Over the Edge (1979) Satire, Rawness & an Amazing Rock Soundtrack (Review)

Teenagers have been one of cinema’s great projects: from the 1960s to the 90s, entire waves and genres rose and fell in the attempt to get their bums on seats. From the teen sex comedy, beach and party movies, and the pink eiga, sadly, they are now an audience that the wider filmmaking community has lost interest in due to some hastily researched sociological issue, no doubt. Fair enough, most of those movies were lewd and crude to the extent that a book like Teen Movie Hell (by the late Mike ‘Beardo’ McPadden) could be anchored heavily on the teen sex comedy alone. More interesting, however, were the films made on the edges of all this decadence and anarchy. Look at 1989’s incendiary cult classic, Heathers, or Arrow Video’s newly released controversy baiting classic from Jonathan Kaplan, Over the Edge, for the hidden value of the teen movie.

Over the Edge is set in a fictional “planned community” called New Grenada, near Denver. New Granada and many places like it popped up in a grand post-war effort to make a go of it away from the inner city – overlooked in that ambition are the kids who have little to do so succumb to drink and hard drugs. In this dust pit of a would-be town, there is nothing for kids save a REC centre. There’s an uneasy status quo with the local police-led by the aptly named Sgt. Doberman (Harry Northup) – even if ‘the law’ arrests the lead duo of Carl (Michael Kramer) and Richie (a debuting Matt Dillion) for the smallest of misdemeanours, this is an overwhelmed police force.

Short and punchy at 90 minutes, this is a teen hangout movie – full of love interests, drugged-out friends, faculty attempts to get the kids to “buck up” and stop being so destructive, parties, and so on. That is until the town planning committee invites a big-time Texas millionaire into town as a potential investor. To keep the kids out of the way, those with the power in New Grenada kick a hornet’s nest by closing the one thing kids have: the rec centre. A decision that leads to a chaotic, violent climax – one which scared the studio, afraid of the impact such scenes might have.

Screenwriters Charlie S. Haas & Tim Hunter read a 1973 San Francisco Examiner article titled: Mousepacks: Kids on a Crime Spree – that detailed a planned community with an unusually high level of juvenile crime. The pair interviewed the kids from that town and drafted a script with a heightened and much more violent conclusion. Whatever the origins of Kaplan’s film, the results are the same – this is drawing satire from the fractured state of America.

Around this time, people were retreating from the inner city in their droves, setting up in the burgeoning suburbs. Often white families. In doing this, children of all ages lost everything they had ever known and replaced it with “the future” or potential rather than a material reality. Left to their own devices, they drank, took drugs and destroyed public property. It was true back then in America – and today in many towns up and down the UK. The short version of this reality is that Over the Edge is a heightened tale about how capitalism fails the young – that and a hangout movie.

We are talking about a movie with two feet planted in authenticity. There isn’t a single showy performance – everyone acts with perfectly realised naturalism. The dialogue doesn’t sound like it was filtered through the imagination of someone twice, three times the core cast’s age. If anything, it almost feels as if the camera is an unseen entity, and everyone is just acting normal. Having the characterisation and dialogue be so real makes the impact of the tragedy and the ends they go to to get their revenge all the more believable. Contrarily, if this was staged and conceived like any other teen movie of the time, it would render the whole project a ridiculous and over-ambitious attempt at reaching beyond their grasp. Over the Edge feels real and lived in, and it’s all the better because of it.

Over the Edge is a brazenly nihilistic film about a bunch of borderline unlikeable kids engaging in the most self-invested and pointless destruction imaginable. That sounds like a hard film to get invested in, and if you aren’t in the right state of mind – it will be. Punk, there lies an important reference point – this is never anything less than an energetic watch, thanks to the anger and burden of glorious purpose found in any piece of good punk cinema. That and the soundtrack, headlined by Cheap Trick and their song ‘surrender’, is an excellent choice and an even better hook to use as a rallying call of discontent. Plus, it will get stuck in your head whether you’ve heard it 100s of times or this is your first. Guaranteed.

Equal parts subtextually satisfying, sad and rabble-rousing in the way that too few directors can manage – Over the Edge is quite the discovery. With a context that will never fail to be relevant and a score of lived-in performances that too few American directors can muster out of child actors, Arrow Video have issued one of their best releases in quite some time. Of course, it helps to have a selection of evergreen and iconic punk ballads. On the extras, there are all the Q&As and commentaries. There’s also a complete version of the PSA. A rock opera based on the movie and a mini-series of 11 documentaries that dig deep into the meaning and history of what made this lost cult classic tick – a release whose only real “failing” is a grainy master.

Why is a TV documentary about the one-time Ginger Spice our longest episode ever? Well, when it’s directed by Molly Dineen and it offers a window into the strange media landscape of turn-of-the-millennium Britain, there’s a fair bit to talk about. Graham is joined by Mark Cunliffe from We Are Cult (and The Geek Show, for that matter) to discuss celebrity in the Blair years, Geri Horner (then Halliwell)’s disastrous James Bond audition, her friendship with Prince Charles, the often prescient films of Dineen, “ass-flavoured bubblegum”, Derek and Clive for some reason… there’s a lot, OK.

MAY POP SCREEN +

Thanks for reading Rob’s review of Over the Edge

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