A tough kid comes to a new high school and begins muscling his way into the drug scene. This is a typical morality play of the era, filled with a naive view of drugs, nihilistic beat poetry,... Read allA tough kid comes to a new high school and begins muscling his way into the drug scene. This is a typical morality play of the era, filled with a naive view of drugs, nihilistic beat poetry, and some incredible '50s slang.A tough kid comes to a new high school and begins muscling his way into the drug scene. This is a typical morality play of the era, filled with a naive view of drugs, nihilistic beat poetry, and some incredible '50s slang.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaEuropean prints featured more explicit versions of two scenes, including co-star Jan Sterling showing a naked breast when Russ Tamblyn calls her on the telephone. Additionally, a girl suffering from heroin withdrawal also shows a naked breast as she lies uncomfortably on a bed.
- Quotes
Poetess: My old man was a bread stasher all his life. He never got fat. He wound up with a used car, a 17-inch screen and arthritis. Tomorrow is a drag, man, tomorrow is a king-sized bust. // They cried, "Put down pot. Don't think a lot." For what? Time how much and what to do with it. Sleep, man, and you might wake up diggin' the whole human race, givin' itself three days to get out. Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake. // I had a canary who couldn't sing. I had a cat that let me share my pad with her. I bought a dog that killed the cat that ate the canary. What is truth? // I had an uncle with an ivy-league car. He had life with a belt in the back. He had a button-down brain. Wind up a belt in the mouth and a button-down lip. // He coughed blood on this earth. Now there's a race for space. We can cough blood on the moon soon. Tomorrow is dragsville, cats. Tomorrow is a king-sized drag. // Hula fast shorts, swing with a gassy chick, turn on to a thousand joys, smile on what happened, then check what's gonna happen, you'll miss what's happening. Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum. Tomorrow, drag.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Mating Game (1959)
Russ Tamblyn was a child star, then primarily a dancer. This `dramatic' role fell to him between his memorable assignments in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and West Side Story. He's not at all bad here (in an badly written and implausible role), but was never able to establish himself as a serious actor, though he continued to work, showing up notably decades later in Twin Peaks.
John Drew Barrymore had just taken up his middle name to distance himself from his legendary father; in earlier roles (The Big Night, While the City Sleeps), he was billed as John Barrymore, Jr. Here he brings off an eerily precise impersonation of Elvis Presley, speaking both in hillbilly accent and in basso-profundo register. (Alas, he does not sing.) It's clear he inherited the family talent, which he was to squander, because he also inherited the predisposition to chemical experimentation.
Jan Sterling seemed destined for a bigger career than she ended up with. The high points of her filmography Billy's Wilder's The Big Carnival/Ace In The Hole being the most impressive of them were behind her, and she was taking secondary roles to the likes of latter-day Joan Crawford ( in Female on The Beach). Here, as a schoolteacher, she not only does a riff on Eve Arden's Our Miss Brooks character, she even looks like Arden.
The late fifties were the blazing noon of Mamie Van Doren's fling at playing third-string sexpot (after Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield). All Dagmars and platinum hair, she was rarely called upon to display what might have been a comic talent, visible here in fits and starts. Her role as a married nymphomaniac whose attempts at fulfilment absent her husband seemed doomed to disappointment is practically a clone of the part she played in The Beat Generation, a slightly more interesting vehicle that covers much of the same ground as High School Confidential.
High School Confidential remains notable from a view of drug trafficking and the process of addiction that had advanced not a whit since Reefer Madness in the thirties. And of course its view of teen-aged life in the second Eisenhower administration bears not the slightest resemblance to any reality then or now. That said, it's fun to watch.
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
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- Also known as
- Young Hellions
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 25 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1