Screengrab’s Back-To-School Round-Up: The Top 18+ High School Films (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:30:00 GMT

SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984) & THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985)

I’m no sociologist, but I’ll nevertheless hazard the following thesis: no matter how good any particular teen film may be, there’s nothing that compares with the high school movies you saw while you were actually IN high school. And so, no matter how good, say, American Graffiti or The Last Picture Show or Rushmore or American Pie may be (and yes, Commenters, we know we left all these ultra-worthy contenders off this week’s list, and apologize profusely!), they’ll never hold the same hallowed place in my heart as Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club, which I saw during my junior and (best of all) senior years at good ol’ M.H.S., home of the Middleboro Marching 100 and the Speech & Theater Workshop...GO SACHEMS!!!! WOO-HOO!!!! CLASS OF ’85 RULES!!!! Writer/director John Hughes also ruled way back then, before he tumbled into the bottomless vat of Cheez Whiz better known as his post-‘80s directing career. But, just like your goofy yearbook photo, his two best films are eternal: Molly Ringwald as wised-up, self-conscious everygirl Sam and Anthony Michael Hall’s noble Geek are Clearasil icons for the ages in the endlessly quotable '84 classic that established many if not most of the future clichés of the modern teen movie: the ironic, pop culture post-modernism, the clueless but caring parent/guardian and, of course, the climactic cast-of-thousands suburban blow-out. But as good as Sixteen Candles is, The Breakfast Club seemed even better at the time, if only because it gave my senior class “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” as our official swan song. Even when I was squarely in Hughes’ demographic, of course, I recognized the occasional pretentious, simplistic and overwrought moments of the '85 dramedy, and Ally Sheedy’s conversion from cool Goth to Emilio Estevez’s boring prep girlfriend still rankles...but looking back now, I can’t help feeling nostalgic for an era when teens could be still be captivated by a talky character study that played like a one-set, seven-character off-Broadway show with no gratuitous violence or nudity (except for the second big screen close-up of Molly Ringwald’s panties in as many years). Hey...hey...hey...hey!

HIGH SCHOOL (1969)

The cinema-verite documentarian Frederick Wiseman has spent the bulk of his career boiling down one American institution after another -- often in movies with generic-label titles such as Hospital, Juvenile Court, Basic Training, and Domestic Violence -- to reveal the lives being helplessly fed into the bureaucratic grinder. It stands to figure that high school would have been one of the earliest subjects on his list. This film, which was shot at Philadelphia's Northeast High School, conveys the experience of being trapped there for a typical day, and in the process pins to the wall the regimented drills, the impatience with nonconformity, imagination, or anything else that might take things off their carefully scheduled course, the seething resentment of the authority figures trying to hammer the kids into well-behaved, smiling cannon fodder. It was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry in the third year of that list's existence, but it might be a greater tribute to it that it was banned in Philadelphia for years because it made the educational process look dehumanizing and depressing.

LORD LOVE A DUCK (1966)

Probably many will automatically nominate Molly Ringwald or Winona Ryder for the title of high school movies' definitive prom queen, but for some of us, Tuesday Weld blows them all out of the water. The Drew Barrymore of her time -- besides having the weird name to have to explain to people, she was a veteran actress-model, supporting her family while coping with a drinking problem and a nervous breakdown, all before she was thirteen -- she was also a white-hot talent, an inventive actress who was both sexy and affecting even in the cheesy, early rock and roll exploitation pictures that served as her entry point into the movie business. She was twenty-three but still looked like a teen queen when she starred in this bizarre satire, directed by George Axelrod. She plays Barbara Ann Greene, a child of divorce (back when that was still supposed to be shameful) who wants to be loved by everyone but can't even crash the important girls' club she needs to join to take her first steps towards school-wide popularity, because she can't afford the twelve angora sweaters that are a non-negotiable requirement of establishing any girl's true worth. Luckily, she attracts the admiring attentions of Alan (Roddy MacDowell), who begins greasing the wheels for her steady ascent, by whatever means necessary: he's something between a wish-fulfilling genie and a psycho on the make. Before graduating forever from high-school age roles, Weld would follow Duck up with another cult classic, 1968's Pretty Poison, in which the roles were reversed: in that one, her frustrated young miss hooks up with a lonely young man (Anthony Perkins) with a history of emotional disturbance, who realizes too late that she's ensnared him in a murder plot. Once again, Weld demonstrates her ability to do the near-impossible by making her character believable and seductive while managing to make Tony Perkins look like the sane one.

ELECTION (1999)

Alexander Payne's movie, closely adapted from Tom Perrotta's slim, sharp novel, may be the best of all attempts to use high school life as a metaphorical testing ground for everything that comes after it. Matthew Broderick explodes his Ferris Bueller persona as the upstanding, much-admired high school teacher who preaches the virtues of democracy until it becomes clear that, unless checked, democracy is going to make a terrible mistake and reward Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), the superachiever student who is the personification of everything that he hates and thinks is wrong with the world (i.e., everything that makes other people more successful than him). Broderick hasn't had a role half as good since, and neither Witherspoon nor Chris Klein (as the sweet golden boy dope of a jock who's Tracy's natural enemy in spite of himself) has ever been better, but a special Screengrab Missing in Action shout-out goes to Jessica Campbell, the young actress (sixteen at the time) who gives a wonderful performance as Klein's lonely, frustrated lesbian sister, whose acting out turns her into the anarchist heroine of the student body elections, and who, except for a couple of low-profile TV and movie roles, hasn't been seen since.

Click Here For Part One, Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

In Other Blogs: Faster, Britney...Kill! Kill!

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

At Some Came Running, Glenn Kenny is skeptical about a rumored remake. “A couple of my esteemed colleagues have expressed slightly guarded enthusiasm over the extremely shaky prospect that Quentin Tarantino will direct Britney Spears in a remake of Russ Meyer's 1965 exploitation classic Faster Pussycat...Kill! Kill!, but I can't say it pushes any of my buttons, personal or otherwise. Of course the argument that, for what it's worth, Pussycat got made but good the first time isn't gonna cut any ice if in fact a remake is in the cards. But really...Britney Spears. Who cares. Her cultural currency—which is entirely distinct, as I'm sure you know, from tabloid currency—is as low as it's ever been…Having Tarantino hand-hold her through a turn as a loudmouth psycho drag-racing lesbian stripper will do exactly what for her at this point?” I don’t think this one’s worth worrying about. It’s taken how many years to get Inglorious Bastards going? Cooler heads will prevail.

Flickhead checks out some obscure DVD releases from restoration house Legend Films. “Set in the trendy inner sanctum of late 1970s encounter groups where narcissism overtakes self awareness, Bill Persky’s Serial (1980) is as safe as an episode of Love, American Style peppered with four-letter words, Sally Kellerman’s boobs and Lalo Shifrin’s quaint muzak score. (With some embarrassment, I confess the theme, ‘A Changing World,’ rattled around in my head for days after.) It’s a quietly amusing time capsule of Marin County after the fall of The Sixties, where middle age and middle class values are perpetually analyzed by quack psychologists and individuals fearful of commitment. An intriguing companion piece to Phil Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1979), this slice of Left Coast lunacy includes Tuesday Weld, Martin Mull, Bill Macy, a coked-out therapist played by Peter Bonerz, the woefully undervalued Barbara Rhodes, and Christopher Lee — Christopher Lee! — as a gay biker named ‘Skull.’”

At the House Next Door, Andrew Johnston revisits Risky Business. “As much as I loved them, teen sex comedies didn’t exactly make me feel good about being the kind of kid I was in 1983, the year I turned 15. They all took place in a world where smart and sexually inexperienced kids (i.e., guys like me) were always laughably pathetic, and rich ones (me again) were universally evil and arrogant. Here, finally, was a movie that didn’t pass judgment on those qualities. In the opening scene, our hero Joel Goodson recounts a dream in which he’s riding his bike home through his affluent neighborhood and winds up inside a neighbor’s house where a nubile girl invites him to join her in the shower, a dream that turns into a nightmare when the shower stall turns into a classroom full of his peers taking the SAT, for which he’s three hours late. How could I not identify with the guy?”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson becomes the last film blogger on earth to see The Dark Knight. “When we were in college, a music critic friend of mine who delighted in making "best ever / worst ever" statements proudly (and sincerely) proclaimed that Bob Dylan's Blood On the Tracks was the single greatest artistic achievement in the history of mankind. We teased him about the hyperbole, but I admit I liked him all the more for saying it. Unguarded, unbounded enthusiasm is a wonderful thing to behold, to feel, and to share…I waited a couple weeks to see The Dark Knight and I even though I felt lukewarm about the movie, I couldn't wait to talk about it.”

And in List-o-Mania this week, in honor of the Tom Cruise cameo in Tropic Thunder, Spoutblog presents the 10 Best Small Roles for Big Stars. Some are fairly obvious (no such list would be complete without Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenn Ross), but I admittedly had forgotten all about Arnold Schwarzenegger as “Prince Hapi” in Around the World in 80 Days. “Schwarzenegger’s hilarious appearance as a lecherous Turkish prince — one of his last roles filmed before becoming Governor of California — is one of the few highlights, if not the sole highlight (personally, I enjoy Jackie Chan in anything, and I liked more of this movie than most people did). The role is especially funny and creepy if you’ve ever seen that old footage of Schwarzenegger being sleazy at Carnival in Rio.”

The Screengrab : tuesday weld

Screengrab’s Back-To-School Round-Up: The Top 18+ High School Films (Part Four)

In Other Blogs: Faster, Britney...Kill! Kill!