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The "authentic disclosure of conditions" at the close is punchline to a fablelike setup, the Pied Piper over the opening credits is Jerry Lee Lewis himself on a flatbed truck, tearing into a keyboard for the delectation of twentysomething teenagers. Petite Russ Tamblyn rolls in as the new big man on campus, the undercover punk who promptly sizes up the student body. "Hiya sexy, you look real cultured. Let's cut out to some drag and eat pad." "Oh wow." Three years after Blackboard Jungle, the whole educational magillah under Jack Arnold's scientific eye. Juvenile Wheelers & Dealers ready to rumble, the reefer market and "the progressive theory," at home the comfort of Mamie Van Doren's inflamed platinum. The pusher (John Drew Barrymore) is a gregarious fellow, sprawled on the teacher's desk he recounts Christopher Columbus' journey as wiseguy stand-up, with consequences for Linklater's Dazed and Confused. The square world of the past, the hepcat negation of the future: "Tomorrow is a king-sized drag, maaaan." An all-pervasive satirical view of the Fifties, as astringent as Tashlin's are coruscating. Charles Chaplin Jr. and William Wellman Jr. figure tellingly in the tangle of generations, plus Jackie Coogan bald and baleful behind Mr. Big shades in the malt shop-cum-hophead den. Brueghel at the cafeteria, a hot-rod Ben-Hur with Michael Landon, the full semantics of adolescent slang and identity. Les Cousins, The Strawberry Statement... "That's the way the bongo bingles." The knowing coda rides into the new decade aboard a convertible, the Old Guard's cry in the distance ("Now children, behave"). With Jan Sterling, Diane Jergens, Ray Anthony, Jody Fair, Burt Douglas, Phillipa Fallon, Lyle Talbot, and Charles Halton. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |