Kelly WandRock'n'Roll High School
November 11th 2006 00:58
It starts off dumb, pretty much exactly the kind of film you’d expect Roger Corman to produce in the shadow of the success of “Animal House”. Just so long as you are not having your head stuffed down a toilet or being imprisoned in a gym locker, life is fairly good. Well, everyone wants to have sex with the people who don’t want to have sex with them but that’s hardly an experience limited to high school.
The old principal has been driven insane and the remaining staff members are utterly ineffectual in the face of their teenage charges. Come to think of it, it is a fairly accurate portrait of High School life. Fortunately, rebel student Riff Randell (played by PJ Soles) loves the Ramones and takes every opportunity she can to hot wire the school public address system and belt out a couple of songs. It is a testament to The Ramones that, whenever their music is played, the film immediately lifts itself above mediocrity. I think that, if they had chosen any other band, the film would have stunk up the screen. It is no surprise that these boys still adorn several million T-shirts.
Formed in the mid seventies in New York, The Ramones typified the kind of music that would become known as punk. No solos, at ninety miles an hour with four on the floor beats, they rewrote the rules of song writing. Their lyrics were so dumb that they went beyond dumb and on into what almost felt like an intellectual stab at dumbness. Unlike their British cousins whose music was fuelled by anger, they had at their core a simple joy. Even a song like “Beat on the Brat” made the abusive use of a baseball bat sound like an act of love. When Joey sings the word “Cretin” in “Cretin Hop”, he manages to turn it into a term of adoration. With these guys in your movie, the flick is going to work.
Story wise, new principal Miss Togar and her Nazi hall monitors want to put an end to all the anarchy that is making teaching an impossibility. Discovering Ramones music causes mice to explode, she blows up several more just for fun. She arranges album burnings and ticket confiscations. The Ramones arrive, play loudly and blow up the school.
Whilst not popular with the board of education, it is complete and total fun for fans of The Ramones, Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul, Dick Miller or Joe Dante. Complete and total fun for anyone else who watches the film, really. You’d have to have a fairly hard and horrible heart to voice dissent.
The old principal has been driven insane and the remaining staff members are utterly ineffectual in the face of their teenage charges. Come to think of it, it is a fairly accurate portrait of High School life. Fortunately, rebel student Riff Randell (played by PJ Soles) loves the Ramones and takes every opportunity she can to hot wire the school public address system and belt out a couple of songs. It is a testament to The Ramones that, whenever their music is played, the film immediately lifts itself above mediocrity. I think that, if they had chosen any other band, the film would have stunk up the screen. It is no surprise that these boys still adorn several million T-shirts.
Formed in the mid seventies in New York, The Ramones typified the kind of music that would become known as punk. No solos, at ninety miles an hour with four on the floor beats, they rewrote the rules of song writing. Their lyrics were so dumb that they went beyond dumb and on into what almost felt like an intellectual stab at dumbness. Unlike their British cousins whose music was fuelled by anger, they had at their core a simple joy. Even a song like “Beat on the Brat” made the abusive use of a baseball bat sound like an act of love. When Joey sings the word “Cretin” in “Cretin Hop”, he manages to turn it into a term of adoration. With these guys in your movie, the flick is going to work.
Story wise, new principal Miss Togar and her Nazi hall monitors want to put an end to all the anarchy that is making teaching an impossibility. Discovering Ramones music causes mice to explode, she blows up several more just for fun. She arranges album burnings and ticket confiscations. The Ramones arrive, play loudly and blow up the school.
Whilst not popular with the board of education, it is complete and total fun for fans of The Ramones, Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul, Dick Miller or Joe Dante. Complete and total fun for anyone else who watches the film, really. You’d have to have a fairly hard and horrible heart to voice dissent.
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