ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL

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"Rock, rock, rock, rock, Rock 'n' Roll High School!"

Those immortal words, written by The Ramones, kick off a super-charged coming-of-age comedy as chaperoned by, well yes ladies and gentlemen, The Ramones.

'70s era cultural signifiers abound in this Roger Corman-produced bonanza of low budget delights.

"Fun, fun, rock 'n' roll high school.

Fun, fun, oh baby.

Fun, fun, fun, fun.

Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school."

That the Punk band from NYC were soaking up California rays while making the movie, only adds to its fun vibe. The Ramones are at the height of their powers, tearing up the screen with determined musical attitudes shaped by Girl Groups of the '60s. Think, The Shangri-Las.

Who knew Punk was so sincerely romantic?

The proof in the Punk pudding nods toward be the beautifully innocent romantic intent in The Ramones' fantastic songs.

The teen dreams of the '70s are in roaring display, squeezed into every frame like a super yummy PB&J.

P.J. Soles is awesome as Riff Randall, The Ramones' biggest fan, or groupie if you will or if you won't. Romantic sparks fly in an out-of-this-world musical fantasy sequence with Joey singing "I Want You Around" to Riff in her bedroom.

Hot.

A girl's Punk dream comes to life, with Johnny playing acoustic guitar accompaniment to Joey's intimate love ballad.

I had the good fortune to be at Richmond Va's radio station-awarded "Rock 'n' roll high school, Richmond Open High School. Aimee Mann was in the equivalent of my home room. As such, the radio station gave us a free screening of "Rock 'n' Roll High School" at the Biograph Cinema in my VCU college neighborhood, the Fan District.

They gave us these great hot pink lettering on black t-shirts.

Oh, the memories of things teenaged Cole did in that t-shirt in 1979, my sophomore year at Open High. And yes, we did claim to get high openly.

Chills baby, straight up chills.

Mary Warnov gives a next level performance as Miss Togar, the high school's evil school principal. It's notable that Mary Warnov and her co-star Paul Bartel went on to make the romping BDSM sex comedy "Eating Raoul" together three years later.

It's clear that everyone involved with this miraculous Punk Rock document, is having a great time really going for it with everything they've got.

That the "Rock 'n' Roll High School" soundtrack is a truly perfect record, goes with the territory.

Rock out kids, "school's out for summer, school's out forever."

"I hate the teachers and the principal
Don't wanna be taught to be no fool
Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school."

Rated PG. 93 mins.

HOUSE — SHOCKTOBER!

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Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 surrealistic satire regarding the overwhelming aftermath of America’s atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a virtuosic fantasy horror movie unlike any other.

Of the atomic bombs’ 200,000 causalities, all of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s childhood friends were among the deceased.

Nobuhiko Obayashi was just eight years old at the time of the attacks. Clearly, he never lost sight of his pals, or his loss. Here, Obayashi throws a cinematic extravaganza party to celebrate the lost potential of a generation.

Extreme teenage Japanese punk power pop! You bet.

We’re way beyond “Rocky Horror” baby.

“House” takes the cake, the dining room table, the piano, and most certainly the title’s house of horrors that devours seven teenage girls via a very hungry piano.

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

“House” shows Obayashi’s encyclopedic mastery of state-of-the-art filmmaking, from a deeply personal approach to meeting the sugary commercial demands of the film’s producers.

This insanely ambitious movie puts George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to shame with pure inventiveness.

Obayashi received story ideas from his eleven-year-old daughter, Chigumi. A blood-spewing white cat piles on the film’s cartoonish tone of outrageous evil consuming every body that steps in its path.

Nobuhiko Obayashi uses every filmic technique at his disposal, in order to transmogrify the grief, pain, and sense of incalculable loss that he and so many others experienced. What results is a cinematic phantasmagoria overflowing with humor, expressions of love, and deep-seeded fear of the unknown.

Visually and viscerally stunning from start to finish, “House” is much more than a mere masterpiece.

Not Rated. 88 mins.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH — SHOCKTOBER!

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"The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a brilliantly stylized science fiction satire about an alien who comes to our big blue ball with a methodic plan to deliver water back to his home planet, Anthea.

Director Nicolas Roeg expands on the success he enjoyed in his experimental film "Performance," in which he turned a British rock star into an imposing film actor overnight. Where Mick Jagger played an ironic character not unlike himself in "Performance," David Bowie transforms into his alien persona with a preternatural instinct that is purely seductive.

Bowie's humanoid alien recasts himself as Thomas Jerome Newton, an orange-haired genius with a stack of original technology patents that will enrich him with the billions of dollars he needs to execute his water transportation plan. After touching down in New Mexico Newton seeks out patent attorney Oliver V. Farnsworth (Buck Henry) in Manhattan to handle his newly minted business World Enterprises Corporation. Newton returns to New Mexico where he plans to construct a spacecraft to complete his mission.

Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), a helpful chambermaid at Newton's hotel, romantically attaches herself to the alien. The couple move in together and slip into a comfortable pattern of American married life. She introduces him to religion, addiction, and sex as he becomes obsessed with television. He tells her, “The strange thing about television is that it doesn’t tell you everything. It shows you everything about life for nothing, but the true mysteries remain. Perhaps it’s in the nature of television. Just waves in space.”

Rip Torn plays Nathan Bryce with his usual maniacal glee. The character is a sex-addicted college science professor whom Newton hires to create an energy system for his spacecraft. Nicolas Roeg's intercutting of analogous sex scenes with Bryce's different female partners establishes the era's attitudes. There's playful violence in the sex scenes that is jarring for their honesty and subtext.

Yet Bryce loses his proclivity for young women in the face of his enormous salary and the challenging nature of his work for Newton. But he also becomes excessively curious about his strange but trusting employer. Bryce's tendency toward exploitation will cost the alien his anonymity to government officials who co-opt his riches.

Based on Walter Tevis's 1963 novel, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a prescient story about the clash between consumerism and intimacy, and between capitalism and the ecology. Newton's alien planet represents a fading utopia that is as much a state of mind as it is an actual place. Newton's flagging sense of responsibility reflects the systematic culture of betrayal that consumes him body and soul.

Rated R. 139 mins.