Thursday Poetry Slam...
posted October 15, 2009 5:08 AM
...and DVR alert: At 11:30 this morning [EST] Turner Classic Movies is showing the greatest rock-and-roll (for want of a better description) film of all time. I refer, of course, to the utterly astounding 1958 exploitation classic High School Confidential, directed (without recourse to mind-altering drugs, apparently) by the great Jack Arnold. Featuring Russ Tamblyn as an undercover narc passing as a teenager and living with Mamie Van Doren, his sexpot "aunt" who spends the entire movie coming on to him. A film that opens with the young Jerry Lee Lewis, looking mean moody and magnificent, pounding out the title song on a flat bed truck...
and just keeps getting better for another 82 minutes.
And a film that also features this classic of alienation from the Age of Anxiety.
That's the alas forgotten Phillipa Fallon as the beatnik poetess. "Tomorrow is a drag, pops. The future is a flake."
Hey doll, I know the feeling.
In the meantime, if you got up to late to catch HSC on the tube, you can -- and most definitely should -- order the DVD over here.
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Steve Simels has written about music and movies for Sound and Vision magazine (formerly Stereo Review) since the early 70s. He has also contributed to Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide and the Wall Street Journal. He’s the author of “Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock n Roll” (Arbor House, 1985), and blogs at PowerPop.blogspot.com. His ambition in life is to play the Leslie Howard role in a remake of “Petrified Forest.”
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Cousin Kevin said:
I haven't seen this in years, and I'd forgotten that Van Doren plays his "aunt." My god.
October 15, 2009 5:18 AM
Gummo said:
You forgot to mention John Drew Barrymore (Drew's dad, I think?) and his lame attempt at a Lord Buckley-style monologue when he gives a "hip" rendition of Columbus's discovery of America.
Utterly cringe-worthy.
And the whole Mamie-as-perverted-aunt thing never makes any sense, even when **SPOILER ALERT** it's revealed at the end that Tamblyn isn't really her nephew, that still means she's been trying to cheat on her absent husband for the whole length of the movie!
She IS at her trampy hottest here, though; right up there with her appearance in "Girls Town."
October 15, 2009 6:45 AM
Steve Simels said:
Wiki says yes, he's Drew's dad.
I always thought he was a pretty cool screen presence, although for the life of me I can't think of another movie of his. I think he was in some 60s swords and sandal stuff...
October 15, 2009 6:52 AM
Gummo said:
I always thought he died young, but IMDB says he died in 2004. Go figure.
IMDB has him doing a lot of 60s TV and a bunch of films in Italy, of all places.
Including this intriguing credit:
Ponzio Pilato (1962) .... Judas / Jesus
October 15, 2009 7:00 AM
Otis Adelbert Kline said:
Per Wiki, Barrymore was 27(!) when he made HSC.
Good grief...
October 15, 2009 11:00 AM
Sid Sherman said:
That version of the title song Jerry Lee is linking to is not the same as the Sun 45. It's actually kind of better, IMHO....
October 15, 2009 3:07 PM
Sid Sherman said:
Lip-synching to. Not linking. Sorry...
October 15, 2009 3:08 PM