| Rock 'n' Roll High School | |
|---|---|
Original film poster |
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| Directed by | Allan Arkush |
| Produced by | Michael Finnell |
| Written by | Richard Whitley Russ Dvonch Joseph McBride |
| Story by | Allan Arkush Joe Dante |
| Starring | P. J. Soles Dey Young Vince Van Patten Clint Howard Mary Woronov |
| Cinematography | Dean Cundey |
| Editing by | Larry Bock Gail Werbin |
| Distributed by | New World Pictures Buena Vista Home Entertainment (DVD) Shout! Factory (2010 DVD and Blu-Ray) |
| Release date(s) | August 24, 1979 |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $300,000 (estimated) |
Rock 'n' Roll High School is a 1979 musical comedy film produced by Roger Corman, directed by Allan Arkush, and featuring the Ramones.
The film starred P. J. Soles, Vince Van Patten, and Clint Howard.[1] Darby Crash and Lorna Doom of The Germs also played extras in this film.
Contents |
Set in 1980, Vince Lombardi High School keeps losing principals to nervous breakdowns because of the students' love of rock 'n' roll and their disregard for education. Their leader, Riff Randall (P. J. Soles), is the biggest Ramones fan at Vince Lombardi High School. She waits in line for three days to get tickets to see the band, hoping to meet Joey Ramone so she can give him a song she wrote for the band, "Rock 'n' Roll High School".
When Principal Togar (Mary Woronov) takes her ticket away, Riff and her best friend Kate Rambeau (Dey Young) have to find another way to meet their heroes—by winning a radio contest. When Miss Togar and a group of parents attempt to burn a pile of rock records, the students take over the high school, joined by the Ramones, who are made honorary students. When the police are summoned and demand that the students evacuate the building, they do so, which leads to a quite literal explosive finale.[2]
A soundtrack album was released around the same time, but included only a limited number of songs from the film. The two main Ramones songs in the film, the title song and "I Want You Around", were remixed by Phil Spector for the album. The original film versions were not officially released until the 1999 CD Hey! Ho! Let's Go: The Anthology.
| Side One | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Performer(s) | Length | |||||
| 1. | "Rock 'n' Roll High School" (Phil Spector remix) | Ramones | Ramones | 2:20 | |||||
| 2. | "I Want You Around" (Phil Spector remix) | Ramones | Ramones | 3:04 | |||||
| 3. | "Come On Let's Go" (Cover of Ritchie Valens, 1959) | Ritchie Valens | The Paley Brothers and Ramones | 2:14 | |||||
| 4. | "Ramones Medley: Blitzkrieg Bop / Teenage Lobotomy / California Sun / Pinhead / She's the One" (recorded live at The Roxy, Los Angeles) | Ramones, Henry Glover, Morris Levy | Ramones | 11:04 | |||||
| 5. | "So It Goes" (from Pure Pop for Now People, 1978) | Lowe | Nick Lowe | 2:31 | |||||
| 6. | "Energy Fools the Magician" (from Before and After Science, 1977) | Eno | Brian Eno | 2:05 | |||||
| Side Two | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Performer(s) | Length | |||||
| 7. | "Rock 'n' Roll High School" | Ramones | P.J. Soles | 2:12 | |||||
| 8. | "Come Back Jonee" (from Question: Are We Not Men? Answer: We Are Devo!, 1978) | Gerald V. Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh | Devo | 3:47 | |||||
| 9. | "Teenage Depression" (from Teenage Depression, 1976) | Dave Higgs | Eddie and the Hot Rods | 2:57 | |||||
| 10. | "Smokin' In the Boys Room" (from Yeah!, 1973) | Cub Koda, Michael Lutz | Brownsville Station | 2:57 | |||||
| 11. | "School Days" (single, 1957) | Berry | Chuck Berry | 2:44 | |||||
| 12. | "A Dream Goes on Forever" (from Todd, 1974) | Rundgren | Todd Rundgren | 3:26 | |||||
| 13. | "School's Out" (from School's Out, 1972) | Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith | Alice Cooper | 2:24 | |||||
Other songs appearing in the film include:
As well as the following songs by the Ramones:
Executive Producer Corman wanted a latter-day version of his wild-teen films of the 1950s and 1960s, and he felt that the best way to adapt to the 1970s would be to center the plot on the popular music of the day. The production Disco High began, based upon a story by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante. In September 1977 Richard Whitley and Russ Dvonch, both fresh out of film school, went to Corman's offices, hoping to find work. As luck would have it, Arkush and Dante happened to be in the lobby and were nice enough to look at their student films. They liked their films enough to give them the script, then called "Girl's Gym" by Joseph McBride. Whitley and Dvonch were told to take any section and rewrite it as a test. Whitley and Dvonch passed the test and were hired to write the screenplay which became Rock 'n' Roll High School.[3]
Arkush, who would go on to direct the film, tells all about the film's evolution on the Buena Vista DVD's commentary track, along with Whitley and producer Michael Finnell. The trio tries to maintain an anecdotal train of thought, but they tend to get distracted when certain elements pop up on the screen. This makes for an interruption in their stories, but it also tends to bring light to otherwise obscure trivia. For example, one of the film's more memorable sequences, the "paper plane" scene, was partially directed by the Zucker Brothers, who would go on to direct, Airplane! (1980). It also reveals that Dante, who helped write the story, got the chance to direct a few of the film's sequences while Arkush was out of commission with exhaustion.[4]
The genesis for the plot was a favorite story told to the film's original writer by his father, Raymond E. McBride of the Milwaukee Journal, who staged a walkout from his Superior (Wis.) Central High school in the 1920s. Rock 'n' Roll High School did so well that Arkush and Whitley followed it up with a sequel, Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever (1991).[5]
The film was shot on the campus of the defunct Mount Carmel High School in South Central Los Angeles, that had been closed in 1976. The actual demolition of the school was used in the end of the film. See it at 1:48 of the trailer.
On July 31, 2008, it was announced that actor/writer Alex Winter had been hired to script a remake of the film for Howard Stern's production company.[6]
The film is a part of Shout! Factory's Roger Corman Cult Classics series, reissued on DVD in May 2010.[7]
Shout! Factory released the film with exclusive content on Blu-ray on May 11, 2010.
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