Amazon.com video review:
"Do your parents know you're Ramones?" With
those withering words, Miss Togar (Mary Woronov), the uptight
neofascist principal of Vince Lombardi High School, addresses the four
mop-haired, leather-jacketed members of America's first and most
famous punk band. And you know it won't be long before the Ramones's
jackhammer riffs are blaring through the public address system at
maximum volume, the kids are running--not walking--wild in the
hallways (without passes!), and Miss Togar's gulag is re-christened
"Rock 'n' Roll High School." Then, in keeping with the
outrageously nihilistic animus of punk, the high school students and
the Ramones just blow the place to smithereens. It's a crowd-
pleasing, fantasy-fulfillment climax that combines the apocalyptic
finale of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point with the
explosive conclusion of Alice Cooper's "School's Out."
Rock 'n' Roll High School is a blast, a goofy and liberating
salute to the rebel spirit behind the teen rock & roll movies of the
1950s, which always pitted the kids' insatiable appetite for fun
against the adults' fear-based authoritarianism. The film is
emblematic of the disarmingly silly, tongue-in-cheek humor of the
youth-oriented B-pictures cranked out in the '50s and '60s by renowned
low-budget exploitation mogul Roger Corman (who gave many a hungry
young filmmaker, including the creators of this film, their start in
the biz), and of the noisy, anarchic energy of '70s punk rock, as
personified by the inimitable Ramones. In the words of the maestros'
beach-blanket-buzz-saw title anthem, this movie is "Fun, fun, oh
baby, fun, fun..." --Jim Emerson
Amazon.com video review:
"Do your parents know you're Ramones?" With
those withering words, Miss Togar (Mary Woronov), the uptight
neofascist principal of Vince Lombardi High School, addresses the four
mop-haired, leather-jacketed members of America's first and most
famous punk band. And you know it won't be long before the Ramones's
jackhammer riffs are blaring through the public address system at
maximum volume, the kids are running--not walking--wild in the
hallways (without passes!), and Miss Togar's gulag is re-christened
"Rock 'n' Roll High School." Then, in keeping with the
outrageously nihilistic animus of punk, the high school students and
the Ramones just blow the place to smithereens. It's a crowd-
pleasing, fantasy-fulfillment climax that combines the apocalyptic
finale of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point with the
explosive conclusion of Alice Cooper's "School's Out."
Rock 'n' Roll High School is a blast, a goofy and liberating
salute to the rebel spirit behind the teen rock 'n' roll movies of the
1950s, which always pitted the kids' insatiable appetite for fun
against the adults' fear-based authoritarianism. The film is
emblematic of the disarmingly silly, tongue-in-cheek humor of the
youth-oriented B-pictures cranked out in the '50s and '60s by renowned
low-budget exploitation mogul Roger Corman (who gave many a hungry
young filmmaker, including the creators of this film, their start in
the biz), and of the noisy, anarchic energy of '70s punk rock, as
personified by the inimitable Ramones. In the words of the maestros'
beach-blanket-buzz-saw title anthem, this movie is "Fun, fun, oh
baby, fun, fun..." The digital video disc offers audio commentary
by the filmmakers, including director Alan Arkush, a Leonard Maltin
interview with Corman, and some audio outtakes of the
Ramones. --Jim Emerson
