Jerry Lee Lewis played a mean piano. He was also apparently a pretty mean guy, as he was once arrested for going to Graceland with the intention of shooting Elvis. He is rumored to have done a lot of drugs, which I think just comes with the territory of being a rock star. Perhaps the ickiest bit of trivia about him which is undoubtedly true is he married his 13-year-old first cousin once removed.
So this is probably somebody most people wouldn’t have wanted near their kids. Admittedly, he never seems to mingle with them in 1958’s High School Confidential. The film opens with him and his band performing on the back of a flat-bed truck as it rolls into town for his upcoming concert. Like the Pied Piper in reverse, he is drawing a crowd of kids and teens and leading them deeper into town.
The high school in this town has a drug problem. As explained by a detective in a meeting with key school personnel, there are almost 300 students using either marijuana or heroin. I laughed hard at that line, where one relatively harmless and non-addictive drug is casually equated with one of the most harmful and addictive. It would be like saying the school has a number of students who are making prank calls or building nuclear weapons.
Russ Tamblyn rolls into town as a new student. He is a career high-school student. I seem to recall this is his third go at his senior year, after failing to graduate from previous schools. From the very first moment he sets foot on school property, he proclaims his intention to become the king of the “wheelers and dealers” there, by which he means to be the grand poobah of the drug trade.
I found his personality repellent, yet he wins over most of the students in the first day there. He acquires a lackey within a minute or two of arriving. This is some poor, deeply unpopular guy who just desperately wanted to have somebody who will boss him around. He’s like the Milhouse to Tamblyn’s Bart.
One of the students who doesn’t take an immediate liking to him is John Drew Barrymore, father of the famous actress bearing his middle and last names. He is the current king of those wheelers and dealers, a phrase used roughly one million times over the course of this movie and which not once rang true. Similarly, much of the other slang here feels not so much dated as likely the product of older screenwriters trying to approximate the lingo of that era’s youth which had them baffled.
Barrymore has a scene early on that is incredibly strange and out of place. He is in a class where the teacher (Jan Sterling) leaves to escort Tamblyn to the principal’s office. Once they’re out of the room, he gets up on her desk and delivers a looong hipster comic spin on the discovery of America by Columbus. He is like some lame, wannabe comedian trying to do a riff in the manner of George Carlin, though long before Carlin was doing his thing. I figured the film would have a break or two for a musical number, but I didn’t expect it to grind to a halt for a stand-up routine.
Now that I think about it, it is odd this has Jerry Lee Lewis, but he and his music are barely in it. I counted three moments where his music is used. Except for very brief glimpses in a later scene, he is only really on the screen in that opening scene on the truck. I didn’t time them, but I suspect Barrymore’s stand-up break is longer than the three moments of Lewis music altogether.
There’s also a goofy scene in a club where Phillipa Fallon fronts a band while delivering hysterically bad pseudo-beatnik poetry. Once again, this is the type of tripe men who are approaching middle age think will scan well with a young audience. And, once again, any viewer will call bullshit on this, regardless of the extent to which they are familiar with the styles, music, lingo and culture of the era. I mean, these are teens who call each other “weedheads”, which I doubt was ever a real term among that demographic.
The one thing the movie does get right when trying to reach its intended audience is there are quite a few hot women in this. Fallon, in her poetry corner moment, brought to mind for me that line in “Hey Ladies” by The Beastie Boys about “Beatnik chicks just wearing their smocks.” Sterling, as the teacher whom Tamblyn makes many passes towards, makes me think Van Halen had entirely the wrong fantasy woman in mind when they made the “Hot For Teacher” video. Diane Jergens plays Tamblyn’s girlfriend in a performance that made me wonder when she was going to transfer to Twin Peaks High School.
But especially noteworthy is Mamie Van Doren as the aunt Tamblyn is staying with. This may be the most wildly oversexed performance I have ever seen. If she’s his biological aunt, then there’s some scenes between the two that are incredibly uncomfortable.
At this point, I’m going to spoil something which drives the third act. You may want to stop reading here. On the other hand, this is a deeply stupid movie that one should only watch for the camp value, so spoiling it won’t exact spoil it. In fact, this additional information may lead more people to check it out. After all, there’s a reason why this movie has been singled out by the Razzies as one of the 100 most enjoyably bad films of all time.
So here goes…Tamblyn is actually an undercover agent for the police, trying to identify the mystery man who is supplying drugs to those who are dealing to the student body. I found it strange Tamblyn, who is usually a reliable actor, is convincing as neither the young hoodlum nor as the upright and uptight cop. What is especially daft is he maintains cover in every scene before this revelation—I seem to recall even in moments where he’s by himself. Then, when the twist is revealed, he immediately and completely drops the ruse, even when most of the other characters are unaware of his true nature.
If there’s one positive thing I can say about High School Confidential, it is I was never bored. Of course, I also didn’t enjoy a single second of the film in the manner originally intended. It is likely to amuse fans of Reefer Madness as much as that film.
This is a picture that is entirely unconvincing when it is trying to be exploitive and hysterically preachy when it reveals its true colors. It is a movie that could have used more Jerry Lee Lewis, and in more than one way. He doubtlessly could have really shown those kids how to party.
Dir: Jack Arnold
Starring Russ Tamblyn, Jan Sterling, John Drew Barrymore
Watched on Olive Films blu-ray