Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)

All the students at Vince Lombardi High love rock music, but none of them loves it more than Riff Randell (P.J. Soles) does.  Riff’s favorite band in the whole world is the Ramones; she calls Joey Ramone the man of her dreams and her greatest ambition in life is to write songs for the Ramones.  With help from her bookish friend Kate Rambeau (Dey Young), Riff enjoys hijacking the school’s intercom system to play Ramones albums.  But when Miss Evelyn Togar (Mary Woronov) takes over as principal of Vince Lombardi High, the first thing she wants to do is rid the school of rock and roll.

Meanwhile, their classmate Tom Roberts (Vincent Van Patten) is looking to spice up his love life and sets his sights on Riff.  Tom asks Eaglebauer (Clint Howard) to set him up with Riff, but Eaglebauer thinks Tom would be a better match for Kate instead.  As luck would have it, Kate has a thing for Tom so when she asks Eaglebauer to set her up with Tom, he’s only too happy to help make it happen.

When the Ramones come to town for a show, Riff is determined to meet the band and give them some songs she’s written.  She skips school for three days so she can camp out to get front row tickets, but when Miss Togar finds out, she confiscates Riff and Kate’s tickets.  That’s not about to stop Riff from seeing the Ramones, though.  She and Kate win tickets through a radio contest and sure enough, Riff makes it backstage and gives her songs to the Ramones.

Miss Togar uses Riff and Kate’s defiance to rally some parents for a record burning at school the next day.  As soon as Riff sees a flaming Ramones album, she leads the students in a revolt and they take over the school.  Just then, the Ramones drop by to tell Riff they love her songs and, naturally, they join the students in their mutiny.

Conventionally speaking, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is kind of a mess.  The jokes are corny, the story is paper thin, and Dee Dee Ramone struggled to play himself convincingly.  But despite all that, I will proudly say that Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is one of my favorite movies of all time.  The only thing Rock ‘n’ Roll High School ever aspires to be is silly fun with a killer soundtrack and it totally succeeds at being just that. 

As hokey as the jokes are, they always make me laugh.  P.J. Soles and Mary Woronov play their parts to deliberately campy perfection and they are endlessly entertaining to watch.  And when they’re delivering lines like, “Do your parents know that you’re Ramones?” and “I’m Riff Randell, rock and roller.” in an awesomely over the top way, that right there is why I have an undying love for this movie.  In fact, the whole cast completely nails being intentionally campy, but Don Steele as radio DJ Screamin’ Steve and Herbie Braha as the Ramones’ manager in particular are some awesome scene stealers.

I also totally love this drawing of a mouse that has been allowed to listen to rock music.

And then there’s the amazing soundtrack.  I’m a big Ramones fan, so obviously I love their performance scenes.  The concert scene is great and the “I Want You Around” scene is actually a really good fantasy scene.  But the soundtrack isn’t all about the Ramones, it also features some good songs by Paul McCartney, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Nick Lowe, and Chuck Berry.

I just can’t help but love this movie. I’ve never watched it and not been in a good mood afterward.

All weekend long, bloggers are owning up to some of their guilty pleasure movies. Be sure to head on over to the Kitty Packard Pictorial to find out which movies other bloggers have lurking in the back of their DVD collections.

Jewel Robbery (1932)

Baroness Teri (Kay Francis) has a life that many would envy.  She’s married to Baron Franz (Henry Kolker), who can easily afford to buy her all the furs and jewelery she could ever want.  There’s just one problem — he’s incredibly boring.  Teri desperately needs some excitement in her life, so she openly dates other men, but gets bored with them pretty quickly, too.

When Teri and Franz go to a jewelery store so that Franz can buy Teri a very large diamond ring, the store is robbed by an unnamed robber (William Powell).  This is no ordinary jewel thief, though.  He’s very suave, charming, and has the unusual habit of giving marijuana to the people he robs so they won’t call the police.  And it just so happens that this robber is exactly the type of man  Teri has been longing for.  He flirts with her as he steals her new ring from her, and she’s so enchanted with him that she doesn’t even need the marijuana to stop her from talking to the cops.

When Teri gets back home, she finds some mysterious flowers waiting for her and discovers that her jewelry safe has been opened.  However, nothing has been stolen.  In fact, something has been added to it — the ring that had just been stolen from her.  The robber sneaks up to her room and Teri tries to get him to take the ring back since there’s no way for her to wear it without raising suspicions.  He refuses, and it isn’t long before there’s a knock at the door from Detective Fritz (Alan Mowbray), who arrests Teri for being an accomplice to the robber.

It just so happens that Detective Fritz isn’t a detective after all, he’s actually working for the robber.  Fritz brings Teri to the robber’s apartment, where he spends the night wooing her and she falls even more deeply under his spell.  They make plans to run away to Nice together, but before they can leave, the real police show up.  The robber and his gang escape, but first, they tie Teri to a chair so the cops won’t accuse her of being an accomplice.  When all is said and done, her name stays clear, but she announces that she could use a vacation to recover from her “ordeal.”  Perhaps some time in Nice would do the trick…

If you know someone who thinks old movies were all super sanitized and boring, Jewel Robbery is the perfect movie to prove them wrong.  With its witty banter, infidelity, jewel heists, and drug use, Jewel Robbery is perfectly pre-code from start to finish.  The chemistry between Kay Francis and William Powell is phenomenal and it’s very hard not to laugh at the scenes of the jewelery store’s security guard acting high as a kite after the robber gives him that joint.  There’s nothing about it I didn’t like.  It’s a total delight to watch and is absolutely essential pre-code viewing.

Platinum Blonde (1931)

When a showgirl sues Michael Schuyler (Donald Dillaway), part of a very prominent social family, for breach of promise, reporter Stew Smith (Robert Williams) is sent to cover the story.  The Schuyler family desperately wants to keep the scandal out of the papers, so they try bribing the reporters to not cover the story.  Ann Schuyler (Jean Harlow) also tries to charm him out of running the story, but Stew is one reporter who can’t be bought and runs the story anyway.

After the scandal hits the papers, Stew stops by the Schuyler estate.  Not to apologize, but to return a book he had taken with him while he was there.  Inside of it, he found some love letters the show girl was planning to use to blackmail Michael into giving her more money, and he knew the family would want those back.  Stew knows the difference between news and blackmail and doesn’t want any part of the latter.  Ann offers him a $5,000 reward, but he turns it down and the two of them end up having lunch together.

Ann and Stew get along very well and continue seeing each other.  They very quickly elope, to the shock of everyone, especially Gallagher (Loretta Young), Stew’s best friend and secret admirer.  Ann’s family disapproves of her marrying someone from a lower class, but she reassures them that she’s going to turn him into the perfect gentleman.  Many of Stew’s friends give him a hard time about being a kept man.  He wants Ann to move into his apartment and they can live off of his salary, but instead, they end up living in a wing of the Schuyler family estate and Stew has a very hard time adjusting to Ann’s way of life.

Stew and Ann’s worlds collide during a party the Schuylers throw for a Spanish embassador.  Gallagher is sent to cover the story for the paper and Ann isn’t happy to discover that her husband’s best friend is a woman.  Not only that, when a rival reporter shows up to offer Stew his own column under the condition that he uses the byline “Ann Schuyler’s Husband,” Stew punches the reporter.  Sure enough, the fight lands them on the front page of the paper.

The Schuylers are absolutely horrified by the whole event, but Ann sticks by Stew and encourages him to write a play.  One night, Stew skips one of Ann’s many society events to work on the play.  But when he needs a little inspiration, he invites Gallagher and some of his other friends to come over, and before he knows it, there’s a wild party going on.  Despite all the crazy antics going on around them, Gallagher and Stew manage to come up with the idea of doing a play about his marriage.  However, when the Schuylers come home, they aren’t happy about his little party.  Ann gets into a fight with Stew and he decides he wants out of this marriage.  He ends up back in his old apartment and finishing his play with Gallagher by his side.

I really loved Platinum Blonde, despite its forced ending.  However, the title felt a little inappropriate to me.  The first time I saw it, with a title like that, I was expecting a madcap comedy like Bombshell.  In reality, it’s a smart look at the power of social class differences that’s more on the witty side than the madcap.  Frank Capra’s direction and a strong script serve as a rock-solid foundation for Harlow, Williams, Young, and a delightful supporting cast to bring it to an even higher level.

I absolutely adored Robert Williams in it, who unfortunately died a short time after Platinum Blonde was released.  He only made a handful of movies during his life and showed great promise in Platinum Blonde, it’s really too bad that he didn’t get to have a more prolific film career.

Bed of Roses (1933)

After getting out of jail, prostitute Lorry Evans (Constance Bennett) and her pal Minnie (Pert Kelton) hop on board a steamship headed to New Orleans.  They could take this moment to get their lives on the straight and narrow, but they have no intentions of doing that.  When they realize they don’t have enough money to get all the way to New Orleans, they find a couple of men on board, get them drunk, and steal their money.  When the captain finds out about what they’ve done, he tries to have them arrested, but Lorry jumps overboard.

She gets rescued by Dan (Joel McCrea), the owner of a cotton barge, but she lost her money in the water.  Dan and Lorry hit it off right away, but rather than pursue a relationship with Dan, she steals his money and goes to see Stephen Paige (John Halliday) when the ship docks in New Orleans.  Stephen is a very wealthy book publisher Lorry had seen on board the steamship and she goes straight to work making herself his new mistress.  He sets her up in a swanky new apartment and a stylish new wardrobe, but she hasn’t forgotten Dan and goes back to repay the money she stole from him.

When Dan finds out why she stole the money, he’s very forgiving and would really like to see Lorry again.  She starts seeing Dan on the side and they fall very deeply in love with each other.  However, he doesn’t know about Lorry’s past.  When Dan proposes, she accepts, but a very jealous Stephen finds out about it, he tells her that her past will only hold Dan back.  Afraid that he might be right, Lorry decides to make a more respectable life for herself and leaves Stephen and his lavish apartment to take a shabby apartment and a job in a department store.  Dan is heartbroken when she doesn’t leave with him as planned and becomes obsessed with finding her again.  Eventually, Dan and Lorry are reunited at a Mardi Gras party thanks to a little help from Minnie.

I really liked Bed of Roses.  Constance Bennett brought so much sass and vibrancy to Lorrie, I absolutely loved her in it.  Not to mention the palpable chemistry she had with Joel McCrea!  Pert Kelton proved to be another excellent co-star for Bennett.  Kelton had just as much sass as Constance and she got some really great wisecracks in there, too.  The writing is razor sharp and has held up very well over time.  Even though the movie is only a little over an hour long, it never feels rushed.  This is a movie that reminded me why I love pre-codes, not that I ever actually needed reminding.

Lady With a Past (1932)

Venice Muir (Constance Bennett) is rich, beautiful, stylish, and very intelligent, so you’d think she’s the kind of woman guys line up to meet, right? Nope. Venice wishes she were more appealing to men, but she’s just too dull to get their attention.  She’s knows darn well that all the men she meets want someone exciting, but how does one get an exciting reputation without actually having to earn it? It turns out the answer is to make one up.

Donnie Wainwright (David Manners) is the man she longs for the most, and Venice’s friend tries to get him to talk to her.  One night at a party, he gets drunk and takes a chance on Venice and talks her into running off to Paris to elope with him. But the next day, he leaves her for another woman. Venice goes ahead with the trip and along the way, comes up with a plan to win Donnie back.

While in Paris, she meets an unemployed American named Guy Bryson (Ben Lyon) and hires him to pose as her gigolo. He helps her concoct a whole new persona with a slew of fake rumors about her love life to go with it.  Sure enough, this plan works and Venice quickly becomes one of the most sought after women in Paris. When Donny comes to Paris for a few days, of course he’s shocked to see that Venice now has a band of admirers, which Venice uses to make Donny very jealous.

However, the plan hits a snag when Rene (Albert Conte), one of Venice’s suitors, proposes to her and she turns him down. He had been very deep in debt and was hoping to marry her to save himself, but when she rejects him, he kills himself.  Meanwhile, Venice is at the train station with Donny, who proposes to her again. But when she hears about Rene, she is devastated. She never meant for her scheme to hurt anyone, so she and Guy head back to America, where they quickly realize that Venice’s new reputation has already made its way overseas. When she goes to a party, all the men flock to her, but Donny doesn’t approve of her new image. She calls him out for being a hypocrite, but he manages to win her over once and for all.

Lady With a Past is far from being great cinema, but it is a pretty likeable bit of fluff.  By far, the most far-fetched thing about this movie is that we’re supposed to believe that no man is interested in Constance Bennett.  I thought it was interesting that they didn’t try to make Venice even the slightest bit dowdy; she was glamorous and stylish the whole time. Venice is a bit socially awkward at first, but come on! Plenty of men would let that slide for a woman who looks like that.  But if you’re able to suspend your disbelief, Constance, David Manners, and Ben Lyon do a good job of making the movie fun to watch.

Bachelor Apartment (1931)

Wayne Carter (Lowell Sherman) is easily one of the most eligible bachelors in Manhattan. So many women visit his apartment that he has an entire drawer for all the things his various companions leave behind. Carter’s loyal butler Rollins (Charles Coleman) thinks he ought to settle down, but he just isn’t the marrying kind.

Lita Andrews (Claudia Dell) is an aspiring showgirl and gold digger, and when she goes to Carter’s apartment for lunch one day, her sister Helene (Irene Dunne) has to come over to let her know about an important job offer. Helene is much more proper than Lita and isn’t a gold digger, which Carter finds very endearing.  So when he finds out that Helene is looking for work as a stenographer, he personally gives her a job. Helene has reservations about working for such a notorious womanizer, but she’s in no position to turn down $50 a week.

It doesn’t take long for Helene to see that Carter means very well with her and he even gets Lita a job in a good show. She and Carter end up hitting it off and fall in love with each other. But while working at his apartment one day, Helene witnesses some of Carter’s former lovers stopping by, including Agatha Carraway (Mae Murray). Agatha very much wants to get back together with Carter, but even though he couldn’t be less interested in her, she won’t take no for an answer. Helene is disappointed in him and he knows it. He can’t bring himself to face her for a week after that, but their time apart confirms that she’s the only one for him.

Once Helene and Carter reconcile, she comes by his apartment and unexpectedly finds herself caught in the middle of a fight between Carter, Agatha, and Agatha’s gun-toting husband.  To make matters worse, when she goes home, she gets into a fight with Lita and she walks out on Helene.  But when Carter helps her find Lita, everything is forgiven and she and Carter can live happily ever after.

Bachelor Apartment isn’t a particularly noteworthy movie, but Lowell Sherman and Mae Murray brought some good life to an otherwise completely forgettable movie.  If you’re a big Irene Dunne fan, you might be a bit let down by it because she is totally overshadowed by Sherman and Murray.  At best, it’s a pleasant enough comedy to keep you busy for a little over an hour. It’s nothing worth going out of your way to see, but there are certainly worse movies you could spend your time watching.

The Half Naked Truth (1932)

While working as the publicity man for a two-bit carnival, Jimmy Bates (Lee Tracy) decides that the best way to drum up some business is through a little good old fashioned speculation and controversy. When he announces that dancer Teresita(Lupe Velez) will name the man in town who fathered her and left her mother years ago during one of her performances, not only do people show up to get the dirt, a few men also slip him some money to keep their names out of it.

The police also take an interest in the story, but when they find out the whole stunt is a sham, they shut down the whole carnival and Bates, Teresita, and their friend Achilles (Eugene Pallette) jump in a car and head to New York.  Bates has promised Teresita that he’s going to turn her into a big star, so as soon as they make it to the city, he hits the ground running building hype for Teresita.  He brings them to the Ritz and convinces them that she’s a Turkish princess and they are given a nice suite.

Bates resorts to all sorts of crazy publicity stunts to get the newspapers talking about this mysterious princess. Merle Farrell (Frank Morgan) is the big Broadway producer in town and he’s flabbergasted when Bates tells the press that the princess will be starring in Farrell’s new show.  But when ticket sales increase, Farrell decides to go along with it. On opening night, Teresita’s dance is not a hit with the audience, so Bates stops the show, telling the crowd the dance was too sacred to be performed in public. He has Teresita sing a song instead and she becomes an overnight sensation. She’s now a star and Bates has a new gig as Farrell’s publicity man.

Even though Bates is in love with Teresita, she loses interest in him and starts setting her sights on Farrell instead. When Bates finds out about it, he takes some incriminating pictures of them together, and uses them to blackmail Farrell into giving a spot in his show to another girl he’s determined to turn into a big star.  With the public losing interest in Teresita, she and Achilles lose interest in New York so when he decides to buy the carnival they had worked at before, she leaves with him.  But New York just isn’t the same without those two and it isn’t long before Bates finds himself back at the carnival right where he started.

The Half Naked Truth is amusing, but not great. It’s the kind of movie I’m glad I saw once, but it’s not the sort of thing I’d go out of my way to watch again.  I got some laughs out of it, I liked the cast, but there wasn’t anything about it that impressed me so much that it became one of my favorites.

Beauty and the Boss (1932)

Bank president Baron Josef von Ullrich (Warren William), like so many men, very much appreciates a beautiful woman.  But there’s just one place he doesn’t want to see them — in his office.  He keeps his bank running like a well-oiled machine and he’s afraid having a beautiful woman as his secretary would be too distracting.  So when he decides that it’s too hard to keep his mind on work with Olive (Mary Doran) as his secretary, he fires her, but starts seeing her outside of work.

When Susie Sachs (Marian Marsh) hears that Josef needs a new secretary, she finagles her way into seeing him without an appointment.  She very desperately needs the job and at first, Josef tries to get rid of her, but she refuses to go and eventually ends up winning him over.  She shows him just how hard she can work and most importantly, she’s very plain looking, so Josef gladly hires her.

Susie proves to be the perfect secretary, but when she accompanies Josef to Paris to take care of some business, she spends a lot of time keeping Josef’s many admirers at bay.  Not because he doesn’t want to see them all, but because she’s fallen in love with Josef.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have anything more than a professional interest in her. One of the ladies she sent away was Olive and when Josef finds out about that, he sends Susie over to Olive’s apartment with some flowers to make up for it. While at Olive’s, Olive tells Susie that men will never notice her as long as she acts more like a machine than a woman.

Susie realizes that if she ever wants to get Josef’s attention, she needs to take Olive’s advice and reinvent herself. She gets herself a beautiful evening gown, a little bit of perfume, has her hair styled nicely, and suddenly, she’s a whole new woman with a whole new outlook on life.  Naturally, Josef can’t help but notice the change in her…and he likes it!

When you think of Warren William movies, you don’t typically think of delightful romantic comedies, but that’s exactly what you get with Beauty and the Boss.  I hadn’t realized going into this movie that it was supposed to be a comedy, so I was in for a very pleasant surprise. It’s another one of those great short-but-sweet overlooked pre-code gems that I love finding.

I love a classic, totally reprehensible Warren William cad, but it was refreshing to see him in something more lighthearted for a change.  Josef is still a bit of a cad, but he’s a far more likeable cad than we see in Employees’ Entrance or Skyscraper Souls. Marian Marsh and Mary Doran were both very memorable as well.  Some of Marian Marsh’s rapidfire line deliveries truly have to be heard to be believed. The way she rattles off some of her lines could easily give Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday a run for her money.

Me and My Gal (1932)

When police officer Danny Dolan (Spencer Tracy) and his partner have to jump into the water to save a man, unfortunately they let gang leader Duke Castenega (George Walsh) get away in the process.  Duke is the ex-boyfriend of Kate Riley (Marion Burns), who works at the bank in town.  Kate is about to get married, but she still carries a torch for Duke and he plans to use her to get the combinations to all of the bank’s safety deposit boxes.  But Kate goes ahead with her wedding and before long, Duke finds himself in prison, but he doesn’t stay there for long.  He makes a daring escape and instantly becomes the most wanted man in town.

It just so happens that Kate is the sister of Helen Riley (Joan Bennett), a waitress that Danny has been flirting with.  Once they finally start dating, it doesn’t take long for them to realize where Duke is hiding — in Kate’s attic.  Even though they don’t realize it before Duke’s gang pulls off a huge bank robbery, Danny is able to nab Duke, make sure that Kate’s name is kept clear, and have a happy ending with Helen.

Me and My Gal is a nice blend of romance, comedy, and gangster film highlighted by the outstanding chemistry between Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett.  It took me a little while to really get into the movie since I didn’t particularly care for the all the focus on the drunk guy in the beginning. But once the movie found its footing, I really did enjoy it.  The teaming of Tracy and Bennett completely made the movie.  Spencer has said that he considered Father of the Bride to be something of an unofficial follow-up to Me and My Gal.  He and Joan played off of each other so well and Bennett absolutely nailed it with all of her witty lines.  Overall, perhaps not one of the best of either of their careers, but still a very nice gem nonetheless.

Merry Wives of Reno (1934)

Frank and Madge Hammond (Donald Woods and Margaret Lindsay, respectively) have been married for one year and couldn’t be happier together.  However, all of that comes to an end on the day of their first anniversary.  Madge had made a special dinner that night, but then Frank has to go see Bunny Fitch (Glenda Farrell) about selling her a boat.  But when he gets to her apartment, he quickly realizes she’s not interested in a boat, it’s him she’s interested in. And with her husband Colonel J. Kingsley Fitch (Hugh Herbert) out of town, she’s looking for some company.

While Frank is trying to fight off Bunny’s advances, Tom Fraser (Guy Kibbee) comes by to see Bunny and Frank ends up sneaking out down the fire escape, leaving behind his new coat, an anniversary present from Madge.  What Frank doesn’t realize is that Tom is actually his neighbor.  Tom and his wife Lois (Ruth Donnelly) aren’t nearly as happily married as Frank and Madge and Lois is well aware of his womanizing, heavy-drinking tendencies.  But then Colonel Fitch comes home unexpectedly early and Tom also ends up leaving through the fire escape, also leaving his coat behind.  When the Colonel asks about the extra coats, Bunny tries to make him think they’re his.

When Madge asks Frank where his coat is, he says he gave it to a homeless person.  Madge is skeptical, but when she goes to the salon and overhears Bunny telling the real story, she decides then and there that she wants a divorce and gets on the train to Reno. It just so happens that Lois, Bunny, and the Colonel are all on the same train and Tom and Frank aren’t far behind them. Once everyone makes it to Reno, the states of each of their marriages are constantly up in the air.  But when Bunny realizes that she’s responsible for all of their heartaches, she comes up with a scheme to set everything right again.

If you love extremely fast-paced screwball comedies, Merry Wives of Reno should be right up your alley.  This is the kind of movie that I had to watch twice to fully catch everything. But this is a movie I didn’t want to tear myself away from for more than a few seconds at a time because it’s an absolute riot.  Not only is it hilarious, but the cast is perfect.  Guy Kibbee was hilarious in it and who doesn’t love a wise-cracking Glenda Farrell?  It’s too bad more people don’t seem to know about Merry Wives of Reno (as of writing this, it only has 4 reviews on IMDB and doesn’t have a Wikipedia page), because it’s a real gem.  Keep an eye out for this one because you’ll be in for 64 minutes of total fun.