Deviant Behaviors

I used to think it was weird that Allan Arkush never got his due as a cult filmmaker. Rock ’n’ Roll High School alone should have secured his rep, to say nothing of his other work on Roger Corman’s production line – including Hollywood Boulevard, his beloved collaboration with Joe Dante – but he pivoted to television in the ’80s after a couple of flops and that was that. He never stopped working, and I’m sure the money was good, but TV directors just didn’t get the recognition that filmmakers did, especially at the time.

Still, we’ll always have the Ramones. And what Arkush pulled off in Rock ’n’ Roll High School was nothing short of a miracle, a mash-up of several classic teenager narratives with the anarchy of punk rock and an upbeat, even delirious energy that makes it all feel warm and fuzzy. It’s an affectionate picture, made by people who saw the wholesome innocence of the Andy Hardy movies give way to the juvenile-delinquent movies of the ’50s … and wondered what would happen if you stitched them together and threw in a punk band.

The script – written by Richard Whitley, Russ Dvonch and Joseph McBride from a story by Arkush and Dante – lays out a simple slobs-versus-snobs conflict, pitting the imperious new principal of Vince Lombardi High School, Miss Togar …

… against the school’s worst student, Riff Randell.

How much of a menace is Riff? Why, she dares to disrupt Miss Togar’s first day by blasting “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” through the PA system! Miss Togar loathes the rock and roll music, so obviously she must be dethroned, and as far as Riff is concerned, the only way to set the world right again is for Riff to invite the Ramones to play a concert at the school.

There’s a version of this film that plays like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with the reprobate Riff ground down by the merciless Miss Togar. But Rock ’n’ Roll High School is too sweet-natured for that: Riff’s rebellion is joyous rather than spiteful or cruel. P.J. Soles beams like the sun in the role, bouncing off the walls with gleeful energy and roping her reluctant pal Kate Rambeau (Dey Young) into her entirely reasonable schemes. She just wants to see the Ramones – at the Rockatorium, of course – and maybe pass along the song she’s written for them. Even when she fantasizes about the Ramones visiting her in her bedroom (and her shower), they’re just there to sing “I Want You Around”.

And Mary Woronov scowls and glowers with the best of them as Miss Togar, delivering a camp performance of buttoned-down fascism that scrapes up against Soles’ jubilant energy just perfectly. Woronov also underplays Togar’s hauteur perfectly, especially when challenged: The woman’s an idiot, but she’s committed to powering through it.

This being a Roger Corman production, it’s made on a shoestring and asks the audience to suspend more than the usual amount of disbelief, starting with its teenage heroes being visibly in their mid-to-late twenties. (Honestly, it mostly works; the biggest stretch is Woronov being just six years older than Soles.) Soles and Young have believable BFF energy, Clint Howard is perfectly skeezy as Vince Lombardi’s resident fixer, and Vince Van Patten as frustrated virgin Tom Roberts – horny for Riff, but desired by the equally dorky Kate – is awkward in just the right way.

The dialogue is peppered with throwaway gags (“I’m allergic to violence, I break out in blood”) and random foolishness (“If you don’t like it, you can put it where the monkey puts the nuts!”), and once Riff and Kate get to that concert and the Ramones take the stage, the whole thing explodes. It’s absolutely joyous, and it doesn’t matter a damn that not a single member of the band can deliver a line of dialogue. They can rock, and like the man said: Kids wanna rock.

To commemorate the 45^th anniversary of Arkush’s low-budget masterpiece first arriving to Shout! Studios is rolling out a new 4K edition of the film – and upgrading the 40^th anniversary Blu-ray with a few new supplements. The new UHD master is bright and vivid, with a sharper image overall and an HDR grade that lets primary colors pop on clothing and the wide-open skies over the Los Angeles locations. (Smog, shmog.) And dig that sweet, sweet film grain, which is part and parcel of the no-budget Roger Corman experience:

Audio is glorious mono, faithfully presented in DTS-MA, and fans will be relieved to hear that an early line of dialogue (Tom muttering “I need to get laid”) that was missing from the 40^th anniversary Blu-ray has been restored to the soundtrack here. Integrity!

And you want extras? You’ll get extras! The supplements from that 40^th anniversary release – which added a feature-length documentary and new interviews to the special features from Shout’s previous DVD and BD – are all here, along with a new sit-down with Marky Ramone and two quick hits with Arkush, one in which the director introduces us to “The Real Riff Randell” (his old friend Gayle, who inspired the character) and another that finds him discussing his working relationship with Joey Ramone (contentious!). The new edition also finds room for a fifth audio commentary, adding observations from film historian and author Stephen B. Armstrong, who just published “I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock ’n’ Roll High School”.

The previous four commentaries are all here as well, covering decades of retrospectives from 1997, 2005 and 2010 and featuring pretty much everyone but the Ramones, and the 40^th anniversary doc Class of 1979 lets them share even more stories of the production, which was both as chaotic and as fun as you’d expect. The anecdotes in the 2005 featurette “Back to School” can’t help but feel rushed by comparison.

Other extras include audio outtakes from the Ramones’ concert (filmed at the Roxy, not the Rockatorium), interviews with various cast members over the years, trailers, TV spots, and the (justly) forgotten 1991 sequel Rock ’n’ Roll High School Forever, upconverted from a 4x3 SD master. Corey Feldman’s the hero this time around, facing off against Woronov’s resurrected authoritarian, now sporting an iron hand and calling herself Doctor Vadar for contractual reasons, I guess.

It’s kind of interesting as a cultural artifact, speaking to that pre-grunge moment where both The Pursuit of Happiness and Mojo Nixon could be considered edgy and cool, but we’re better off as a culture pretending it never existed.

Speaking of grunge, though: The Addiction!

Abel Ferrara would probably deny any knowledge of the movement that defined the early ’90s, but he is something of a contrarian; half the fun of Arrow’s special edition is listening to him argue with everyone about the symbolism and meaning of his lo-fi 1995 vampire picture. And Lili Taylor’s deteriorating grad student would be right at home at a Nirvana show … or waiting just outside the doors for the right victim to stumble into her arms.

The Addiction was Ferrara’s first picture after the slingshot experience of following the acclaimed Bad Lieutenant in 1992 with the troubled Body Snatchers in 1993, and it’s very much a return to modest indie form after butting heads with a major studio. Having recently revisited Body Snatchers, I was happy to find it holds up a lot better than I’d expected … but I don’t think either Ferrara or Warner would say it’s the movie they set out to make.

The Addiction is his baby all the way, with his regular collaborator Nicholas St. John offering up a script that abstracts vampirism into a series of choices and affectations: After a violent encounter with a strange woman (Annabella Sciorra), Taylor’s Kathleen discovers she doesn’t like the sun so much, and develops a new interest in biting people, but she’s not a monster. She’s all about the philosophy of free feeding, debating whether she’s a predator or a participant in a newly discovered ecosystem.

It all comes down to choices, per Count Dracula’s classic invitation (“Enter freely, and of your own will”), and that places The Addiction in line with Ferrara’s fascination with Catholicism, and whether the tenets of a given religion are of any use in a blasphemous world. And as with any religion, the rules Kathleen sets out about where and when to feed – and, most importantly, who she’ll be feeding on – turn out to be fairly easy to ignore when they keep her from doing the thing she wants to do.

By the time Kathleen runs into Christopher Walken’s Peina, a vampire who’s built a coping system that looks a lot like recovery, the lines between dependency and abuse are blurred beyond recognition, and The Addiction abandons its allegory entirely to dig into the life of an addict. And because that’s the subject in which Ferrara is most interested – his best films are all about people who can’t stop destroying themselves – that’s the richest section of the story.

Arrow’s new 4K limited edition offers a brand new restoration of the film, and it looks terrific – I know not every label bothers to apply an HDR grade to black-and-white titles, but The Addiction is all about the allure of darkness, and DP Ken Kelsch’s shadows can never be too rich or too deep. (Audio is offered in 5.1 DTS-MA and two-channel PCM stereo.)

There are no new supplements, but the suite of special features produced for Arrow’s 2018 Blu-ray is here, and it’s definitive: A half-hour retrospective doc with Ferrara, Taylor, Walken, Kelsch and composer Joe Delia, new interviews with Ferrara and critic Brad Stevens, and the aforementioned audio commentary in which Ferrara pushes back on nearly every suggestion Stevens makes. And yeah, I’ve interviewed Ferrara over the years and he can be contentious when discussing his work and downright resistant to the idea of interpretation. But honestly, that’s part of his charm … and as you’ll see in the archival featurette “Abel Ferrara Edits The Addiction”, it’s not a new development. Never change, my dude.

Rock ’N Roll High School is now available in a 4K/Blu-ray combo from Shout! Studios; there’s also a steelbook edition. The Addiction is newly available in 4K from Arrow Video.

Up next: Criterion rolls out one of the best discs of the year, Arrow goes all in on a forgotten American treasure ... and then there’s the matter of that Joker sequel. See you soon.