High School Confidential! (1958)

I love this movie so much

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Also appearances by Micheal Landon, Charles Chaplin, Jr. and Jackie Cooper.This film begins up with Jerry Lee Lewis and band pounding away in a High School parking lot as Tamblyn drives up in the coolest car ever seen in any of these Teenage Exploitation films.Just like 1955's "Blackboard Jungle", this film depended on exploiting the music and slang of the 50's - Which it did in not so much an over-the-top fashion as films like the '50's rock and roll films like Alan Freed's "Rock Around the Clock", "Don't Rock Around the Clock", or even the anti-marijuana film "Reefer Madness".Like "Reefer Madness", this film tries to discourage teenagers from smoking marijuana, chiefly by trying to prove that smoking marijuana leads directly to using hard drugs, which may, or may not be true- It's an angle law enforcers used to use back in the 30's that "Pot smoking always leads to using hard drugs" - An angle that we now believe as incorrect, in relation to the present day psychiatric belief that such cravings are inherited.However, the depictions of hard drug users, and use! - in this film are as close to reality as I have ever seen, especially in a film made in the 50's.Tamblyn as JD almost does not work, his performance just slides under the door into believability- However, the reason for this reveals itself as the film develops.The female lead Diane Jergens as "Joan Staples" - When Tamblyn's character calls her "Kitten" she looks rather Kittenish. Also, Mamie Van Doren as Tamblyn's aunt "Gwen Dulaine" is a standout. '50s actress Jan Sterling is Tamblyn's home-room teacher and is a good solid character role for her.One highlight of this film is by John Drew Barrymore, who as "J. I.", the ringleader of the "Wheeler-Dealers", gives us a comedic version of Columbus asking Queen Isabella for money - This delivered as a stand-up comedy routine "in front of the High School class" - And he delivers this using all 50's type slang.Overall, the slang use in this film is the best and most realistic of all the 50's rock and roll movies and Jack Arnold, "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and other Sci Fi flicks from the 50's as well as uncredited re-shoots in "This Island Earth" takes a step away from the science fiction genre to direct this classic Teenage Rock and roll/Film-Noire film.

This is an amazing 1950s movie because it is both highly entertaining and really cheesy fun--making it a sure cult classic. Unlike some anti-drug teenager cult films like REEFER MADNESS, this one actually has decent production values and performances--though I'll also admit there is more than enough cheese to please the "bad film fans" out there.Russ Tamblyn plays the lead. He enters a new high school like a typhoon--walking in like he owns the place and full of hep-cat 50s lingo. At the time, audiences must have been really shocked by his thuggish ways, though today his antics just look pretty silly and way, way over the top. Later in the film, however, you discover that his "new thug on the block" routine is just an act, as he's really working with the cops to get to the bottom of a drug ring selling to rich kids at a local high school.The film's pluses are it's hip lingo and beatnik ways. It's hip style is highly reminiscent of films such as BUCKET OF BLOOD and it is really fun to watch the "wild and untamed youth running wild" (they are about the tamest "untamed youth" I've seen since WILD ONE). Also, the plot isn't bad--making this like a hipster version of Film Noir. One of the negatives were the occasionally over the top performances--especially Mamie Van Doren as she plays a cat in heat who is desperate for action. She was perhaps the horniest lady on celluloid in the 1950s! Again, though, this was cheesy but also rather fun to watch as she acted like a sex addict going through withdrawal. However, the biggest problem with the film by far is that most of the "teenagers" in this film were actually too old even to play college students! Of the main cast, the youngest was Michael Landon who was 22 and yet they have them all playing high schoolers! It's laughable but again because it's all so funny and entertaining, I think it really adds to the film's kooky charm.So the final verdict is that this is a highly watchable and pretty well made camp classic. Is it art? Of course not--but that's what makes it all work somehow.

Having first read about this '50s juvenile delinquent movie in the book "Cult Movies 2", when I saw a DVD displayed in my local library, I knew I had to check High School Confidential! out. With Russ Tamblyn as a troubled kid going to a new school, Diane Jergens as his potential girlfriend, and John Drew Barrymore as his rival/potential partner in a drug ring, the fireworks that happens is slowly but surely coming but not in the way you think! Mamie Van Doren is a hoot as Tamblyn's "aunt" who puts the moves on him and anyone who's not her husband who's conveniently out of town during most of the picture. There's also former child star, and later Uncle Fester, Jackie Coogan and a star of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, Jan Sterling, here. And then there's "The Killer", Jerry Lee Lewis, singing the title song on a flatbed truck to get things off to a rousing start. With a young Michael Landon and lots of dated slang that still provide some amusement today along with some car chases and some fights, High School Confidential! might be the most "trippin" movie from the '50s I've seen yet!

This film starts out with Jerry Lee Lewis and his combo, on the back of a flatbed truck, singing and playing the title song while slowly rolling by the local high school (which looks nothing like a high school). Why are they playing there? Who knows? This scene was shot around the time IL' Jerry Lee married his 14-year-old cousin and was banned from American Bandstand. "Dick Clark done me wrong!" (Also, Allen 'Mr. Rock 'n Roll' Freed was busted for payola during this period; Buddy Holly, Ritchie Vallens & Duh Big Bopper were almost ready to take that fateful flight out of Iowa.) The song 'High School Confidential' suffered from poor airplay and drifted into obscurity—but hey, we got Fabian, Frankie Avalon and the other Italian-American rockers out of the shake-up.A new kid (who happens to be 24-years-old) Russ 'Westside Story' Tamblyn cruses by the musical flatbed, without looking up and starts his first day at Nameless High. He almost gets into a rumble with Drew Barrymore's dad, the President of the 'Wheelers & Dealers' who's also a small potatoes reefer dealer (one joint for a buck)—Jackie 'Uncle Fester' Coogan is Mister Big. Goody Two-Shoes Michael 'I Was A Teenaged Werewolf' Landon ties to get Russ to stop acting like a juvenile delinquent and join the football team. No dice… There's a pointless and outlandish 'Wheelers & Dealers' sponsored drag race, whose route seems to consist of pointless loops around a few movie studio sound stages. For reasons unknown 26-year-old John Drew Barrymore's (he died last year) hopped-up 21-year-old girlfriend, Joan is riding with and hanging all over Russ during the big race. This bizarre romantic betrayal doesn't seem to bother any of the drag city racing fans or the Wheelers & Dealers. A big plastic bag of marijuana, hidden behind Russ's wobbling hubcap, falls out just as the fuzz arrive ending the race. Bummer! Oh, platinum blonde Mamie 'Untamed Youth' Van Doren plays Russ's sex-starved/nymphomaniac aunt—she's an absolutely useless character that has nothing to do with the plot. She was big-busted in her day and a well known cinematic sexpot, but today she's viewed as small bleached-blonde potatoes compared to the saline-implant hoochy mamas of the 21st century.Anyway, Russ is actually an undercover nark who eventually busts the maryjane/horse dope syndicate preying on those poor, innocent & overaged Eisenhower Era high school students. Those addicted teeners are constantly skipping their homework, preferring to hang out at a strangely serene beatnik nightclub while listening to bleak beat poetry and "grazing in the grass." Uncle Fester plays a honky-tonk piano during these poetry sessions.Homeroom teacher, Jan Sterling (who also died last year) convinces John Drew Barrymore's marijuana addicted blonde girlfriend Joan, played by Diane Jergens, to break her reefer in half and drop it on the floor. Maybe now Joan can finally graduate from Nameless High and go on the city college.