Rock 'n' Roll Highschool

Riff Randell (actress P.J. Soles) likes to rock ’n’ roll — that much is safe to say. And in this cult hit from 1979, she does her rocking with the help of those lovable lunkheads The Ramones (who, according to singer — the late frog-legged crooner Joey Ramone — once collectively pissed in a beer before handing it to John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon). She’s ensconced at Vince Lombardi High, a school where even Mötley Crüe might feel at home, thanks to all the “smokin’ in the boys room.”

Rock ’n’ Roll High School is a gleefully silly, stupid screwball comedy in the Troma vein — except it doesn’t have enough sex or violence to push it into true trash glory. What it does have is the deliciously enthusiastic and gorgeous Soles working her tailfeathers off to get her smash-hit single “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” into the hands of Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Marky. The Ramones pop up in her daydreams of stardom, regaling her — and by extension, us — with a flaming hot set list of their greatest hits: “Teenage Lobotomy,” “Pinhead,” “She’s the One,” and more. Hardcore Ramones fans will go ga-ga over seeing them in this otherwise forgettable flick, where it becomes painfully obvious that they are rock ’n’ rollers first and actors dead last.

No surprise, none of the band’s “performances” would win awards. What, did the director just tell them to act like themselves? Even that seemed like a stretch. Stanislavski would’ve fled the theater.

As you might imagine, there isn’t much of a plot to bother with. Tom Roberts (Vince Van Patten) wants to score with Riff Randell, so he hires sleazeball kingpin Eaglebauer (Clint Howard — with a résumé stuffed to bursting with low-budget oddities) to help him get laid. Somewhere in there, gold chains, a leisure suit, and a 1979 shag-carpet van all make appearances. Meanwhile, Ms. Togar (the incomparable Mary Woronov, paired here once again with Paul Bartel), the new principal, does her best to crush Randell’s rock ’n’ roll dreams.

Ramones Rock 'n' Roll High School movie full show

Randell, irrepressible as ever, camps out at the ticket office for Ramones tickets — only to have them confiscated, then improbably win a pair back. She drags her friend Kate (Dey Young) to the finale, where the film finally clicks into gear: an explosive (literally) Ramones concert. By this point, they are the prime special effect, ripping through a blistering set of their short, sharp shocks. Everything else around them feels… meh. Except Soles, and maybe Howard.

Soles carries the movie like a champ, eyes beaming with musical obsession, seemingly unfazed by the mediocrity swirling around her. Once you’ve been murdered by Michael Myers, I suppose nothing else rattles you. Her optimism is the movie’s real heartbeat. And The Ramones, a band that never tasted true commercial glory, are the perfect foil: scrappy, ugly-duckling rockers whom the movie insists on treating like pin-up idols — which plays like one long running gag.

The film has gags galore: exploding mice, guys in mice costumes, Bartel hamming it up as a fuddy-duddy teacher turned beatnik, and Dick Miller dropping in comfortably as a sheriff straight out of one of his old monster flicks. The soundtrack is stacked — Paul McCartney, Todd Rundgren, Alice Cooper, Devo, Chuck Berry, The Paley Brothers (with the Ramones), Brian Eno — though licensing kept many off the official album.

In the end, Rock ’n’ Roll High School is an almost naïve snapshot of youth, parody, and wacky hijinks, with irony and crass commercialism baked in. Forty-six years later, Vince Lombardi High seems as quaint as a teenybopper campus in 1959. Today, it’d look more like a minimum-security prison, patrolled by guards instead of hall monitors. Dick Miller wouldn’t be breaking up a concert — he’d be leading a SWAT team.

But in 1979? High school wasn’t quite so grim. And rock ’n’ roll — it was all I ever wanted. Especially with a chick like Riff.

Gabba gabba hey.

Rock 'N' Roll High School

My book: Cult Films and Midnight Movies: From High Art to Low Trash Volume 1

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