Jack
Arnold was one of the greatest science-fiction horror directors of his time as
well as being something of a jack-of-all-trades ala Robert Wise who equally
excelled in the wide variety of broadly appealing pictures he created. Dabbling in everything from Universal
Monsters horror to The Incredible
Shrinking Man, frequent television work over the decades to even trying his
hand at Blaxploitation with Boss N***er,
Jack Arnold never met a picture he couldn’t make.
Which
brings us to his 1958 juvenile delinquency drama/thriller/comedy High School Confidential, a film best
remembered for its opening title track by Jerry Lee Lewis while serving up a
hefty dose of gloriously high camp. A
cool little fast-talking B-movie dressed as another Blackboard Jungle type of rock-and-rolling bad teens picture, High School Confidential follows the
mischief makings of high-schooler Tony Baker (Russ Tamblyn). Recently transferred from Chicago to
California, our slick and hip newcomer quickly stakes out his rank amid fellow
thuggish students embroiled in the marijuana and heroin trade.
Courting
the head thug J. I. Coleridge’s (John Drew Barrymore) girlfriend Joan Staples
(Diane Jergens) while fending off the maternal meddling of his progressive
teacher Arlene Williams (Jan Sterling), Tony quickly plunges into the high
school narcotics business though his greatest adversary seems to be his blonde
bombshell “auntie” Gwen Dulaine (Mamie Van Doren). In every scene, the flirtatious seductress
tantalizes Tony relentlessly, immediately catapulting the picture into new
heights of preposterous fun. The
character and performance are so ridiculously over the top you get the sense
Mr. Arnold was knowingly concocting a farce.
Loosely
based on the findings of undercover cop Texas Joe Foster and intended to be a
cautionary tale of drug addiction amid teenagers, replete with a proto-Nadsat jive
dialect requiring its own glossary, the film is a kind of groovy jaunt that’s
delightfully trashy and compulsively watchable.
Hardly a plausible depiction of violence or drug abuse committed by
adolescents but in Arnold’s hands it’s a wildly entertaining romp through a
bygone era of drag races, greaser tropes and maybe the hippest poetry jam ever filmed.
Though
Mamie Van Doren’s quasi femme-fatale arguably steals the show, High School Confidential succeeds as
rapid-fire bad-teen trash primarily for resting solely on Russ Tamblyn’s
shoulders. One of the greatest character
actors of all time, garnering an Oscar nomination for Peyton Place as well as landing a central role in the Oscar winning
West Side Story before achieving
immortality as the enigmatic Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks, Mr. Tamblyn simply owns High School Confidential from
start to finish.
Adept
with the tongue-twisting dialogue as well as giving off vibes of suave,
debonair cool, the Gun Crazy actor
doesn’t just give his all in this part, he dances across the stage with
it! Clearly the scenarios and dynamics
playing out in this film are absurd but Tamblyn sells the part so well we
hardly mind. Also rounding out the
colorful cast are Jackie Coogan (yes, Fester Addams) and John Drew Barrymore
who’s tasked with as much challenging jive dialogue as Tamblyn is. Serious or silly, you have to hand it to the
actors to keep up with the word salad of a screenplay.
Upon
initial release the black-and-white CinemaScope production was a box office
hit, taking in nearly $2 million against a roughly $6K budget. Largely aided by the Billboard Charts record
setting success of the title track by Jerry Lee Lewis, High School Confidential proved to be a lean and mean little indie
flick. In the years since however the
film made the ranks of the Golden Raspberry Awards among the 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made,
canonizing its stature in camp classic cinema history.
Decades
later High School Confidential reignited
pop cultural interest again when the band White Zombie sampled portions of
dialogue from the film for the album La
Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol 1, further cementing it as a bright and
shining relic of the past. More than
anything, it’s another example of the many wide-ranging talents of Jack Arnold
who arguably could do any genre picture and still leave his distinctive mark on
the piece. Simply put, the man could do
anything and High School Confidential is easily among his very best, a
film which makes no bones about what it is and as such remains a spectacular
slice of 50s exploitation cinema.
--Andrew Kotwicki
