High School Confidential

by El Destino

2002-01-24 13:30:15

Drive-In Pigdog

Heroin! Pot! And Jerry Lee Lewis! This campy 50s movie turns your VCR into a drive-in....

Five minutes into High School Confidential bad Tony is smoking a reefer in the principal's office. Back in class, he's hitting on his teacher. Why not, he's 22... She returns him to the principal, who confiscates Tony's knife.

At home Tony's horny incestuous aunt puts the moves on him. But he's only interested in that blond good girl who's jonesing bad for a stick of marijuana. Real bad; the last girl in this town who smoked marijuana became a shivering heroin junkie sold into prostitution.

There's an insane drag race, plus lots of hipster slang like "Daddy-O." But what Tony really wants is to score several kilograms of heroin to become the town's dope peddling king. Woe to naive parents who ignored the police commissioner's warnings....

It's more fun to root for the hopped-up beatnik teen, of course. In real life, David Lynch even hired the actor -- 35 years later -- to be on Twin Peaks. The drug dealer's henchman, meanwhile, in real life spawned messed-up Drew Barrymore. And the drug dealer himself? Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.

Somewhere in the mix is Michael Landon and Charlie Chaplin's son -- but most especially Jerry Lee Lewis, who serenades the townfolk from the back of a flat-bed pickup, pounding on a piano as they drive through the city.

Where is this town?

Because I want to be a turned-on daddy-o too....

laredo@pigdog.org