High School Confidential!: Hilarious ’50s Expose About Nefarious “Weedheads”
Alex Theatre (Glendale, CA)
Santa Bellow High School might look like Squaresville, USA — but among all those poodle skirts, Brylcreem’d pompadours and chromed-out convertibles, lurks an insidious evil, a moral danger more deadly than a dozen A-Bombs: Marijuana! High School Confidential! (1958) imports the moral hysteria of Reefer Madness into a previously pristine location: the American high school. Directed by Jack Arnold, this hilarious expose opens with the title song performed by Jerry Lee Lewis and features a wildly improbable cast including pinup queen Mamie Van Doren, a young Michael Landon, Drew Barrymore’s dad and Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester) as the drug kingpin. Filmed in gorgeous black-and-white CinemaScope, High School Confidential! returns to the big screen at the historic Alex Theatre.
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