Over The Edge (79)

6/4/97

Watching this movie again was like stepping into a time machine. It is impossible to describe what a big deal this film was when it first came out in 1979. My friends and I were the same age as the kids portrayed. We had the same [lack of] style, we talked the same. We listened to Cheap Trick and The Cars and Van Halen. This movie was the first time that we recognized the people who were on screen. For God's sake, I had the exact same glossy Boston belt buckle that the lead character had. One guy wears a Puma shirt, another one wears one of the Adidas ones that every kid had. They had 8-track tapes and those big bulky headphones. They had bikes with Sissy bars and big flags flying behind them. They had those huge combs that were in every teenager's back pocket. In short, it's like looking through a yearbook.
The film takes place in a planned community in a unnamed southwestern state. The kids have nothing to do because none of the plans call for recreational areas or movie theaters or bowling alleys. There are drugs everywhere and a kid-hating cop named Doberman. The plot, such that it is, involves a boy named Carl and his crush on Corey, his friend Richie, played by Matt Dillon, and the trouble they get into. Someone steals a gun which leads to a tragedy which leads to a revenge scene that seems utterly ridiculous now, but had me swelling with pride when I was younger. Richie and Carl and the rest of the gang go to a drug dealing teenager, who has turned into a narc, and scare him with the gun they stole. This leads to the police looking for Richie and Carl and they take off in a mother's car. They're chased by Doberman and Richie holds up the gun and the cop shoots him. Carl escapes and stays a few nights in an abandon condo with the warm company of the luminous Corey [maybe my third movie crush after Tatum O'Neal and Christie MacNichol]. He appears at the park the night of the big parent's meeting at the school. He is welcomed as a hero and he finds 'his' girl and they embrace in front of the 40 or so kids who have gathered. Talk turns to revenge and they march on the Junior High and lock the cops and parents in the Cafetorium [can you believe such a word] while they break car windows and loot the school. Scenes of mayhem are replaced with Carl and Corey arm in arm watching their people riot, while bathed in the bright light of a barrel fire. How romantic. Most of the kids are eventually caught and sent to reform school for a couple of weeks. Carl is shackled and put on the prison bus, but Corey, who had escaped, waves from a highway overpass as the bus goes by. The End.
The two biggest names to emerge from this film were Matt Dillon and Vincent Spano, both in their film debuts. The fact that these may be two of the most New Yorky of actors allegedly living in the southwest doesn't hurt the plot. In fact, Carl and Corey and many of the other kids have accents that obviously aren't local. Most of the young actors never made another film. Dillon is unsure of himself as an actor, but his genuine energy and budding charisma get him through the role. Plus he has the coolest feathered hair and cut off t-shirt. There were some problems with fire. When the kids are rampaging, a kid shoots a pellet gun at the trunk of a car and the trunk flys up and the car next to it explodes into flames causing a chain reaction. Which burns everything. Spano plays a kid who's a little bit older, but not much wiser. I don't know what happened to Corey, she seemed on the brink of stardom. Every one of my friends and I thought she was 'sweet'. Best movie use of the songs 'Surrender' and 'You Really Got Me'. Scene of the party in the guy's house who's parents are away for the weekend was perfect. The couples in the basement, the guy smoking in the stairwell, the loud music, the cops arriving. This was fun.
Michael Eric Kramer Pamela Ludwig Matt Dillon Vincent Spano Tom Fergus Harry Northup Andy Romano Ellen Geer Richard Jamison Julia Pomeroy Cinematography by Andrew Davis Directed by Jonathan Kaplan
Ebert *** Maltin ***^
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