ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979)

The students of Vince Lombardi High School love rock music and (for whatever illogical movie logic reason) this love of rocking out keeps driving their principals insane.  Like literally.  So before the last principal can even be shipped off to the nuthouse, the school board brings in the new principal: Miss Togar.  Miss Togar (Mary Woronov) hates rock music, so it's only natural that on her first day as principal she butts heads with "Number 1 Ramones fan" Riff Randell (P.J. Soles).  And to make matters even worse: Riff has to miss three days of school in order to wait in line to buy everybody at school tickets to the upcoming Ramones concert.

That's about as deep as the story gets, but it fits the playful mood of the movie perfectly.  I've watched ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL dozens times since I was a teenager and watching it again just a few minutes ago I still got lost in the energy of the movie.  It's entertaining as hell right from the opening scene but then when the Ramones show up in person about halfway through...the excitement level goes right off the charts!  I loved the Ramones concert scenes so much that I watched them like four or five times.

Without even having a way to know it, the filmmakers captured the Ramones at the height of their post-Tommy Ramone power and because of that alone ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL is a one-of-a-kind treasure of American culture.  They couldn't act for shit, but goddamn their screen presence was amazing.

Human-sized rats, great cast (a few of them probably giving the best performances of their careers), the fakest-looking TV camera in movie history, The Real Don Steele, off-screen birds chirping out "cheap...cheap" when the New World Picture copyright shows up in the opening credits, lightening-fast pace that never lets up for a moment, the promise to give Mr. McGlup a visit, a van with a badass paint job, somebody looking for Carbona, awesome 70's hairstyles on the girls, uncredited Joe Dante direction when director Allan Arkush was hospitalized for exhaustion, tons of great quotable lines, Dee Dee smiling.

ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL is mandatory viewing for all lovers of stuff that was awesome in the late 1970's. Double-feature with A HARD DAY'S NIGHT.

If you need me, I'll be in my room tossing slices of pizza at my Mick Jagger poster.

Tommy

PRIVATE PARTS (1972)

After running away from home, Cheryl goes to stay with her elderly aunt who runs a old hotel in Los Angeles' skid row.  There's only a handful of tenants but they are a strange bunch, especially the elusive George who enjoys hiding behind peepholes like he's Norman Bates and rubbing on the wall while Cheryl bathes.  He also has a creepy water-filled plastic sex doll that he decorated with a picture of Cheryl's face and...well, you should probably just see for yourself what he does with it.

Paul Bartel's PRIVATE PARTS is groovy little sexually confused movie that takes influence from the European Giallo films of the time then tosses in some Hitchcock and kinky sex and tops it off Bartel's own unique vision and end up with something pretty neat.  The pace is too slow and there's not enough weird tenants or violence, but it's still a fun film that I can't help but appreciate.

Decapitation, awesome Los Angeles locations, two scenes that (at least to me) seemed to have left an impression on Martin Scorsese, a brief Paul Bartel cameo as a drunk in the park, one nice nude scene by Ayn Ruymen, great supporting cast of familiar faces, a kinky story that shows surprisingly (and disappointingly) little sex.

I bet this was a fun watch back in the seedy grindhouses of the early 1970's.  Recommended for fans of confused psychosexual killer movies.

Two years before Martin Scorsese's ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE.

These two shots (above and below) seem very similar to the famous shot of Robert De Niro used four years later in the TAXI DRIVER poster.