princess of morocco.")