Pump Up The Volume (1990, Dir. Allan Moyle)
Synopsis:
Shy teen, Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) is unhappy after his parents have uprooted him from New York to move to a small town in Arizona. He vents his frustration through nightly pirate radio broadcasts as “Happy Harry Hard on” — the H.H.H. Name chosen in reference to the initials of his new school, Hubert Humphrey High. Mark uses his school governor father’s access to confidential school memos to shine a light on the corrupt behavior of the principal, Loretta Creswood (Annie Ross) who is selectively expelling the students she feels are undesirable; making him a hero and spokesperson for all the students at the school who feel disenfranchised. The suicide of one of Mark’s listeners after he called up during a show provides all the excuse that Creswood and her cronies need to bring in the Police and the F.B.I. to hunt for “Hard Harry” and take him off the airwaves permanently. Can Mark and Nora (Samantha Mathis), the one girl at school who has figured out that Mark is “Hard Harry” and who is attracted to Mark, stay one step ahead of the authorities and still stop the unfair regime at Hubert Humphrey High…
I was in two minds to include a post about this film, firstly it’s definitely a “cult movie”, secondly it’s not that unknown. In the end, it was my friend Colin Hussey who convinced me to write a post about it when we spontaneously decided to re-watch it last Friday evening, in a double bill with another Christian Slater/Samatha Mathis movie: Broken Arrow. He’s a long time fan of the movie and has clearly seen it even more times than I have, but mentioned that he knows a lot of people who’ve never seen it.
Even more shockingly, when I bought the film a couple of years ago on DVD, I discovered that it had actually been deleted. In fact, it still is. New copies are changing hands for up to £35 on Amazon. There are plenty of second-hand copies floating around for a more reasonable price though, so with a little effort you can find a copy if you don’t already have one in your collection.
It’s always suffered a little from being in the shadow of Michael Lehman’s Heathers, as the “other” great 80s/90s teen movie starring Christian Slater (I know, there will be some of you out there clamoring to have Gleaming The Cube included as well — sorry, that movie, on it’s best day, isn’t nearly as iconic as either of these…at least in my opinion). In fact, if I remember correctly, the U.K. Release of Pump Up The Volume was delayed until after Heathers popularity on home video was firmly established. Certainly, Heathers’ cult status served to further help this film’s reception and make Slater, officially, “a star” by the time this film and Young Guns II were released in the same year. Despite all this, however, we should really stop mentioning this film and Heathers in the same breath, as they bare little or no relation to one another, other than they both feature teenage protagonists.
Where Heathers tries to capture the essence and horror of what a teenager can be like through overt satire and pitch black comedy, this goes in the other direction totally, and takes a more serious and thoughtful look at the subject. In many ways, this is the film’s great strength: none of the characters (with the possible exception of Annie Ross’ wonderfully mean Principal) are stereotypes or two-dimensional and the film is very clever in that it never resorts to the typical teen movie cliché of making all the adults either stupid or evil.
Even as a teenager myself, I found Mark’s parents sympathetic rather than overbearing — something that even John Hughes often struggled with doing in his films — and it would be hard to believe anyone wouldn’t cheer when Mark’s dad fires the hated Principal at the end of the film. I’m sure most people wished they’d had such a great and sympathetic English teacher as Ellen Greene’s Ms Emerson. Even the slimy school guidance counselor, David Deever (played with a wonderful sense of self-righteousness by Robert Schekkan) seems to have a “change of heart” when he realizes what the Principal has been up to.
The teenagers too all have clearly defined characters, no matter how little screen time they have; and again, there’s really none of the typical high-school characters: the jocks, the geeks, the rich, over privileged kids; and those that would nominally fit into those categories are presented in much more naturalistic and nuanced ways here than in any other high school film that I can think of.
In a film like Heathers, characters like the wealthy Page or the suicidal Malcolm would be treated with scorn. I’ve already mentioned the work of John Hughes, whose 80s teen movies are rightly regarded as some of the best of the genre, but name me one of Hughes’ movies that deals as sensitively and sympathetically as this film with the issues of teen pregnancy, suicide and gay characters… Something that is often overlooked in a film which features a teenage shock radio DJ obsessed with Sex and masturbation.
Even that aspect is unusual, as here over a decade before American Pie, we have the implication that teenage girls are as obsessed with sex as teenage boys. At the beginning of the film it seems to be the girls at the high school, led by Samatha Mathis’ character, who are the most avid listeners of Mark’s show. In the opening scenes, one of the girls introduces her boyfriend to the show and it’s he who is shocked, rather than her — a nice twist on the way most other films would have chosen to have done this.
I remember that the film’s realistic, but also slightly downbeat ending surprised me when I first saw the film as a teenager. Again, this is part of the film’s brilliance for me. Of course, Mark wasn’t going to get away “scott free”, he has broken the law after all; but like any protagonist fighting against “a system” — you want him to. The cleverness of the ending is that It still feels like Mark has won, even though he’s been arrested. It reminds me a little of the ending of Dead Poets Society: the main character appears to all intents and purposes to have “lost” and must face some sort of punishment; and yet their influence on all those around them means that in terms of making a difference, they have “won”.
It’s a great shame that aside from Empire Records five years later, director Allan Moyle has made little else of note. Whilst it’s clear that he’s clearly a writer who directs, rather than vice versa; his direction here is assured and suits the material perfectly. Walt Lloyd, who had shot Sex, Lies and Videotape for Steven Soderbergh the year before he made this and who would go on to photograph Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, (which also starred Annie Ross) gives this film the same subtle, naturalistic look as both of those. The score is an early effort by another Soderbergh collaborator, Cliff Martinez; whose subtle soundscapes underpin the movie and sit perfectly alongside the indie songs on the soundtrack.
This is one of those rare teen movies from the 80s and early 90s, like WarGames, Breakfast Club, and (yes) Heathers that still deserves it’s reputation. Whilst the trappings of being a teenager will change over time, the core issues of that period of your life — feeling lost, wanting to escape your home town, wanting to know that you’re not alone in feeling this way — that is universal, and it’s why even now this movie still matters and will continue to; even to future generations, like my kids who, on the surface, will have as much in common with these early 90s, Arizona teenagers as they do with the kids in The Secret Seven books…and yet, despite all this can look at both and say: “I know how it feels to be them.” That’s the power of great movie and it’s a power that in recent years we seem to have lost.
Colin and I often lament that today’s teen movies have none of the charm, humour or intelligence of those we grew up with in the 80s and 90s. In an era where Porky’s and not Breakfast Club has become the template for what Hollywood thinks teenagers want to watch, it’s more important than ever to cherish examples of intelligent movie making for young adults.
Let’s hope that it’s deletion is only temporary and that means that a nice remastered special edition, perhaps with a retrospective documentary reuniting the various participants included, is just around the corner.
