DVD REVIEW

Rock ’n’ Roll High School

[Shout Factory]

After making his name with low budget sci-fi fare such as Little Shop of Horrors, Piranha and Humanoids From the Deep, producer Roger Corman decided that he wanted to pull in a younger audience via a music-themed film. He came up with a concept he called Disco High School and enlisted director Allan Arkush to transform his vision into reality. Fortunately, Arkush convinced him to scrub the disco in favor of punk, recruited the Ramones to anchor the soundtrack and found the film’s heart in anarchy and subversion. Released for the first time on DVD, 1979’s Rock ’n’ Roll High School
now features a sadly nostalgic tone considering the subsequent deaths of three-quarters of the featured Ramones lineup. The film’s plot both mines and upends high-school movie clichés. A tyrannical adult in the person of the new school principal seeks to repress her teenage charges, forcing the kids to fight back and ultimately convert the authorities to their cause while usurping those who resist. The formula has been repeated before and since, from Animal House to Dirty Dancing, but Rock ’n’ Roll High School helped etch it in the history of rock. It’s a triumph of nerds, nebbishes and rebellious spirits, and at least one scene—a fantasy encounter between the film’s Joan of Arc, Riff Randell (played by a giddy P.J. Soles), and a brutally seductive Joey Ramone—offers hope that even if you’re a loser, the wackiest dream can come true.

–Lee Zimmerman