User Reviews

It's funny, implausible, dated, unrealistic.... and wonderful. Great fun and full of interesting characters. You can never go wrong with Zugsmith. I watched this because of the Zugsmith connection and also to see if Russ Tamblyn could pull off a tough guy role (not any more convincing than Riff in West Side Story, but still an enjoyable performance, as was Riff). Jan Sterling is always a delight. And Mamie Van Doren... enjoyed seeing her paw Tamblyn and thrust her chest out in every scene. Jerry Lee Lewis singing in the opening scene was a bonus (and we hear the song again near the end). The final scene of Tamblyn, Van Doren, etc., riding in the car was the perfect ending to another bizarre Zugsmith production.

This is an amazing 1950s movie because it is both highly entertaining and really cheesy fun--making it a sure cult classic. Unlike some anti-drug teenager cult films like REEFER MADNESS, this one actually has decent production values and performances--though I'll also admit there is more than enough cheese to please the "bad film fans" out there.

Russ Tamblyn plays the lead. He enters a new high school like a typhoon--walking in like he owns the place and full of hep-cat 50s lingo. At the time, audiences must have been really shocked by his thuggish ways, though today his antics just look pretty silly and way, way over the top. Later in the film, however, you discover that his "new thug on the block" routine is just an act, as he's really working with the cops to get to the bottom of a drug ring selling to rich kids at a local high school.

The film's pluses are it's hip lingo and beatnik ways. It's hip style is highly reminiscent of films such as BUCKET OF BLOOD and it is really fun to watch the "wild and untamed youth running wild" (they are about the tamest "untamed youth" I've seen since WILD ONE). Also, the plot isn't bad--making this like a hipster version of Film Noir. One of the negatives were the occasionally over the top performances--especially Mamie Van Doren as she plays a cat in heat who is desperate for action. She was perhaps the horniest lady on celluloid in the 1950s! Again, though, this was cheesy but also rather fun to watch as she acted like a sex addict going through withdrawal. However, the biggest problem with the film by far is that most of the "teenagers" in this film were actually too old even to play college students! Of the main cast, the youngest was Michael Landon who was 22 and yet they have them all playing high schoolers! It's laughable but again because it's all so funny and entertaining, I think it really adds to the film's kooky charm.

So the final verdict is that this is a highly watchable and pretty well made camp classic. Is it art? Of course not--but that's what makes it all work somehow.

Funny looking back at it now. This is a classic juvenile delinquency melodrama with many familiar faces. Tony Baker(Russ Tamblyn)moves to California from Chicago and he hits the high school hard and heavy to make himself known. He is living with his sex-crazed Aunt Gwen(Mamie Van Doren). Not just wanting to be a stud, but THE stud. He immediately gets into the drug scene and strives to be the top dog dealer. There in the middle of the havoc he has induced, no one knows that he's a narc. Jerry Lee Lewis opens and closes the flick riding on a flatbed truck singing "High School Confidential". Cutie Diane Jergens plays Tony's love interest. Other familiar faces you may recognize: Jan Sterling, Jackie Coogan, Lyle Talbot, Michael Landon, band leader Ray Anthony and John Drew Barrymore, who would become the estranged father of actress Drew Barrymore.

Gear up for a swanky romp through the seedy underbelly of campy exploitation in this classic nugget featuring the World's Oldest Troubled Teens.

A fiery Jerry Lee Lewis opens the movie rolling through the bucolic 1950's streets belting out the title song in opening credits.

The chase and race scenes in this movie are actually really excellent for a B movie. This almost makes for the ham handed "twists" (that were probably mid-shoot re-writes) of Tony secretly being Mike Wilson "Undercover Man".

It appears to me that the writers wanted to squeak by the Hays Code after they created a unforgiving anti-hero in Tony. This wounded anti-hero role, before the High School Caesar is revealed as an FBI MAN, would be picked up on by generations of actors including Brando and James Dean minus the G-Man or redeeming values angle.

Mamie is awesome as usual. She plays a perky and moody sexpot on the prowl competing for Tony/Mike's attention with his teacher, the straight laced Jan Sterling. Be sure to dig the way out hipster/beatnik action in the jazz nightclub featuring Mr. Big and catch a young Michael Landon wandering through scene after scene visibly wondering exactly what he's doing in the film at all.

If you like this flick, you'll really dig Highschool Ceasar!

The only thing that High School Confidential has to offer is Jerry Lee Lewis singing and playing the piano in that unique style of his. But Jerry Lee had the good sense to confine himself to singing and not attempt any dialog.

High School Confidential is the story of new kid Russ Tamblyn in the high school. He starts heading for the dope smoking crowd and why wouldn't he since Tamblyn's an undercover cop. He gradually works his way up the food chain of druggies until he can find the adult pushers who are corrupting the morals of those Eisenhower era youth. Wait till you see who the head of the gang is. Here's a hint, he's in a profession that isn't exactly unknown for its use of marijuana.

Jan Sterling plays the role of interested and concerned teacher and she's clearly getting rid of some last picture commitments on an MGM contract. As is Russ Tamblyn who was finding it more difficult to get work from MGM since they cut back on musicals.

John Drew Barrymore is positively embarrassing in his role as a high school kid, he clearly looks way too old. But you got to love Mamie Van Doren as Tamblyn's 'aunt' who tries to seduce him since she's not getting any because her husband has flown the coop.

This one should have been released as satire since that's what the producers unintentionally got.

Since Russ Tamblyn is really an undercover police officer sent to a high school to break up the drug trade, who is Mamie Van Doren, the woman who plays the boozy aunt that he lives with?

The film is most interesting since it deals with familiar themes- rampant use of drugs in our schools and parents,who either deny that the problem exists, or continuously say, "Not my child!"

Tamblyn is terrific as the masquerading delinquent. His utter disrespect for authority is fantastically depicted here.

Jan Sterling, a terrific actress, is terribly miscast here as the teacher who tries to help Tamblyn. With her facial looks, she looks like she wants to be part of the action in a desire to be loved.

Jackie Coogan, Mr. A., is in fine form here as the head drug dealer.

I just finished watching "High School Confidential" on TCM, and it's even worse than I remembered it was when I first watched it 50 years ago at a Drive-In theater. I knew how misguided the plot was even back in 1958. Being a 16 year old teenager at the time, it bugged me, because the movie in no way represented my generation. Like the guys I hung around with, we all felt that it was just an older adult's impression of what they thought it was like, to be a teenager at the time! Talking' jive, Beatnik poetry, grown adults playing the part of teenagers, using expressions like, "Crazy man", "I dig it the most", and "weed-head!" Hot Rods and Roadsters were popular at the time, but no teenager trying to be cool, would be caught dead driving a Chrysler Imperial Convertable as his car of choice. Even worse, the film promotes the false impression that smoking a joint is highly addictive and causes one to become totally drug-crazed, ala "Refer Madness." And that those who do smoke a joint, automatically move right on up to heroin afterward. I think movies like this one, did little in trying to persuade teenagers in the 1950s to be good, because they failed to keep it real. It was so over the top in every way, that it ended up being a comedic parody of itself.

A real cool cat (played by Russ Tamblyn) transfers to a new high school, where he wants to "rumble", and "make the scene" as the "top stud" of the "wheelers and dealers". He's "got four big ones and he's lookin' for junk". It's a blast from the past, where hot rods aren't the only thing that's smokin'; where high school teachers are from squaresville; and where the "kittens" include a very three-dimensional Mamie Van Doren. Can ya' dig?

Our cool cat tells the old biddy who works in the principal's office: "You know, if you were twenty years younger, even then I'd hate to be stuck with you on a date". Far out, man. You can call him "daddy-o", cause like, he's hip. He's "got the gold", and he wants "to score like the Yanks".

The dialogue's a hoot. But I didn't dig the cinematography ... too much light. Needs more dark interiors and smoke ... could have used some bongo drums and guys wearing "shades".

But it does have poetry. Cool! In one of the better sequences, as Jackie Coogan hits the keys, Phillipa Fallon recites a hip poem that in part goes like this: "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? ... We cough 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-size drag". Spoken in the proper rhythm, it's out of sight!

Like, the jive is all in code, see? You have to get a fix on the lingo to gain entry into the rebellious in-crowd. The Eisenhower-era straitjacket is too tight. Needs some breathing space.

There's a nifty plot twist near the end, if you haven't been plastered already with spoilers, which are like king-size drags.

Casting and acting are groovy, especially Russ Tamblyn.

As a razzle-dazzle retro to 1950s teenage hipsville, "High School Confidential" is the cinematic bull's-eye. What a king-size hoot.

***SPOILERS*** Movie about America's youth being corrupted by drug pushers who use drug addicted high school students to push their marijuana and heroin on their fellow students. Of course he local police and FBI need evidence that these horrendous crimes are going on in the high schools of our nation and use undercover agents to get the goods, and drugs, to put these fiendish drug dealers away for good. The now new kid in high school Tony Baker, Russ Tamblyn, gets into the act by him trying to take over the drug operation in Santa Bella High.***SPOILERS*** You see right away that the cocky and almost 30 year old Tony is really a teenage looking undercover agent Mike Wilson who works for the FBI who knowledge of the now ,1950's, hip and drug slang has him easily infiltrate the school's student drug operation headed by hipster student J.L Coleridge, John Drew Barrymore. It's J.L's pot addicted girlfriend Joan Staples, Diane Jergens, whom Tony makes a play for in him being able to get close to the action as well as J.L.

It's obvious as soon as you see him that Tony is not exactly whom he wants us to think that he is. A spoiled brat who wants us to think that he's in charge of things in and out of the classroom. It's Tony's history teacher Miss. Williams, Jan Sterling, who tries to straighten him out who almost ends up getting killed in the end by the drug dealers hat Tony is working, undercover that is, with. There's also Tony's sexy undercover aunt, in who's house he shares with, Gwen Delaine, Mamie Van Doren. You never can figure out just what's Miss. Van Doren is doing in the movie except providing eye candy to us guys watching her Va Va Voom figure and vital statistics, 37-24-35, that she's more then willing to show off in the ultra tights clothes that she wears.

It's after Tony gets to meet the real Mr.Big in the high school drug trade piano playing night cub owner Mr. A, Jackie Coogan, that he slips up in letting the cat out of the bag by Joan finding out, and telling J.L while she's stoned out of her skull, that she overheard a conversation between Tony and Mr.A that Tony secretly recorded that can send Mr.A away for life!

***SPOILERS*** It's now up to Tony's friends in the police FBI and student body headed by Steve Bently,Michael Landon, to come to his rescue before Mr. A, machete in hand, and his goon squad headed by Quinn, Charlie Chaplin Jr, finish him off! The free for all ending in Mr.A's night club has the lid blown off in Mr. A's drug dealing operation in Santa Bella High that he's been running. It's then that the parents of the students going to Santa Bella High realize just how naive they were in them thinking that it, drug dealing, can't happen here in suburban middle America. Which in fact has been going on for the last four or five years right under their noses!

P.S Look for Rock & Roll singer and piano player Jerry Lee Lewis banging away at his keyboard with his locks of blond hair swirling almost off his head playing the movies theme song,on the back of a flatbed truck, "Boppin at the High School Hop".

This film starts out with Jerry Lee Lewis and his combo, on the back of a flatbed truck, singing and playing the title song while slowly rolling by the local high school (which looks nothing like a high school). Why are they playing there? Who knows? This scene was shot around the time IL' Jerry Lee married his 14-year-old cousin and was banned from American Bandstand. "Dick Clark done me wrong!" (Also, Allen 'Mr. Rock 'n Roll' Freed was busted for payola during this period; Buddy Holly, Ritchie Vallens & Duh Big Bopper were almost ready to take that fateful flight out of Iowa.) The song 'High School Confidential' suffered from poor airplay and drifted into obscurity—but hey, we got Fabian, Frankie Avalon and the other Italian-American rockers out of the shake-up.

A new kid (who happens to be 24-years-old) Russ 'Westside Story' Tamblyn cruses by the musical flatbed, without looking up and starts his first day at Nameless High. He almost gets into a rumble with Drew Barrymore's dad, the President of the 'Wheelers & Dealers' who's also a small potatoes reefer dealer (one joint for a buck)—Jackie 'Uncle Fester' Coogan is Mister Big. Goody Two-Shoes Michael 'I Was A Teenaged Werewolf' Landon ties to get Russ to stop acting like a juvenile delinquent and join the football team. No dice…

There's a pointless and outlandish 'Wheelers & Dealers' sponsored drag race, whose route seems to consist of pointless loops around a few movie studio sound stages. For reasons unknown 26-year-old John Drew Barrymore's (he died last year) hopped-up 21-year-old girlfriend, Joan is riding with and hanging all over Russ during the big race. This bizarre romantic betrayal doesn't seem to bother any of the drag city racing fans or the Wheelers & Dealers. A big plastic bag of marijuana, hidden behind Russ's wobbling hubcap, falls out just as the fuzz arrive ending the race. Bummer!

Oh, platinum blonde Mamie 'Untamed Youth' Van Doren plays Russ's sex-starved/nymphomaniac aunt—she's an absolutely useless character that has nothing to do with the plot. She was big-busted in her day and a well known cinematic sexpot, but today she's viewed as small bleached-blonde potatoes compared to the saline-implant hoochy mamas of the 21st century.

Anyway, Russ is actually an undercover nark who eventually busts the maryjane/horse dope syndicate preying on those poor, innocent & overaged Eisenhower Era high school students. Those addicted teeners are constantly skipping their homework, preferring to hang out at a strangely serene beatnik nightclub while listening to bleak beat poetry and "grazing in the grass." Uncle Fester plays a honky-tonk piano during these poetry sessions.

Homeroom teacher, Jan Sterling (who also died last year) convinces John Drew Barrymore's marijuana addicted blonde girlfriend Joan, played by Diane Jergens, to break her reefer in half and drop it on the floor. Maybe now Joan can finally graduate from Nameless High and go on the city college.

Mike Wilson (Russ Tamblyn) goes undercover as Tony Baker to get inside a high school narcotics operation. His cover is that he lives with Gwen Dulaine (Mamie Van Doren) who acts as his aunt but really wants to seduce him. He keeps his cover, which means he's some kind of robot, because living with Mamie Van Doren who wants to sleep with you at every opportunity seems like the kind of life some men dream of their entire existence, you know?

Mike also has some romantic moments with a student - Joan Staples (Diane Jergens) - and a teacher - Arlene Williams (Jan Sterling) - but he's more interested in getting the guy pushing all the marijuana in school who is known as Mr. A (Jackie Coogan).

The thing about this movie is that the cops are all squares and all of the really cool people are on drugs. So yes, the makers of this movie - director Jack Arnold and producer Albert Zugsmith, the man who director Dondi - erred on the side of making an entertaining movie, even if Zugsmith wanted nudity. Indeed, the European version of this movie has Jan Sterling topless when Tamblyn calls her on the telephone and a girl in the throes of heroin withdrawal showing her breasts.

If you listened to any White Zombie, you'll recognize the beat poetry read by the character played by Phillipa Fallon, who was also in Zugsmiths's The Girl In the Kremlin and The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, which goes like this:

"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."

That sample appears on La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1, as does the Columbus speech at the start of the movie and the lines "Do you want to start a rumble?" and "Drop it, buster!"

Not only does this movie have Jerry Lee Lewis do the theme song, he shows up to sing it.

I love this movie. I love it so much I nearly missed Michael Landon showing up in it, but I was concentrating on all the kids just openly smoking joints and, well, thinking about Mamie Van Doren.

"High School Confidential" is a tale with a moral, but it doesn't wait until the end to start preaching. The topic of interest is made clear early on, and the effects are as logical as those that were outlined in "Reefer Madness" in the 1930s. But while the older movie seemed designed to inspire drug use, and somehow got remodeled to look like an attempt to sober the youth, "High School Confidential" was designed to show the dangers of dope - hocking the family's prized possessions and engaging in drag races. None of these things could happen to young people who hadn't been smoking marijuana. Teenagers are just too practical when not under the influence.

Somehow, the movie tries to get over on the young people by showing what a great feel they have for the current lingo. When Tony first arrives at his new high school, even his English teacher is teaching them about slang, explaining what some of the terms mean, as if this is how slang spreads, through the great American education system. When she steps from the room, one of the students, in his early 30s by the look of him, demonstrates the eloquence of the latest hip chatter by reciting the story of Columbus asking Isabella for financing to prove the world is round. After all, when the English teacher teaches about slang, perhaps the history teacher spreads contemporary misconceptions about history as well. In addition, there is a nice demonstration of the difference between a "normal cigarette" and a hand- rolled joint. That's education in action.

In a broader perspective, this story picks up where "On the Road" left off, continuing the story of post-war American youth into the next generation. While Kerouac's crew were among those wild ones slipping under the radar of social consciousness not yet ingrained to the need stronger values to protect their cultural ideals, the HSC crew were just indignantly rebellious in their music, their language, and especially in what they smoked.

This movie is no "Blackboard Jungle" just another movie trying to use the new trend of white- sung rock and roll to trample the seeds of iniquity before society has a chance to water them. Looking at the 60s, this movie may have fostered more drug use than it intended to hinder. They make it look fun, after all.