Weird Wednesday: Over The Edge

Drafthouse’s Laird Jiminez and Zane Gordon-Bouzard introduced their February 7 feature, Over The Edge, as the fifth in a series of juvenile delinquent films, an exploitation subgenre that surged in the late 70s/early 80s with films like The Warriors, Scum  and the Spanish quinqui dramas but is rarely seen today. The pre-show was entertaining as usual, featuring a trailer for River’s Edge—the other Edge film by director Jonathan Kaplan—and a goofy period MTV commercial featuring David Lee Roth.  

Jonathan Kaplan was born into a Hollywood family, the son of film composer Sol Kaplan and actress Frances Heflin, and mentored by Martin Scorsese while studying film at  NYU. He got his start making exploitation flicks like Night Call Nurses for Roger Corman, and also directed Hyperreal family favorite Truck Turner. A prolific filmmaker, Over The Edge was his seventh movie in as many years. For this Weird Wednesday screening, the Alamo Drafthouse managed to acquire the director’s personal 35mm print.  

Screenwriter Tim Hunter based the story on a 1973 incident in San Francisco involving a rash of teen vandalism in a planned community that hadn’t planned on accommodating a large population of bored youth.However, the filmmakers delivered a more chaotic film than the production company, Onion Pictures, had bargained for.  Convinced they could be held liable for copycat teenage riots, they dumped it with little advertising.  Still, Over The Edge made an impact on those who saw it, including Richard Linklater, who has said it was a major inspiration for Dazed and Confused.  It was also Kurt Cobain’s favorite movie and the inspiration for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video.

As the film opens, a title card informs us that a quarter of the population of California suburb New Granada is 15 or younger. Cheap Trick kicks in loud on the soundtrack as the camera pans across a sign advertising the development:  “New Grenada: Tomorrow’s City…Today.”  

Or “New Granola” as local punk Ritchie White calls it. A hero to his classmates and a menace to the adults, Ritchie is played by 14-year-old Matt Dillon in his first movie role.  Like most of the kids cast in the film, he was discovered while skipping school. (The frame is often teeming with feral-looking extras, lurking like gawky baby zombies.)

The plot is set in motion when a local burnout shoots a cop’s windshield with a BB gun and Ritchie and his buddy Carl are busted for it.  Carl gets hassled by his upper-middle class parents about hanging out with a kid from the wrong side of the tracks.  The film explores the suburb’s class divide with understated realism: Ritchie lives with his single mom in a brutalist apartment block resembling a council estate, while Carl’s family occupies a spacious tract home in the “nice” part of town.  

The junior high school where the kids spend their days is stifling, almost prison-like.  A giant blow-up photo of young Robert F. Kennedy saluting at JFK’s funeral looms in the auditorium where students are lectured about the rise of vandalism in the community.   “You guys know what an ecosystem is?” a belligerent biology teacher barks. Indeed, the film evokes the strange, artificial ecosystem of the liminal spaces in the neighborhood where youthful energy festers and ferments.

Outside the school, the only facility for the kids is a sad little recreation center with a few games and foosball tables. So, the youth of New Grenada drift along in an aimless pursuit of drugs, booze, and basement parties. It’s a compelling vision of what It feels like for kids that age who can only react to the decisions of authority figures with no agency of their own.   

The clueless grown-ups, having built a family-friendly enclave to escape the city, ironically show little interest in their offspring. They discuss the delinquency problem mainly in terms of how it affects their homes’ resale values. (Julia, the rec center counselor, is the only sympathetic adult in the entire film.)   They nix a planned drive-in/bowling alley in favor of selling the land to developers to build an industrial park. When the developers visit, they decide to shut down the recreation center to prevent any embarrassing scenes. Naturally the plan backfires spectacularly, causing a near-riot between kids and cops.

There’s a real craftsmanship to the filmmaking that far exceeds the demands of the genre. Screenwriter Tim Hunter delivers hilariously hard-boiled dialogue for his young characters, including the legendary line, “A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid.” Kaplan drives the story with clarity and economy toward its demolition derby finale. The film’s DP was none other than Andrew Davis, who went on to direct blockbusters like The Fugitive. He imbues the teenage wasteland with mythical golden hour hues and a palpable atmosphere to its sunbaked days and aimless nights.  

This was an excellent movie to watch in a packed theater of cult film die-hards. While a bit faded, the 35mm celluloid leapt off the screen in a visceral way that I did not remember from watching it on VHS many years ago. Sadly underseen, Over The Edge is a kaleidoscopic vision of feral youth in revolt, the chaotic evil version of the quaint Spielbergian utopias of the era.