High School Confidential [VHS]

High School Confidential [VHS]
by Jack Arnold

High School Confidential [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Diane Jergens, Jan Sterling, John Drew Barrymore, Mamie Van Doren, Russ Tamblyn
Director: Jack Arnold
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 85 minutes
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Republic Pictures
Studio: Republic Pictures

VHS Movie Reviews of High School Confidential [VHS]

Movie Review: High School Con
Summary: 3 Stars

A teen-oriented tale that suggests tobacco is A-OK for adolescent use? Oh, yeah, man! Just cede the weed, and you'll be too cool for school! Maryjane is a real bummer, and, next thing you know, daddy-o, you'll be through the gateway and into H! You might end up just like the pretty little chick who's so addicted (!) to pot that she's laid out all her bread for the stuff and now's willing to do anything for more--even kiss a guy who's not her boyfriend! Though you have to wonder, man, where her big-needs supply comes from, given that the two cats who deal keep only a couple of reefers at a time! Oh, well. There's loads of incongruity here--dudes and dolls who look like the kids next door but are so heavy into hep talk that Maynard Krebs probably couldn't dig it, a teen hangout that features not a juke box and jitterbugging but a jazz band and beat poet, and vampish Mamie Van Doren va-vooming into scenes backdropped by a burlesquey score. Jerry Lee Lewis does do a couple of numbers. And Michael Landon has a small part as a nice-guy jock. At least he could act.

Movie Review: a film with so much camp that it's not to be laughed at
Summary: 4 Stars

High School Confidential starts off fast and it keeps up the pace all the way through the picture! The action and the plot develop rather quickly and there's plenty to leave you stuck to the screen. There's action; races; fight scenes; romance scenes that would make a counselor have a field day and there's a fairly good albeit very, very campy look at how drugs were a big concern even back in the day. The cinematography is actually rather well done even though there's one scene where you can easily see the cameraman's shadow behind Mamie Van Doren; and the choreography for the action scenes couldn't be better. On the other hand, the acting could have been more convincing and the plot could have been reworked somewhat to make it a bit more believable; it's too campy to be totally realistic.

When the movie opens we are treated to a great performance by Jerry Lee Lewis who just happens to be performing on the back of a truck with his crew in front of Santa Bellow High. The kids dance to the music and when the number is done you got one terrific appetizer! We then quickly meet a young tough talking punk named Tony Baker (Russ Tamblyn) who wants to stir up trouble--and who also wants to find out where the drugs come from so he can get some himself. He immediately clashes with J.I. Coleridge (John Drew Barrymore), the president of The Wheeler-Dealers, a gang of thugs who hang out and do small time drug dealing. In addition, J.I.'s girlfriend Joan (Diane Jergens) has run out of money for mari***** and J. I. won't give her any without money. This drives Joan crazy because she's hooked on the drug.

It isn't long before the tension between J. I. and Tony gets so high that The Wheelers And Dealers stage a wild car race with The Rangers football team (the "clean" kids). I won't say how that turns out; but there's an embarrassing moment for J.I. when he finally has to admit to Tony that he doesn't have enough her*** to sell to Tony. J. I. then "refers" Tony to "Mr. A." (Jackie Coogan), who is in fact the big boss behind the local drug trafficking. Tony meets Mr. A. and they discuss a "business transaction."

But things can go wrong from here. Tony's "Aunt" Gwen (Mamie Van Doren) wants him for "attention" while her husband is out of town; and Mr. A. could get wise to Tony's "angle." Which team does win that car race; and what happens just afterward? Will Joan be able to kick her habit? What will Joan do when she finds out about a tape recorded conversation that involves Tony and Mr. A.? Watch the movie and find out!

The DVD has no extras; I would have liked at least some commentary by Mamie Van Doren who could have told us a lot about how they made the film.

Overall, High School Confidential isn't the very best "teen exploitation" movie in that it's just TOO campy; the real problems caused by drug abuse and addiction are somewhat obscured by all the camp. However, it features Jackie Coogan and Charles Chaplin, Jr., in small but pivotal roles; and Ray Anthony plays Bix, one of Mr. A.'s top men. I recommend this film for fans of the actors in this movie, people who like "exploitation" films and people who enjoy campy motion pictures.

Movie Review: Just Say No, Right?
Summary: 3 Stars

Mary Jane, weed, tea, ganja, herb, stick and so on. Every generation (which should tell us something) has its own code words for its recreational drugs. But wait a minute. Drugs, especially marijuana, are bad for you, right? Why? Marijuana is the first step on the slippery slope down the road to serious drug addiction- heroin, opium, crack and so on. And then on to a life of crime and jail. Is this a story from today's headlines? Well, I suppose it could be but it is not. This is the premise behind the 1958 classic B teenage movie "High School Confidential".

Now frankly, this year I have been on a Jerry Lee Lewis kick trying to establish who was the "king of rock and roll" during the 1950's so I picked up this little movie to see if it could aid my Jerry Lee bias. While the lead-in scene of Jerry Lee on a truck doing "High School Confidential" in front of some California high school students is amazing this film did not help in that effort. What is the case, however, is how even back then when drugs were a fringe phenomena mainly indulged in by the "beats" like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and their crowd and other "anti-social" types the monitors of American teenage mores in the film industry had to weigh in to condemn this practice out of hand. Nothing new there and the police authorities (the good guys, right?) then were just about as successful (in reality, not in the film) as they have been today. That is to say that they have sought to fill the jails as their solution to the problem. Mainly with blacks and Latinos. But enough of that, for now.

This turns out to be a very campy movie complete with new boy Russ Tambyn (a very old teenager, by the way) in town (as an undercover vice cop) trying to become "king of the hill" in the teenage drug market. We have a glance at teen life in the 1950's as seen by Hollywood with their take on "beat" slang (including a very nicely done be-bop poetic recitation by a young woman at a teenage nightclub), high school dances, hot rods on Saturday night(complete with a Rebel Without A Cause racing scene), grabbing girls (right from under the noses of other guys no less), 'dissing' teachers and headmasters and doing a little weed. (You know to liven up the party). All in the service of one thing- don't. The only thing not done here is an explicit tie-in with drugs and rock and roll although with Jerry Lee present that might have been a little hard to do. Since this is the 50th anniversary of the release of the film I will finish with one conclusion from viewing the film and the facts of life since then- decriminalize drug use-now.

Movie Review: The funniest, daddio!
Summary: 5 Stars

What campy fun. It tried to have a serious message (and I guess for the time it came out it did), but it turned out to be just great. The scene where the student gets up and (raps?) it the best part of the movie. "You can spit blood on the moon, soon" is all you need to know. Uncle Fester was great as the mysterious Mister 'A'. Added feature was Mamie Van Doren parading around in tight sweaters and showing her stuff. She was a riot and beautiful!

Movie Review: Funnier than REEFER MADNESS!
Summary: 5 Stars

Twenty years ago, "pothead" baby boomers flocked to midnight showings of the '30's cult movie Reefer Madness, and laughed till their sides hurt at the unintentionally riotous warnings issued therein about the dangers of becoming, well, a "pothead." It's hard to believe that there could be a better Bad Movie on the same subject, but the 1958 High School Confidential! is even funnier.

"I'm looking to graze on grass," Russ Tamblyn tells another student on his first day at a new school. She reminds him, "this is your seventh year in high school." That almost explains why Tamblyn looks too old for this role, but nothing could possibly explain the next scene: Wandering into homeroom, Tamblyn finds teacher Jan Sterling writing on the blackboard, "Derivation of slang words: chicken, doll, square, scram," prompting Tamblyn to let fly a wolf whistle, then leer at Sterling, "Why don't we cut out, go to your pad and live it up? You can call me Daddy-o." Instead, Sterling must attend a staff meeting where a Fed explains, "In the language the addicts use, marijuana is referred to as Mary Jane, pot, weed or tea," then warns, "it can happen here." It does, at a hep-cat coffeehouse where Tamblyn anxiously tried to score "some H, some coke and some goofballs" while a "doll" recites this poem: "We cough blood on this earth/Now there's a race for space/We can cough blood on the moon, soon/Tomorrow is dragsville, cats/Tomorrow is a king-sized drag."

At home, Tamblyn must fend off the advances of his amorous aunt, Mamie Van Doren, who vamps him by rolling around on his bed and takes a big, meaningful bite out of his apple. The movie goes loco when Sterling, concerned about Tamblyn, comes to call--an opportunity for Van Doren to strut her stuff and snarl, "I don't believe all that stuff the papers say about 'wild reefer parties' and 'fates worse than death in the bushes at night.' Don't tell me you never rode a hot rod, or had a late date in the second balcony!" Tamblyn, meanwhile, is off meeting the local drug lord, Jackie Coogan, who runs a jukebox empire (the evils of rock'n'roll and drug abuse being one and the same). Coogan sneers, of a high-school cutie writhing on his sofa, "I tried to tell that chick that no head ever becomes a lady." Tamblyn pleads, "I'm looking for junk!"--as if this movie were anything but.

Though there's lots more--Jerry Lee Lewis drives by, belting out a tune; the "bad" kids do drugs and (how shocking!) laze around a pool; Sterling helps teen Diane Jergens break the habit by, yes, snapping a joint in two (oh is that how it's done?)--it all ends happily, for, thankfully, Tamblyn's really an undercover FBI agent who busts Coogan. Best of all, at the film's close, a narrator tells us, "You have just seen an authentic disclosure of conditions which unfortunately exist in some of our high schools today.... The job of policemen will not be finished until this insidious menace to the schools of our country is exposed and destroyed." Go buy this movie, right now.

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Summary of High School Confidential [VHS]

Is it a serious look at drug addiction and the "narcotics problem," or is it pure exploitation? Well, High School Confidential opens up with Jerry Lee Lewis rolling into town on a flatbed truck, pummeling an upright piano as he bellows one of his hits, so that should tell you something right off. Eminently slappable punk Russ Tamblyn enrolls at the local high school and immediately starts to hit on the teacher (Jan Sterling). Soon he proves that he's even cooler than jive-talking king daddy-o John Drew Barrymore (Drew's dad), and is getting acquainted with the local dope peddler (Jackie Coogan). Never mind that Barrymore should be able to pick him up over his head and throw him; Tamblyn has a switchblade at the ready should trouble break out. At home, he's constantly fending off the amorous advances of his "aunt," Mamie Van Doren. Of course, Russ's character is a narc, sent undercover to infiltrate the school dope ring. High School Confidential's cast includes Lyle Talbot, Michael Landon and famous offspring William Wellman Jr., and Charlie Chaplin Jr. Fifties teen movies (and drug-hysteria movies) just don't come any better than this; simultaneously absurd, exciting, and hilarious. --Jerry Renshaw

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