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Pump Up the Volume Reviews

The film could have been much better...or not because its intrinsic falsehood condemns it from the start. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Nov 3, 2022

While watching Pump Up the Volume I was amazed that such an anti-establishment movie was produced by 1990’s mainstream Hollywood.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2022

The fact that it does this simply and unabashedly gives the critic little to work with; it's all there, right on the surface, with nothing to decode–just a dream, and a dream of an idea, that it asks us to share and celebrate. And better yet, emulate.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 12, 2022

Allan Moyle's angsty coming-of-age romp...

Full Review | Dec 9, 2021

If you don't mind (or even like) the standard teen fare that is the stuff such movies are made of, there are a couple of good reasons to see this one.

Full Review | May 21, 2020

Call it Rebel With a Cause, and listen good, because it's the most frank, startling and radically opinionated movie ever made for young viewers.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2020

'Pump Up The Volume' Still Shines In Its Exploration of Depression and Trauma

Full Review | Nov 5, 2019

As a movie, 'Pump Up the Volume' is a lot like a teenager: at times unbearably self-important and pretentious (Nora's poems, good lord), yet undeniably, and admirably, earnest.

Full Review | May 27, 2016

Sharply uneven, this teen-angst feature begins exgremely well with some relevant social commentary; it also put on the map Christian Slater as a talent to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jan 8, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Sep 7, 2011

Slater is Moyle's generator, powering the film through some sludgy melodramatics, and while his separation of Mark and Hard Harry is practically Kabuki theater, the effort is just wonderful.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Aug 30, 2010

Much more than a teen movie....an experience, and one you'll never forget. TURN IT UP LOUD!

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 3, 2006

The perfectly cast Slater effectively propels the film, his intensity and dry delivery giving it a definite edge, as does a soundtrack which includes Ice T, Concrete Blonde and the Cowboy Junkies.

Full Review | Feb 9, 2006

Fast paced with a satisfyingly unhappy ending.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 20, 2005

A teen anthem and guilty pleasure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 21, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 2, 2004

Underrated.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 12, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 4, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 4, 2004

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Talk Hard: The Making of the Teen-Angst Classic ‘Pump Up the Volume’

In 1990, an indie drama about an anti-authoritarian pirate radio DJ obsessed with masturbation jokes signaled a wave of mutilation that was cresting over American culture. Thirty years later, it still feels prescient.

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“You ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?”

These words, coming from a distorted, disembodied voice, are how the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume begins . And yeah dude, I get that feeling. You probably get it too. Maybe it came just this morning, waking up to a deluge of terrible, terrifying news and a bunch of possible solutions to problems where it still feels like everybody loses. And maybe you first got that feeling back when you were a teenager, sitting alone in your bedroom or on a couch in front of your parents’ TV, realizing how much everything in the world (friends, family, school, work, hormones, you, the president, cops, racism, sexism, homophobia, religion, network sitcoms, pretentious movies, corporate media, opportunistic activists, cash-in nostalgia, turtles dying from plastic in the ocean, deodorant commercials ...) kind of sucks, and you weren’t sure how or if they’d ever stop sucking.

No matter what year you were born in, it’s tough not to get those teenage feelings these days, since nearly every person in a position of power seems either incompetent, indifferent, or actively trying to screw you over.

These are angsty times we’re living in, which is just one reason that Pump Up the Volume , an incredibly influential if criminally under-seen teen drama released 30 years ago on August 22, feels so resonant right now, despite its late-’80s/early-’90s fashion and technology. Starring Christian Slater, and written and directed by Allan Moyle ( Empire Records , Times Square ), Pump Up the Volume tells the story of Mark Hunter, a teenager whose parents transplant him from New York City to suburban Arizona. Unable to talk to anybody in his new surroundings, he finds his voice behind a microphone in the isolation of the basement bedroom where he broadcasts his pirate radio show. At 10 p.m. every night he’s free to embody Happy Harry Hard-On, a character who goes on rants, pretends to compulsively masturbate, and blasts his favorite songs by Richard Hell and Descendents. Though he started the show for his own amusement, he soon amasses a rapt listening audience among his fellow students at Hubert H. Humphrey High School, who might not know his true identity but are inspired by his words to rise up against their authoritarian, corrupt principal.

Pump Up the Volume hardly made a dent at the box office, landing in the 15th position during its opening week at a time when theaters were dominated by Ghost , Flatliners , and Presumed Innocent . But months later it found a following among disaffected and dissatisfied teenagers. Which really could be any teenager, as long as they had parents who weren’t paying much attention to what was getting rented on their Blockbuster account. (Even Sam Esmail, who would revive Slater’s career 25 years later with Mr. Robot , is an avowed fan of Pump Up the Volume and snuck in references to it on his show over the years.) The film also functioned like a mixtape guide to a more interesting life, encouraging amenable viewers to not just track down Pixies B-sides and the music of Leonard Cohen, but to learn about everything from Lenny Bruce to cock rings to the sweet, artificial thrills found inside a can of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi.

Pump Up the Volume , with its call for new voices from an ascendent generation to emerge, foretold a major shift that was about to happen in pop culture. The year after its release would bring the debut album of Tupac Shakur, Bikini Kill’s Revolution Girl Style Now! cassette, Liz Phair’s Girly-Sound 4-track recordings that would soon evolve into Exile in Guyville , and Nirvana’s Nevermind . (In a strange bit of synchronicity, in Pump Up the Volume after Hard Harry lambasts the sellouts of his parents’ generation, he warbles the chorus of the Youngbloods’ hippie classic “ Get Together,” a comedic bit that Kurt Cobain repeated in the intro to “Territorial Pissings.” ) Beyond the world of music, in 1991 Richard Linklater’s Slacker got a theatrical release, John Singleton made his cinematic debut with Boyz n the Hood and Quentin Tarantino filmed Reservoir Dogs , while Donna Tartt sold her debut novel The Secret History to Knopf for $450,000 and Douglas Coupland published Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture .

“It felt like something was happening,” says Samantha Mathis, who was 19 when she was cast in Pump Up the Volume . “We were moving away from that synthesized sort of sound and moving into something edgier, and we had the dissonance of being around the ‘greed is good’ era of filmmaking and finance in the world. There was anger, and I thought Allan really tapped into that with this movie.”

Allan Moyle got the idea to make his protagonist a pirate radio DJ from the unregulated stations in the United Kingdom that would broadcast off of ships during the 1960s. But even more important to Pump Up the Volume and its suburban setting was a figure from his own past. Moyle grew up in Shawinigan, a small town in Quebec about 150 miles from the Vermont border, during the post–World War II era. At the English language high school he attended, he had a classmate with an amateur printing press he kept in his basement. That classmate would use it to make anonymous pamphlets to distribute around the school. Some featured his commentaries on life, others attacked the principal and the institution. Moyle admired him and saw him as someone more sophisticated and far braver than he could be at their age.

Then his classmate shot himself with a .22 rifle in the nearby woods. Moyle was profoundly affected by his death and even visited the spot where it was said he did it. “I was upset because I could see that he was dark and I was attracted to that, but also afraid of it,” Moyle says now from his home in Venice, California. “If he’d gotten to university or a big city, he would have found people like him, artists basically, but he was too young.”

“I thought here’s a guy, a voice crying out in the wilderness ... but he’s more than this town,” he continues.

The first version of Moyle’s script was called Radio Death . It followed a young pirate DJ’s final broadcast, one that he promises will end in his own death by suicide and where he ruminates on all the different ways he might end his life. But as the show continues, and as the listeners hang on, it becomes clear that he doesn’t actually plan on going through with the act.

Moyle had previously directed 1980’s Times Square . Though it’s now considered a cult classic because of its punk and new wave influences, making it was a traumatizing experience. During post-production, the film was taken away from him by producer Robert Stigwood, who cut the scenes that made the lesbian relationship between the two teenage leads obvious, rather than implied. Moyle vowed to only write movies and to never direct again. Then, at the end of the ’80s when he had already entered his 40s, he took a meeting with a young executive named Sandy Stern.

Growing up in the village of Roslyn on Long Island in the ’70s and ’80s, Stern would tune into New York City’s WBAI, a public radio station left of the dial, to learn about the world beyond his conservative hometown. “I was the classic teenager-outsider-freak-geek that felt like I didn’t fit in,” he says. “I would literally turn on the radio late at night and realize that there was a whole world out there, which is what the internet is clearly doing now for kids in the middle of nowhere. But the radio really spoke to me and was a force for me finding my way out of suburbia, and a way into myself as well.”

After dropping out of the clinical psychology graduate program at NYU, Stern eventually got a job running production out of a satellite office in New York for a Canadian film company. A mutual colleague put him in touch with Moyle, and before they met, Stern read the seed of what would become Pump Up the Volume . He remembers it as a 45-page treatment called Lean on Me . Stern was excited about the project, but it had no ending. “I came to the meeting with an idea, which ultimately became the third act of this movie,” he says. “And Allan Moyle, when I pitched him, stood up, spilled red wine all over me and the table, hugged me, and said, ‘Oh my god, I love that idea. We have to do this together.’ And that’s how it started.”

With both of them living in New York City, the two worked on the script for a year. Moyle explains that because of strict Writers Guild of America provisions, producers cannot take writing credits on screenplays, but that Stern’s contributions to the script would otherwise merit it. As they collaborated, Stern cajoled Moyle into directing it as well.

In the years since Pump Up the Volume ’s release, Stern has produced films including Being John Malkovich and Saved! , and went into a partnership with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe on his Single Cell Pictures venture, after Mathis introduced him to the singer. He is also a faculty member at Los Angeles’s American Film Institute. Pump Up the Volume was his first producer credit, and he tells his students that over his entire career, putting together another film has never gone as smoothly. “I keep looking for the same experience to happen to me again, and it never has,” he says. “When I look back on it now and know how hard it is to get a movie made, it’s what hooked me into the business.”

As they tried to set up financing and distribution for their independent film, Moyle and Stern went about casting their Mark Hunter. Moyle’s first choice was John Cusack, because he saw a natural darkness in him, but the actor declined the role. He was just coming off Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything and had decided he wasn’t going to play any more high schoolers.

Their next pick was Christian Slater. He’d been working in movies since he was kid, landing key roles in lovable teen trash like The Legend of Billie Jean and Gleaming the Cube , as well as supporting parts in the prestigious duds Tucker: The Man and His Dream and The Name of the Rose . But at the beginning of 1989, filmmakers were clamoring to work with Slater following his appearance as J.D., the charming and homicidal boyfriend in the darker-than-dark comedy Heathers . Critics and profile writers were already beginning to dwell on the then-19-year-old’s Jack Nicholson–esque affectations, where he mimicked the Hollywood legend both in his performances on the screen and his carousing behavior in real life. Across 1988 and 1989, Slater was arrested twice for drunk driving. The second offense happened after he crashed his Saab Turbo into two telephone polls following a car chase with the sheriff’s department and ended with him getting sentenced to 10 days in jail.

In the spring of 1989, Moyle and Stern flew out and had a lunch meeting with Slater at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood after sending him a copy of their script. Movie stars are usually counseled to never commit to a project during a first meeting, especially when they are as in demand as Slater was at the time, but he immediately told the pair he was in. “Never happens like that,” says Stern.

Slater declined to comment for this piece, though earlier this year while promoting the TV series Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story , he told Variety , “[ Pump Up the Volume ] is my favorite movie I’ve ever done. … It wasn’t a typical high school movie, and it really did get into some of the darker, more gruesome details of what it’s actually like to be a teenager in high school.”

Slater’s battles with substance abuse took him to some truly dark places , but he’s now been in recovery for several decades. During a 2015 profile of him in GQ , writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner repeatedly tried to coax Slater into revisiting his turbulent young adulthood. She was politely but continuously rebuffed. “Here I am living my life and it’s just this calm set of leaves and resting on a nice pool of water, and then a journalist comes in and says let’s go, let’s stir it up, let’s think about things you haven’t thought about in 25 years,” he told her.

Moyle and Stern were in talks with Island Pictures, the film offshoot of Chris Blackwell’s storied record label, to make Pump Up the Volume . The deal fell apart after Island demanded that the character of Malcom Kaiser, a bookish and lonely Happy Harry Hard-On listener who shoots himself after a crucial scene, not be gay. Moyle and Stern refused to make the change, though in the final version of the film it isn’t stated explicitly that he is homosexual. “It was told to me, but never clarified with the audience,” says Anthony Lucero, the actor who played Kaiser, “which I liked, because it left room for all of the things that we struggle with.”

Pump Up the Volume then found a backer in New Line Cinema, the biggest name in American independent movies at the time. New Line’s main moneymaker in the 1980s was the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and in March 1990 it would hit big again with the first live-action adaptation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . But the company also made hipper pictures too, like Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy and John Waters’s mondo-trashtacular oeuvre. “We realized we were doing well with the youth market and genre kinds of films,” says Sara Risher, the company’s longtime head of production who has an executive producer credit on Pump Up the Volume . “When the script came to us, I’m not sure how it got to us, but I loved it immediately. I met Allan and thought he was a little bit crazy—and loved that about him—and full of energy and enthusiasm and ideas.”

To help shepherd Pump Up the Volume , New Line brought on Rupert Harvey as a producer. The studio had already worked with him on A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and the first Critters film. “The first draft [of the script] that I read was more out there,” says Harvey. “Allan—as can be told from many things in the movie, including the soundtrack—was (a) Canadian, and (b) a Leonard Cohen fan beyond all others. There was a tone to the movie originally that was supplanted by making it more linear and making it more acceptable to a more general audience.”

Moyle concurs with this assessment. “I wanted the thing to be a bit more obscure, and everyone wanted the thing to be a bit more pop,” he says. That shift also translated to changing the film’s title to Pump Up the Volume so it shared its name with a hit dance song by M|A|R|R|S that had been released a few years earlier.

Looking back at his career, the now 73-year-old Moyle often focuses on the compromises he had to make, or were imposed on him, in order to get his films done. At one point in our interview he referred to Pump Up the Volume as “an abortion,” before admitting he was exaggerating and that it’s one of the few films he made that he’s proud of. Still, he feels he’s often had to stifle his more experimental tendencies in service of an accessibility that he’s not particularly interested in. “Every producer we went to wanted to sanitize it more and more,” says Moyle. “Some people in the clusterfuck of people that want to make movies always want to sanitize. They’ll deny it, but what they want secretly is for the movie to appeal to everybody. I don’t know how to make a good movie, but I know how to make a bad movie, and that’s try to appeal to everybody.”

While the teen flicks of the 1980s are now fondly remembered for the charms of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and John Hughes’s endearing tributes to youth, there were also plenty of brain-dead sex romps and opportunistic rip-offs. But as the decade ended, Say Anything imbued the teen relationship comedy with far more emotional complexity than usual, and as the country entered the ’90s, Pump Up the Volume offered a less exploitative and more considered version of nihilistic fare like Over the Edge and Suburbia . “It was all Hollywood pap that was coming out at the time, and here was something that was much more ballsy, realistic, and true,” says Harvey. “Allan was well past his teenage years, but he was speaking as a teenager. He was still very much in touch with the angst and the anger and the frustrations of being that old and having self-awareness and not being taken seriously.”

The script also struck a chord with the cast, most of whom were the same age, or a few years removed from the kids they portrayed. One of them was Mathis, who played Nora Diniro, an arty sleuth and ardent listener determined to figure out Happy Harry Hard-On’s true identity. “I had been a huge fan of John Hughes movies, which I still love,” Mathis says, “but I felt like [ Pump Up the Volume ] went to this raw place, with the landscape of being a teenager and being in a world where you see so much that’s wrong and feel cynical about society.”

Mathis had appeared in a few television shows and made-for-TV movies, but Pump Up the Volume was her first real film. In it she’s a mesmerizing, charismatic swirl of bright lipstick, sly jokes, dyed hair, and illicitly smoked cigarettes. Her character paints abstract portraits and sends Harry anonymous erotic poetry that causes him to christen her the “Eat Me, Beat Me Lady.” “She was everything I wanted to be in high school,” says Mathis. “She was bold and outspoken and unapologetic, and she had chutzpah.”

Lala Sloatman, the then-19-year-old niece of Frank Zappa who’d been living at the musician’s Laurel Canyon compound since she was 15, auditioned for the role of Nora, but ended up getting cast as her best friend Janie. An aspiring actress who had already appeared in two movies with Corey Haim, Sloatman spent her free time hanging out with the Beastie Boys and goofing around with her younger cousin Ahmet Zappa as they were getting “super into fuckin’ Whitesnake.”

The younger Zappa frequented Hollywood’s child actor social circuit, spending time at infamous spots like Jerry’s Famous Deli in Beverly Hills and Alphy’s Soda Pop Club. “I had dropped out of school at the beginning of eighth grade, I missed more than half a year of school prior to that,” he says. “I just started working as a kid, working on creating new businesses, and when I felt like it, to try to make some extra money, I auditioned for something. I could not really consider myself a child actor per se, though I did work on a lot of things here and there.”

He tagged along to Sloatman’s Pump Up the Volume audition, and after he met Moyle, the director created the part of Jamie for him. “Supposedly we were boyfriend and girlfriend in the movie, but it never evolved like that,” says Sloatman. “Thank goodness.”

Mark Hunter’s basement studio, as well as the bedrooms of his young listeners, were sets constructed in a studio in Los Angeles. For the film’s fictional setting of Paradise Hills, Arizona, they picked Saugus, a Southern California suburb near Six Flags Magic Mountain, as a stand-in. For Hubert H. Humphrey High School they used Saugus High School, which became an all-too-common site of tragedy in 2019 when Nathaniel Berhow shot five students, two fatally, before killing himself on his 16th birthday.

Every morning before filming in Saugus, director of photography Walt Lloyd would drive his Mitsubishi Montero to pick up Moyle at his place in Santa Monica . During the hourlong drive (if traffic wasn’t too bad) the two would discuss their plans for the day. Lloyd had recently shot Steven Soderbergh’s indie sensation Sex, Lies, and Videotape and jumped at the opportunity to be a part of Pump Up the Volume because of the script, even though there were plenty of potential red flags that came with it. “It was low budget,” he says. “It was a lot of nights up in Saugus. There were a lot of stunts. There were a lot of kid actors. On paper, there was a reason to be nervous.”

Instead, the production went relatively smoothly. “Most film sets are pretty contentious, there’s always somebody fighting,” says Lucero. “I just don’t remember that being the case. In fact, Allan had quite a few parties, and they were always quite imaginative and fun. He’d have these giant, strange ice sculptures of various human organs. There just wasn’t a lot of ego.”

“[Moyle] was really adamant about having a crew that was cohesive and knew each other,” says Mathis. “He had this credo that he wanted the crew to be skinny guys who read books. He wanted everyone involved to be invested in the making of this movie.”

The cast became tight as well, carpooling to the set together, waiting around until the others were finished with their scenes before leaving, then hanging out together in L.A. afterward. Zappa quickly targeted Seth Green, who plays a young metalhead in the film, for an on-going series of pranks, like making it look like the vintage car he’d just bought had been stolen and creating a fake Saugus High student who would send him love letters. (Green declined to comment for this article.)

Ultimately though, the movie’s success hinged on Slater’s performance, which mostly consisted of either unbridled monologues in a room by himself or being so painfully shy around others that it seemed like he might have an aneurysm if he made eye contact. “It was a fascinating character to play, because I was really acting like Superman,” Slater told the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 profile. “I was meek and mild on the outside, but a hero on the inside.”

“He was extraordinary to work with and extraordinary as a person” says Ellen Greene, the theater veteran who plays the writing teacher Jan Emerson, the sole compassionate adult in the film. “Not only was he true to himself and his acting ability, but he was really true to his character.”

Moyle calls Slater “a stallion of a young actor” and fondly remembers how every morning on set he’d eat a breakfast that consisted of a big bowl of bacon drenched in maple syrup. It was over this meal that Slater would learn his lines for the day. But once Slater memorized the words, he stuck to them, going against Moyle’s preferred improvisational style. The director sees what he writes as simply a starting point, then hopes the actors will come up with their own material in the moment. “He relished the discovery on film, and the danger and excitement that comes with that,” says Mathis.

“He let us do whatever we wanted,” adds Sloatman. “I worked with Robert Towne [on Tequila Sunrise ] and I felt nervous and intimidated on some of these sets, but Allan was really comfortable, and he just loved all of us goofing around and ad-libbing and playing. He let us do all kinds of crazy stuff. I felt so much freedom on that movie.”

This looseness spilled into other parts of the production. Moyle is an eccentric—emotionally raw and a bit scattered. His temperament is far from the control freaks who are often considered directorial masters, like Stanley Kubrick, David Fincher, or the Coen Brothers. “Allan is a little, should I say, free form,” says Lloyd, who remains one of his good friends. “He’s not a traditional all-the-t’s-crossed and i’s-dotted type of director. And I work pretty well like that. I can improvise pretty easily, and in fact I like working like that. I know a lot of people who are more structured would probably have a heart attack if they saw the way we worked.”

When filming ended and editing began, Moyle says the first rough cut caused New Line’s founder Robert Shaye to tell him that the movie was unreleasable. Fortunately, the executive’s young daughters were standing behind him waving their arms, signaling to Moyle to not listen to their dad. He also says that Risher soon told him that this was a common tactic of Shaye’s to get filmmakers to work harder. As postproduction progressed and additional material was shot to help with the film’s connective tissue, the film began to do well with test audiences.

Another crucial factor in Pump Up the Volume ’s improved reception was finalizing the songs used in the film—a task spearheaded by music supervisor Kathy Nelson, a pioneer in her field who continues working on major projects like Top Gun: Maverick . Nelson started the soundtrack department at MCA Records in the mid-’80s under Irving Azoff. She’d actively look through the film industry trade publications to find movies in pre-production that sounded interesting, then approached their makers about putting out something on MCA. “It was before everybody realized music was actually a good marketing tool,” says Nelson. “It was before studios ruined the soundtrack business by going, ‘Let’s just find the next hit single by so-and-so and put it at the end of the movie.’ A complete disconnect.”

Moyle always intended for Happy Harry Hard-On’s intro music to be Leonard Cohen’s cynical “Everybody Knows,” whose recording was engineered by Moyle’s first wife, Leanne Ungar. Shaye thought the song was too morose, so Nelson had Concrete Blonde, a group signed to MCA, record a sultrier cover version. Eventually Shaye relented and let Moyle use Cohen’s original, so Concrete Blonde’s take plays just once during the film’s climax.

Pump Up the Volume ’s beloved soundtrack was one of the biggest factors in the prolonged dissemination of the film over the years. It also serves as a preview of where modern music was going. The soundtrack includes songs by Sonic Youth and Soundgarden before college rock became the more mass-marketable alternative rock. It also has tracks by Ice-T and Above the Law, capturing the moment when gangsta rap took hold in the suburbs but hadn’t reached the multiplatinum status it would find just a few years later through albums like Dr. Dre’s The Chronic . “I’ve always liked edgy stuff,” says Nelson. “Because of Allan’s taste and because of the character being an edgy guy that was a rule breaker, I really knew it could be a soundtrack with music that I really like too, not total, straight-down-the-middle pop songs.”

As Pump Up the Volume ’s release date neared, its prospects looked good. It won the award for best film at the Seattle International Film Festival in May and critics were mostly supportive. In the Washington Post , Rita Kempley called it “passionately caring. It’s a howl from the heart, a relentlessly involving movie that gives a kid every reason to believe that he or she can come of age.” New Line began to get excited about how well it might do at the box office. Then it only made $1.6 million during its first week in theaters, before finally ending with a total $11.5 million gross after four weeks.

After a discouraging initial showing, New Line didn’t expand or continue advertising the film, doubting that its theatrical audience could grow. It didn’t want to lose any more money on the film. As with any commercial failure, the second-guessing started and hasn’t totally stopped yet. Maybe the poster wasn’t strong enough. Maybe they didn’t get the trailer right. Maybe teens just weren’t able to get into the theater to watch an R-rated teen movie with prodigious swearing, nudity, suicide, and dick jokes. “Even though I was at New Line, I can actually say that I think New Line did a not-very-good job in distribution and marketing,” says Risher, “simply because they did not reach the audience that wanted to see it and loved it.”

“The film did not fail,” she continues. “The film was and is terrific in every way—with the music, with the casting—what failed is it didn’t reach its audience at the time. At the time.”

Pump Up the Volume may have not made much of an impact in theaters, but word caught on about it in the first half of the ’90s through robust VHS rentals and pay-cable showings. It became a touchstone for kids intrigued by everything cleverly subversive, alongside Ren & Stimpy , Heathers , comedian Bill Hicks, and albums by the Smiths. “My son was proud of the movie,” says Risher. “When he went off to college, he was known as the kid whose mom made Pump Up the Volume .”

Unfortunately, as the technology of viewing mediums has progressed, Pump Up the Volume has not kept up. It has received only a bare bones treatment on DVD and no Blu-Ray release. Even more detrimental to its potential spread to younger generations is that it’s never been available to rent or download through digital services like iTunes or Amazon. New Line was bought by Turner Broadcasting System in early 1994 and through a series of corporate mergers, its catalog is now owned by Warner Bros. When that company’s new HBO Max streaming service launched in May, Pump Up the Volume sadly was not included alongside other New Line titles from that era, like House Party and Metropolitan . As of now the only way to watch it online is through segmented uploads on YouTube or other illicit methods.

There’s nothing specific about Pump Up the Volume that makes Warner and New Line not want to put the film up, but there are legal issues that come with it being made before digital distribution even existed that need to be resolved. And it’s far from the only movie from this era that’s not available digitally. Every one of the dozens of songs that appear in Pump Up the Volume would have to be relicensed before it could legally be available, and that might not be so easy, for example, when a rarity by the Beastie Boys called “Scenario” that the group has never officially released in any form is directly referenced, played, and rapped over in the film. Even the film’s soundtrack isn’t on audio streaming services, aside from incomplete versions cobbled together by fans as playlists.

After Pump Up the Volume , Moyle directed the films The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag and Empire Records . On the latter, the producers once again took the film away from him and it turned into an even bigger financial disaster than Pump Up the Volume , even though it too has its devotees . He hasn’t directed a Hollywood film since, though he kept working as an uncredited screenwriter for directors like Peter Bogdanovich. There have been talks about various reboots or reimaginings of Pump Up the Volume as a movie or a television show, but nothing has come together yet. Stern has been developing a musical theater adaptation of the film for years , and it was finally going to premiere in Pittsburgh this past April, but the pandemic effectively ended that.

While Pump Up the Volume was an angry movie, it was also a hopeful one. It told teenagers that they were not alone in their struggles and in their fears. As the police get ready to lock him up, Hunter’s message to his listeners is to steal the airwaves for themselves, just like he has. The film ends with an audio collage of teenagers around the country with their own pirate stations, talking directly to the people who need to hear them. Moyle calls it a stray moment that still makes him choke up.

These days it’s easier than ever for people to broadcast themselves, even if it is through the technology of mega corporate intermediaries. YouTube, podcasts, TikTok, Instagram Live … it’s gotten to the point where the amount of voices beamed directly into your brain can get overwhelming. “Now there are thousands of Hard Harrys on the internet,” says Moyle. Then, with his characteristic candor, he adds, “I keep looking for one and hoping it will be interesting, but some of the stupidest people have their own shows.”

Eric Ducker is a writer and editor in Los Angeles.

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Cast & crew
User reviews

Pump Up the Volume

Mark runs a pirate radio station and causes an uproar when he speaks his mind and enthralls fellow teens. Mark runs a pirate radio station and causes an uproar when he speaks his mind and enthralls fellow teens. Mark runs a pirate radio station and causes an uproar when he speaks his mind and enthralls fellow teens.

Allan Moyle
Christian Slater
Samantha Mathis
Anthony Luke Lucero
141 User reviews
52 Critic reviews
77 Metascore
3 wins & 5 nominations

Mark Hunter

Nora Diniro

Malcolm Kaiser
(as Anthony Lucero)

Luis Chavez

Mr. Woodward

Mazz Mazzilli

Cheryl Biggs

Loretta Creswood

(as Alex Enberg)

Marla Hunter

Brian Hunter
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia The onscreen chemistry between Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis was genuine. They were in the midst of a year-long relationship while filming this movie.
Goofs Everyone wears the same clothes on two different days.

Mark Hunter : Eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark.

Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Darkman/Wild at Heart/Pump Up the Volume/My Blue Heaven/The Witches (1990)
Soundtracks Everybody Knows Written & Arranged by Leonard Cohen Performed by Leonard Cohen Published by Stranger Music (BMI)/Geffen & Robinhill Music c/o WB Music (ASCAP) Courtesy of CBS Records, Music Licensing Department

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 42 minutes

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How 'Pump Up the Volume' Plays as an Internet Origin Story — For Better and Worse

The Christian Slater cult classic comes to Blu-ray February 23.

The internet gives a lot of power to a lot of people. If someone wants to shout out a thought, whether benign or incendiary, they can go to all matter of social media accounts to express it to a mass number of people. In a day and age full of situational crises compounding the day-to-day ennui of being alive, the internet can function as a pure democratizing force, an attempt at a groupmind, a sort of mutual aid network of communication and information and raw feeling.

Pump Up the Volume , released in 1990 (just a few years before the internet started to become commercially available in America), is fascinatingly dated in many primary ways. It’s about rebellious youth culture, and its cast of characters dress, speak, and behave in that kind of dated-on-arrival, performatively “edgy” way we now view with satirically nostalgic lenses. Christian Slater is our hero, who runs a pirate radio station (what?), plays vinyl records and cassette tapes (huh?), and chastises his parents for selling out from hippies to yuppies (what to huh?). But the film remains too potent, prescient, and pissed off to write off as a cultural curio. It details what happens when a large group of underheard voices is suddenly encouraged to scream as loud as they can. Pump Up the Volume is an origin story for how we use the internet today.

Slater’s family has recently moved to the suburbs of Paradise Falls, Arizona, which he demographically refers to as “white bread land.” It’s no doubt empowering to watch the younger class of Paradise Falls rise up against the comfortably oppressing older class with the power of their voices, but it’s impossible not to note how typical of a “countercultural white male” our central figure of Slater is. At the beginning of the film, he plays exclusively male recording artists, calls himself Hard Harry (referring to, well, his dang penis), constantly refers to his insatiable horniness, and acts out masturbating to completion on air. I’m no prude; I’m happy to see an expression of intense, sexual humor without shame from his peers. But to see so many folks idolize this explicitly male-driven juvenilia — especially the many young women who seem to love every second of it — feels like an unintentional slide into expressing the power of privilege. Samantha Mathis plays what I’d call about as explicit a “this type of character female fantasy” role as I’ve ever seen, someone so obsessed with Hard Harry’s shenanigans that she must figure out who he is in real life, someone who is written to ask our troubled male protagonist to explain Lenny Bruce to her. Slater does not take this piece of catnip, as in real life, he’s quiet, shy, and can’t talk to girls; a kind of insidious piece of “male incel martyrdom” positing that he’s at his best and freest and malest by himself, and so should we all be. The film argues that we should all be allowed to say whatever we want in a public forum — but it should be kicked off by a single, chosen vulgar white guy whom we all love unquestionably.

To the film's credit, Slater is playing a self-aware vulgar white guy. Not necessarily about his whiteness (though he does play a good amount of music from Black artists talking about Black issues and, again, recognizes the entire town as having a white identity), but more about the perils that come with being granted power inherently. Inherently, we human beings are contradictory, complicated, ceaselessly shifting entities. As Hard Harry, Slater screams about sex for one second before cascading into casual nihilism the next before encouraging activistic actions as a conclusion. There’s not an attempt at a filter, a professionally curated “brand.” Hard Harry’s just shouting whatever’s on his mind, with every human crinkle remaining unironed. And his followers give him power, acclaim, and idolization for that lack of finesse.

It’s the same kind of power, enjoyment, whiplash, and backlash we see happen in internet culture just about every day. As Slater watches real life consequences of violence, unrest, yearning for more answers spew seemingly in result of his authentic, unfiltered talking, he retreats, questions himself, becomes scared of his power and his society’s need to hear him. I don’t know about you, but whenever I see a viral tweet expressing a charged opinion, I click on its author-written reply. Nine times out of 10, it’s something like “I am muting replies because everyone’s engagement with this is ruining my life.” People love to be heard, but people hate to need to be heard, but people also have to need to be heard. Slater, who’s slid into everyone’s consciousness with a kind of “proto-provocative Reddit troll” persona, or maybe even a “proto-libertarian-slacktivist Joe Rogan listener” persona, can’t always handle when it turns the corner into being serious, despite his willingness to dive into seriousness with the same level of frankness and cheekiness he applies to more broad targets of derision. The internet can turn everything into an intellectual piece of “content” to be argued with, joked about, spoken with inflammatory language and casual nihilism from the safety of distance. When Slater, or when, say, a group of QAnon weirdos see the real-life consequences of their edgy lulz and freewheeling conspiracies, it can provoke paralysis.

Ultimately, though I think it’s in vogue to say it (and heck, I probably feel it on occasion; I’m contradictory and trying to calcify my contradictions into the internet just like everyone else!), I don’t think the internet is a net negative, and I don’t think we would be better off eliminating it. There are simply too many benefits that come with giving a voice to folks who’ve been voiceless for so long; too many acts of mutual aid, of succinct social analysis I’ve seen occur because of the internet, especially during this dang pandemic. Pump Up the Volume settles on this argument too, quite thrillingly and viscerally. Slater’s transition from edgelord to activist is an inspiring one. He speaks plainly so many truths about power, hierarchy, subjugation. He sums up the feelings of young generational malaise with fire; if they come off hopeless or nihilistic, it’s because the folks in power don’t give them much reason to accept hope (a sentiment that’s sadly getting truer and truer by the minute). He begins to show shades of vulnerability, of self-criticizing, of palpable empathy. At one point, a longtime listener calls in to reveal he’s considering suicide. Slater neither turns off his Hard Harry persona nor amps it up to egg this hurt man on. He listens to him, and responds with a level of frankness, acceptance, and clarity about the inherent suffering that plagues existence. He tells this young man we’re not alone. If you’re feeling some way, someone else is, too. That’s really worth something.

Ultimately, this young man does commit suicide, an act that makes Slater wonder what the point of communication is at all. He berates himself for not speaking clearer, turning their conversation into content, not simply saying “don’t do it.” But was this other person’s well-being Slater’s responsibility? If so, why? Because he interacted with Slater’s public forum? Because if you have the power to speak, you should have the power to change other people’s words, thoughts, actions? It’s a difficult moral question, one we see only amplified in our Internet age. But in its difficulty, examined so fiercely in Pump Up the Volume , one solution remains steadfast.

Pump Up the Volume ends with the bare, transparent hypocrisies and corruptions of the ruling class. It ends with Slater reminding us that we are the ones who actually rule, who actually hold the power. If we pump up our volume through whatever methods we have, be it pirate radio stations, Internet accounts, or dinner time conversations, they can’t stop us. Speak for yourselves, speak for each other, speak against the powers that be. This act of speaking means you are living, or even just surviving. If enough of us can keep surviving through the struggle, using the readily available power of other people’s expression of this struggle, that’s enough.

Pump Up the Volume comes to Blu-ray February 23.

Pump Up The Volume Review

05 Dec 1990

100 minutes

Pump Up The Volume

A stirring slice of pop-profound juvenilia given a cool heart by Christian Slater spouting screeds of fun-rebellious anti-establishment bile that gets a bunch of Gen X mopers all hot round their skateboard pads as played by a bunch of nowhere soon teen actors. It should be dire, but is generally great fun because Allan Moyle avoids the temptation to apply heaps of Heathers-bleak irony rather than give it a shrill but effective earnestness. You kind of feel, Happy Harry, Slater’s midnight on-air identity, might have a point, at least until the credits roll.

Actually, there are various levels on which the film clicks into place. The monologues have a hip-stupid ferocity to them, and Slater launches into them like a boy possessed. Time may have told on Harry’s dirty asides — “Just look inside yourself and you'll see me waving up at you naked wearing only a cock ring” — which sound more camp than shocking by today’s potty-mouthed standards, but his jabs of nihilism carry the same mock-philosophical cant that even beefed up Fight Club. The film also gels as a Cinderella story as shy-by-day, outrageous-by-night Harry finds a genuine lurve thang with hip cutie Samantha Mathis. And the strike of tragedy, a teen suicide misreading his angry blather, sends a caustic note of caution to shake up the film’s finale. As the authorities close in to arrest the punk provocateur, Moyle allows the film to end on a surge a teen righteousness.

It’s doubtful we should take any of its petty umbrage too seriously, but when it is delivered with such grave authority as this it’s hard to resist the urge to take up arms to bring the establishment crashing down round its ears, by playing records really loudly and swearing at your parents.

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Late night truth bombs … Christian Slater in the original Pump Up the Volume.

Pump Up the Volume: can Christian Slater’s teen movie become a musical hit like Heathers?

The 1990 film about high-school rebellion, featuring a jaded late-night DJ, could find a fresh theatre audience in this new age of disillusionment

W atching the macabre 1989 high school movie Heathers , you may not have thought it needed show tunes. But after an off-Broadway run, Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s brutally funny, candy-coloured musical became a sensation in the West End. It starts a tour of the UK and Ireland this month while continuing a residency at the Other Palace in London, where they host singalong performances, serve “freeze your brain” cocktails and fans wear official Heathers lipgloss and colour-coded scrunchies.

Is this the future for Christian Slater’s subsequent teen movie, Pump Up the Volume? The film, a portrait of alienation and rebellion which stars Slater as shy student Mark who is a pirate radio DJ by night, was adapted as a rock musical in the US just before Covid. It has now reached London as part of MTFestUK , which showcases a slate of new musicals including versions of the TV show Come Dine With Me and Gogol’s The Government Inspector.

On Monday, a condensed version of Pump Up the Volume was presented in workshop form for a small audience at the Turbine theatre and I’m delighted to report (relieved even, since my childhood bedroom was covered with pictures and slogans from the film) that it channels the same unruly spirit. Jeremy Desmon ’s book and lyrics preserve the blend of rancour and ribaldry that distinguished director Allan Moyle’s screenplay. But it keeps the compassion, too, of a film that didn’t satirise the students but seemed to really care for them. (Moyle’s original story was inspired by the suicide of a friend.)

Carrie Hope Fletcher, Sophie Isaacs, Jodie Steele and T’Shan Williams in Heathers: The Musical at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, in 2018.

Pump Up the Volume’s soundtrack introduced me to bands including Pixies, Cowboy Junkies, Sonic Youth, Bad Brains and Soundgarden. Richard Hell’s yelping, helter-skelter Love Comes in Spurts is a favourite of Slater’s enigmatic DJ, Happy Harry Hard-On, renowned for his on-air masturbatory stamina. But his listeners particularly revere his brand of jaundiced truth-telling in a world where, to quote his signature track (Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows), the good guys lost and the fight was fixed.

While something of the film’s scuzzy quality has been ironed out, the musical’s rousing, often anthemic rock score by Jeff Thomson is established with the opening number, Speak to Me, which shows how the students of a small-town school in Arizona become Harry’s disciples, religiously tuning in to hear him at 10pm.

Directed by Dave Solomon, the workshop performances – which run until Wednesday – are backed by a small band under the musical direction of Debbi Clarke, with props limited to a boombox, a mixtape and the red stationery used by Harry’s fan, Nora. Winningly played in the film by Samantha Mathis, Nora is given greater agency in the musical and becomes a crusading journalist for the school newspaper, her activist streak directly inspiring Mark.

In the musical, Mark’s dad is a tough police lieutenant (rather than a school commissioner) who is raising his son alone. He is shown to be frequently absent – and not the greatest detective if he doesn’t know what Mark’s up to in the basement – while the film showed Mark’s parents as present, well-intentioned liberals who recognise his isolation but seem resigned to not reaching him.

The ruthless and corrupt headteacher, Principal Cresswood (demonically played on screen by the great jazz singer Annie Ross ), is here somehow both more monstrous – sacking the drama teacher for staging Fahrenheit 451 – and more humanised. She gets a solo built around the line “I’m the signal, he’s the noise” in which she rails against the “incessant chatter” of teenage life and seeks to find a way to cut through and establish her authority. Cresswood still represents a sense of national rot as the US enters the 90s and the musical adds a perhaps inevitable jibe at Donald Trump, said to be plummeting into bankruptcy at the time so “we’ll never have to hear from that asshole again”.

Today, of course, Harry would just have a podcast like everyone else. The musical has to work hard to establish the renegade spirit of pirate radio, rather as the movie Moxie did for riot grrrl zines. Like Heathers: The Musical, it also uses humour in returning us to a less interconnected world with rudimentary technology. (At the Other Palace, where Heathers has a huge fanbase of digital natives, the audience is instructed to turn off their smartphones because it’s the 80s and “they haven’t been invented yet”.)

But there are parallels, too, with more modern teen musicals, in particular Dear Evan Hansen in the way Mark uneasily adjusts to his role as an inspirational figure and the exploration of adolescent mental health. One song assesses the expectations and pressures placed on children who are told to “take one for the team, take two for the pain”.

“All the great themes have been used up – turned into theme parks,” sighs Harry in one of his diatribes. A cynic might say all the great movies are just turned into musicals. But this hourlong, no-frills, script-in-hand evening – with Noah Harrison and Jaina Brock-Patel both strong in the lead roles – suggests Pump Up the Volume could become a musical attuned to a post-pandemic teenage mental health crisis and a new age of disillusionment. The merchandise stall could sell Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi and Black Jack gum . Like Harry says: so be it .

Pump Up the Volume is at the Turbine theatre, London , until 8 February. MTFestUK continues until 11 February.

Christian Slater

Comments (…)

Pump Up the Volume (United States, 1990)

Those who would bundle Pump Up the Volume with the other numerous teenage-oriented movies to dot the '80s and '90s cinematic landscape do the film and themselves a great disservice. Pump Up the Volume is smart, perceptive, thought-provoking, and well acted. It examines issues that the average teen/high school film rarely addresses. And the characters seem a lot more like the real people one finds walking school halls than the cardboard cut-outs with which Hollywood typically populates classrooms. Allan Moyle's picture is filled with purpose, and perhaps a little anger, and it's just as relevant - if not more so - to today's group of teenagers as it was to those of the last generation. Pump Up the Volume may be 14 years old, but it could have been produced now.

During the 1980s, teen movies predominantly splintered into two categories: John Hughes "dramadies" and the raunch of Porky's . Pump Up the Volume doesn't fit into either group, but reviewers of the time viewed it through Hughes-colored glasses. Yet anyone expecting to absorb something light and inoffensive may be jarred by Pump Up the Volume , which deals frankly with teen ennui, isolation, and impotence. It's about the darker aspects of the teen psyche - the impossibility of fulfilling others' expectations and the difficulty of facing a grim future, and the pressure (both self-imposed and societal) that results. There's a glimpse (and it's only a glimpse ) into the cauldron of roiling, hormonally-fueled emotional instability that became one of the foundations for the Columbine tragedy.

Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) is an intelligent high school student whose move from New York to Arizona has thrown him into a profound state of depression and isolation. Mark is a shy, introverted kid who has left behind all his old friends and can't seem to make new ones. He describes himself this way: "I could be that anonymous nerd sitting across from you in chem lab, staring at you so hard. Then when you turn around he tries to smile, but the smile just comes out all wrong. You just think, How pathetic. Then he just looks away, and never looks back at you again." His parents, Brian (Scott Paulin) and Marla (Mimi Kennedy), are worried about him, but they don't know their son well enough to understand the depth of his psychological wound. In defining this relationship, Pump Up the Volume makes a small but telling point about the disconnect that often exists between children and parents (no matter how well-meaning they might be).

By day, Mark is a conscientious student whose writing teacher, Jan Emerson (Ellen Greene, Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors ), praises his work, and who attracts the attention of goth girl Nora Diniro (Samantha Mathis). But every night at 10:00, he is transformed into "Happy Harry Hard-on," a pirate radio DJ who uses his shortwave set to surf the airwaves. His nightly program lasts anywhere from five minutes to five hours, and features anti-mainstream music, profane rants against school and society, and faked masturbation sessions. It's enough to appall most adults who hear it, but it becomes a magnet for teenagers. Soon, Happy Harry is a local legend, but the moral conscience of the community begins to worry about his influence, especially when he says things like, "They say I'm disturbed. Well, of course I'm disturbed. I mean, we're all disturbed. And if we're not, why not? Doesn't this blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy? Then why not do something crazy? It makes a helluva lot more sense than blowing your… brains out."

The event that brings the Happy Harry controversy into the spotlight is when a young listener kills himself immediately after engaging in an on-air conversation with the DJ in which suicide is discussed. Community leaders, searching for someone to blame, elect to go after Happy Harry rather than the cold, emotionally distant parents of the dead boy. So the witch-hunt is on, with the noose drawing ever tighter as the number of involved law enforcement personnel increases.

For anyone who still believes they have stumbled into a John Hughes motion picture, listen to the music. Hughes loved peppering his movie soundtracks with safe, pop tunes, but there's nothing comfortable or familiar about Moyle's selection of songs for Pump Up the Volume . Led by a pair of Leonard Cohen dirges ("Everybody Knows" and "If It Be Your Will"), this is a collection of edgy and offbeat music, with nothing even close to dance-able. Liquid Jesus, Soundgarden, and the Beastie Boys also make contributions.

Pump Up the Volume is about the importance of teenagers having a voice, and the dangers of that voice being stifled by well-meaning but close-minded adults. High school and the teen years are depicted as ordeals to be endured, where the weak are ground underfoot. ("Being a teenager sucks. But that's the whole point. Surviving is the whole point.") For the most part, teenagers are more attuned to hypocrisy than adults, and the result is rebellion. The kids in Pump Up the Volume are rebelling, although, in many cases, they don't know against what. But, in Harry, they find someone whose acid words and ferocious anti-establishment diatribes speak to their souls. And parents find Harry threatening not because he preaches sedition and anarchy (although, to be fair, he's not family values-friendly), but because he exerts more influence over their children than they do. Consider the case of straight-A Paige (Cheryl Pollak), whose frustration about her perfect, ordered, high-pressure lifestyle explodes when she decides to take Harry's advice to do something crazy. ("They think you're moody, make 'em think you're crazy. Make 'em think you might snap. They say you got attitude, you show 'em some real attitude.")

Strangely, one can almost see Pump Up the Volume as a superhero movie. Happy Harry Hard-on is Allen Moyle's version of the Man of Steel, a supremely confident voice in the dark, whose words uncover hypocrisy and corruption wherever they reach. By day, however, he has a secret identity - that of the lonely, ignored Mark, who is afraid to have conversations with girls, doesn't like being singled out in class, and eats his lunch by himself while reading a book. No one would guess that Mark is Harry, whose slogans have become the fodder for graffiti artists and whose name is revered. Only Nora figures it out, and that's because she feels a deeper connection to Harry than most. Calling herself the "Eat Me Beat Me Lady," she corresponds with him anonymously until she discovers who he really is.

In addition to having a great deal to say about the teenage mindset, Pump Up the Volume also takes a pointed jab at the media, focusing on how the frenzy of a "hot" local news story can blow everything out of proportion. To this end, the film gives us numerous throw away shots of hotshot reporter Shep Sheppard (Clayton Landey) coming to the evening news audience live from the scene of the action. Admittedly, other movies have succeeded far better with this kind of take-no-prisoners satire, but it surprising how well it works here, where it's relegated to the back burner. Pump Up the Volume isn't about the capricious power of television news, but it nevertheless gets the point across.

The important members of the cast can be boiled down to two figures: Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis. Everyone else, from the supporting adults to the secondary high schoolers, represents little more than background color. This movie belongs to Slater and Mathis, and they dig into the roles with relish. It also helps that there's a palpable chemistry between them. Their romance is secondary to the main story, but they are convincing as two outsiders tentatively exploring attraction and sex.

For Slater, this role came in the midst of his time at the top. Nestled between Young Guns II and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Pump Up the Volume is easily forgotten (it was a theatrical bust, but has found a following on home video), but it arguably represents the best performance of Slater's career. He is believable as the shy, ineffectual Mark (although he lowers his head a few too many times in an attempt to convey insecurity), but really comes alive when he is transformed by the magic of the airwaves into Happy Harry. Mathis, in her first role, seems destined for the kind of stardom that ultimately eluded her. Watching her once again in this part, I found reason to lament what has become of her career (a small role as a murder victim in The Punisher ).

One thing that can be criticized about Pump Up the Volume is its reliance upon the stock character of the High School Principal as the Wicked Witch of the West. Annie Ross plays the part like a one-dimensional harridan; she can be forgiven the absence of inspired acting, since that's how the role was written. Pump Up the Volume would have worked just as effectively with the character of Principal Loretta Creswood toned down or written out.

Since Pump Up the Volume had its short theatrical run in 1990, the Internet has become the medium of choice for the world's Happy Harry Hard-ons. Pirate radio stations are virtually things of the past; the Internet is the wave of the present, and there is no shortage of angry teenagers venting their feelings about what's wrong with the world. (It's interesting to note that many high school students, who are too young to vote, are more passionate about politics than the majority of eligible adults.) Yet the tone and the message remain the same, indicating that Pump Up the Volume , in addition to presenting an engaging story, has tapped into a universal truth about rebels with causes.

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Pump up the volume.

Directed by Allan Moyle

TALK HARD. STEAL THE AIR.

Mark Hunter, a lonely high school student, uses his shortwave radio to moonlight as the popular pirate DJ "Hard Harry." When his show gets blamed for a teen committing suicide, the students clash with high school faculty and the authorities.

Christian Slater Samantha Mathis Annie Ross Scott Paulin Mimi Kennedy Andy Romano Keith Stuart Thayer Cheryl Pollak Jeff Chamberlain Lala Sloatman Holly Sampson Seth Green Robert Schenkkan Ellen Greene Anthony Lucero Billy Morrissette Ahmet Zappa Matt McGrath James Hampton Nolan Hemmings Virginya Keehne Lin Shaye

Director Director

Allan Moyle

Producers Producers

Rupert Harvey Sandy Stern

Writer Writer

Editors editors.

Larry Bock Janice Hampton

Cinematography Cinematography

Executive producers exec. producers.

Syd Cappe Sara Risher Nicolas Stiliadis

Stunts Stunts

Michael Cassidy Troy Gilbert Donna Evans

Composer Composer

Cliff Martinez

New Line Cinema SC Entertainment

Releases by Date

22 aug 1990, 05 dec 1990, 20 dec 1990, 03 jan 1991, 19 apr 1991, 23 may 1991, 07 jun 1991, 23 aug 1991, 21 dec 1999, 15 jun 2005, releases by country.

Theatrical M
Theatrical 12
Theatrical 15

Netherlands

Physical 12 DVD
Theatrical R
Physical R DVD

105 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

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Review by Adam Ball ★★★★★ 1

The cinematic equivalent of trading in your Poison tape for a Pixies CD.

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Before Facebook, iPhones, iTunes, AOL, and Twitter there was this really cool thing called a radio. Teenagers would listen to it and maybe even dance. What was even cooler than a radio? Pirate radio, an underground station that played awesome music and the DJ's could say whatever they wanted without FCC regulations. Pump up the Volume is the tale of amateur shock jock DJ Happy Harry Hard On and his underground pirate radio station. Harry played by Christian Slater in his prime becomes the star of his sleepy Arizona town and awakens the youth in this rebellious coming of age drama. Mix tape. Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi? Hypnotic iconic Leonard Cohen. Toy wang. The first time you see Christian Slater.…

Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

"This is vandalism, not free expression!"

I assumed that this very formative movie for me would rest mostly on nostalgia -- which is still there, intact. But also this thing, this still so thorny thing, that should be inextricably tied to its moment is instead on the "weirdly somehow still timely" playlist, sincerely very good, and the areas in which it's dated are very appropriate and still-productive ones. Its teen angst is still completely authentic but the pirate radio -- a thing that you'd expect to scan as a total relic now -- seems perfectly analogous to people pleading for justice and equality and accountability and sanity on social media. And what's more, this isn't a blanket endorsement of Happy Harry's provocations. His rhetoric has direct consequences and contradictions that he cannot morally account for despite his -- and the film's -- intentions. And the soundtrack still kills.

Review by Anna Bean ★★★½ 2

Even shy, awkward, bespectacled Christian Slater can GET IT.

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★½ 1

"I like the idea that a voice can just go somewhere, uninvited, and just kinda hang out like a dirty thought in a nice clean mind. Maybe a thought is like a virus, you know, it can... it can... kill all the healthy thoughts and just take over. That would be serious."

Review by dani ★★★★★ 1

another perfect example that punk is beyond just music, leather jackets, docs and spiked hair.

Review by Justin Decloux ★★★★

Kids rule! Adults drool!

*catches his reflection in the mirror*

Review by Matt Gourley 2

Based on the true story of the kid who invented podcasting.

And, for some reason the guy who works for the FCC rides around in a stretch limo.

Review by Disgustipated ★★★★★ 11

I just watched Pump Up The Volume again for the first time in god knows how long. It will be forever one of may favourite movies that taught me all about being proud to let your freak flag fly. But to be honest, watching again as an adult, its treatment of suicide feels slightly problematic and somewhat counter to the spirit of the majority of the film.

In response to Malcolm Kaiser's suicide, Happy Harry Hard-On says at one point that, "the terrible secret is that being young is sometimes less fun than being dead". Now, I dont know why Malcolm killed himself, the fact is no one does, but this statement and a few others in the film has…

Review by Joe Lynch ★★★½ 2

An important movie for me growing up on so many fronts and happy to report it holds up very well (even in a sea of post 80’s mullets). Moyle’s thesis on teenage angst and finding one’s voice actually feels MORE relevant today, given how short-wave radio became blogs/podcasts/twitch feeds/etc. Endlessly quotable and quite possibly my favorite Slater performance, zits and all. Soundtrack? Defined my sonic evolution.

Review by Dave Jackson ★★★★★

I can't believe this film is from 1990. Such a perfect representation of 90s angst and culture should not have occurred this early on. From Slater's madcap, lovable performance to the awesome soundtrack, I loved the hell out of this. While watching this, I kept thinking that this was what Empire Records wanted to be but failed at being (at least from my point of view). I was surprised to see that this was from the same director. Pump Up the Volume balances angst and entertainment like it's the easiest thing in the world. It jumps from masturbation gags to teen suicide and makes it seem tonally sound. Characters who should be irritating and pretentious are believable yet larger than…

Review by Timcop ★★★★ 4

Like the bastard child of all the 80's feel-good John Hughes movies, Pump Up The Volume takes a lot of the same tropes from those films and turns them on their head. Unlike those Hughes films, the adults in this film are almost pure evil, with the student body being called to action by the cause celebre created by a fly-by-night pirate radio dj who happens to be a member of that student body.

Mixing a punk attitude, 80's indie rock, and an X-rated sense of humor, Christian Slater somehow makes a completely watchable movie that mostly consists of just him talking by himself. Probably a little less than an hour of the film's total running time consists of Christian…

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Movie Review

Movie Review – Pump Up The Volume

A terrific teen rebellion flick, still packs a punch even today, several decades after initial release. Slater has never been better, even though he’s surrounded by a cast of fairly amateurish talent giving their all, but the central themes of the film always shine through.

– Summary –

Director : Allan Moyle Year Of Release : 1990 Principal Cast : Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Annie Ross, Robert Schenkkan, Scott Paulin, Cheryl Pollack, Seth Green, Anthony Lucero, James Hampton, Lala Sloatman, Ahmet Zappa. Approx Running Time : 105 Minutes Synopsis: A young high-school student operating a pirate radio station is hunted down by school authorities and the FCC for his brazen, controversial and anarchic viewpoints. What we think : A terrific teen rebellion flick, still packs a punch even today, several decades after initial release. Slater has never been better, even though he’s surrounded by a cast of fairly amateurish talent giving their all, but the central themes of the film always shine through.

**********************

I had completely forgotten about this film until my friend Dan over at Top 10 Films included it in one of his lists . Pump Up The Volume was – nay, is – one of my all time favorite films from the late 80’s and early 90’s, and it spoke to me at the precise time in my life when things were most confusing: my high school years. As Dan mentions in his list, it’s a terrific Teenage Rebellion film, and although the clothes and cars may have dated since, the core themes of the film remain true. It speaks to teenagers everywhere – Volume deals with themes of isolation, depression, suicide, rebelling against authority, and a sense of self worth, among others. The script may be somewhat preachy in parts, but the essence of the film, the beating heart director Moyle gives it, transcends the era in which it was created. It’s a teen film for the ages, faults and all, and if you’re reading this wondering why you’ve never heard of this film before, then go out and find it.

School student by day, pirate radio sock-jock by night, Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) lives a shy and retiring life in a deadbeat suburb of Arizona. He has no friends at school, his parents don’t understand him, and he feels misunderstood and isolated from a society which deems him unworthy of existence – his internal rage at his situation manifests itself with his radio broadcasts under the pseudonym of Hard Harry, a character through which he can give voice to his opinions while remaining anonymous to anyone who may be listening. The school Mark goes to is run by the malicious and vile headmistress Loretta Cresswood (Annie Ross), who uses her status to fatuously expel any student she deems “unworthy”, in order to maintain her school’s grade point average (which leads to more funding). She is aided by the toadyish school counselor David Deaver (Robert Schenkkan). As Harry’s broadcasts become more popular with the increasingly more disenfranchised student body, the more he becomes the focus of the authority figures to try and stop – Cresswood, together with an outraged parent body, as well as the FCC, band together to track down the ranting radio jock and get him off the air. One bright young girl, Nora (Samantha Mathis) manages to track down the true identity of Hard Harry, and confronts Mark into revealing his true self to her – she pushes him to continue his work as Harry as a beacon of hope to his fellow students through their darkest hours: when a student suicides as an indirect result of Harry’s words, Mark begins to question to true motives for his actions, until he realizes the true impact he can have as a voice of chaos in the insanity.

Rebellion films have long been a staple of cinema, particularly since James Dean captured an epochal feeling of teen angst in Rebel Without A Cause , and when you hold up the genre to the spotlight, hopefully somewhere Pump Up The Volume gets a bit of time in the sun. Perhaps not as visually brilliant as Rebel , nor as commercially cool as The Breakfast Club , Pump Up The Volume more than makes up for its visual shortcomings with a punchy, sharply written script and two winning central performances by Slater and Mathis. Directed with a sense of cool by Allan Moyle, the film’s opening sequence remains a favorite of mine for evoking a feeling in the most visual manner possible – the use of Leonard Cohen’s tune Everybody Knows , coupled with the dingy, shadowy world of Hard Harry’s bedroom-set radio station (which, I might add, I tried to emulate in my own bedroom for a while) drags us right into the wrist-slitting emotion we need to get to for this film to work. It’s one instance where sound and picture work in perfect harmony at the start of a film. Moyle’s razor-sharp script does have a few problems, I must admit, when you view this film in the cold light of day, and the inherent low-budget nature of the production is evident in the way it’s shot and set, but for a film that speaks directly to teenagers about their problems, in a way they can understand, Volume ticks all the right boxes. Moyle captures the teen angst zeitgeist with such precision it’s like he was one when he made this film. Understanding what makes teenagers tick is a key ingredient in making a film like this work well.

Moyle’s script delves into many issues affecting teens around the world – and many of those issues are perhaps even more problematic and prevalent than they were when this film came out back in 1990. Teen depression is touched on, as is suicide in one confronting sequence, and where the Moyle could have made it more a melodrama than a straight drama, he never shies away from the truth of the matter. This, I think, is the film’s central positive – it never strays from the message it’s trying to impart at all, even if it’s the most painful message possible. Where Moyle’s script does tend to fall flat is in some of the dialogue, which can tend to feel forced and awkward at times as the obviously young cast struggle to deliver the goods performance wise. Christian Slater delivers what I consider to be his best performance in a film (to date!) as Hard Harry, and his long monologues into the microphone are among the most memorable in modern film, even if they occasionally border into genre cliche. Slater’s ably abetted by then-newcomer Samantha Mathis, who positively glows in her role as the sexy, smart, not-stupid-to-fall-for-your-crap Nora, and aside from a few moments where her acting naivete shows, she absolutely nails the role. Veteran performer Annie Ross delivers a ghastly school principal (aren’t they all, though?) in Loretta Cresswood, Hard Harry’s chief enemy and focus for his rage, and of the entire cast, it’s she who holds the dramatic narrative together. Without her spot-on performance, her character could have simply been a generic Film Villain; as written, she certainly comes across that way, and yet Ross manages to make her seem somehow more human than she appears, with an “I did it for the kids” vulnerability that prevents simple caricature. Keep an eye out for Start Trek actor Robert Schenkkan as David Deaver, who produces one of the films funniest moments when a recording of his voice is sampled into a music track and played around the school PA system.

The film is essentially a mix of ensemble and monologue work, with the school student body portrayed by relative screen newcomers in vignettes as they listen to Harry speak making up the ensemble, and Slater’s vitriolic Harry as the monologue. Moyle manages to make the interaction between Harry and his listeners more engaging than it might seem on the page, with reactions to his words almost an applause Harry can hear as he spouts off against the Establishment. While the majority of the film is Harry talking into the darkness, by the end, it’s not about him . It’s about those he’s speaking to . Moyle pulls no punches with his script, as the authorities close in on Harry and his world starts to come undone. The film, perhaps apropos to its themes, never looks for the upbeat moments with any alacrity, rather it is content to wallow in much the same feelings of depression many of the characters have. This isn’t a negative, don’t get me wrong. It’s actually a powerful statement of cinema that Moyle allows the film to spiral, spiral downwards without any sense of finality – the initial closing credits play over the legacy Hard Harry leaves on his town, and although perhaps not quite as powerful for today’s audience, certainly remains iconic for youth as far as breaking free from perceived constraints.

Yes, much of the look and feel of Pump Up The Volume might seem anachronistic now, a lot like The Breakfast Club and other teen films of its ilk, but the narrative and themes the film provides remain as perceptive today as they did then. Perhaps the Facebook generation may face pressures of a different technological age, but feelings of depression and exclusion from society remains a major issue facing the youth of today. Pump Up The Volume is not a panacea for the problems of the world, but it’s a truly remarkable – and instantly effective – look into the psyche of troubled teens in any part of the world. Worth a look!

If you or somebody you know suffers from depression, please visit the following websites for help:

Lifeline (australia), beyond blue (australia), suicide & crisis hotlines (usa), depressionuk (united kingdom), what others think of pump up the volume :, house of self indulgence says: “i’m sure i’m not alone when i say this, but i really wanted to launch my own radio station after i saw pump up the volume, a shimmering glob of underrated awesomeness, one that fought for your undivided attention twenty years ago, but got lost in the overcrowded realm that was teen angst cinema., glenn heath jr at match/cuts says: “released almost two decades ago, pump up the volume still feels incredibly smart, audacious, and enraged, an inspired call to action against the fascism of limitation, and definitely not just another teen movie.”, supraterranean had this to say: “it’s important to note that pump up the volume was not an enormous success. there are just as many tacky moments as memorable ones, even if the tackiest parts are realistic to everyday teenage discourse.”, who wrote this.

Rodney Twelftree

“Some people say I like films. Those people are wrong. I *love* films.” – Me. I said this.

Rodney has been writing about films for well over two decades, appreciates a good wine, the love of his wife and kids, and the affection of his dog and cats. He has a fondness of cheesy 90’s action and classic Hollywood, hates that physical media is disappearing, and wishes somebody would make a high-budget series of The Neverending Story.

See author's posts

2 thoughts on “ Movie Review – Pump Up The Volume ”

Glad you enjoyed it Rodney. Although released in 1990 it definitely has that 1980s teen film feel about it. I really enjoy watching it and have seen it a few times now. Christian Slater has never really fully realised his potential I don't think. That's a shame..I might look at a top 10 for him though. My recent post Top 10 Slasher Films

Yeah, Slater never really garnered the popular vote from the public did he? I think his work in films such as this, True Romance, Bed Of Roses, and even the John Woo flick Broken Arrow showcased his versatility, but (perhaps it was his personal problems) he never caught the imagination of many directors. He never struck me as the most appealing leading man, to be honest, although after Pump Up The Volume I would have said different – he lacked the charming good looks of your typical "star" and was probably even shorter than Tom Cruise, so he has had to work hard to garner the career he has, I'd say.

Although, his cameo in Austin Powers was hilarious.

Comments are closed.

Cliff Martinez Recalls Scoring ‘Pump Up the Volume,’ How It Shaped Future Projects

by Nadia Neophytou December 3, 2020, 9:09 am

It was 30 years ago, in August, that Pump Up the Volume came out on the big screen, with its reluctant hero, “Hard Harry,” played by Christian Slater, urging his young listeners to find their voice and “talk hard.” Over the years, the 1990 film, which confronted issues of teenage angst and suicide, gained a cult following and was adapted into a musical. Slater has said it’s his favorite of all the films he’s done, and the film’s milestone anniversary brings with it an opportunity to reflect back on its memorable soundtrack and the career of composer Cliff Martinez, who created the score.

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Before the Bronx-born, Ohio-raised Martinez become the go-to composer for unconventional thrillers and a master of synth cinema, he was a rock and roll drummer, playing for the likes of The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Captain Beefheart. A fascination with music technology and a propensity for being behind the scenes rather than on stage, drew him away from performing towards scoring.

Pump Up the Volume, which may not be as well known as Martinez’ other scores, like Solaris, Drive or The Knick , still has its pivotal place in his career. It came fairly early on, just after he’d scored Stephen Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which made a splash at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. Director Allan Moyle, who would go on to make Empire Records after Pump , wanted to work with Martinez. “It was only my second film score and Allan was a fan of Sex, Lies And Videotape, as I recall,” Martinez tells American Songwriter.

“I didn’t see much of a stylistic connection between the ambient minimalism of Sex, Lies , a nd Videotape and Pump Up The Volume …Allan didn’t seem attached to that style either,” he continues. “I don’t remember being steered in any specific musical direction except that the soundtrack was to be dominated by songs, and the mission for the underscore would be to create a sense of musical unity. So I decided to use guitars and drums in an attempt to give the score a rock & roll flavor.”

Indeed, onscreen, tracks from the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, the Pixies and the Descendents all played into the mood of teenage alienation that the film captured. Martinez recalls feeling a bit out of touch with the generation the film spoke to. “I felt a bit elderly,” he says. “I remember having to ‘get in character’ for the score and rummage around my past to recall all the feelings and problems that seemed important to me in high school. This was the first of many film projects where I had difficulty connecting with its’ characters.”

He says over the years, he’s since learnt how to approach films with characters he can’t quite relate to. “I’ve come to realize that very often you are dealing with extraordinary characters in extraordinary situations, and it is the function of the music to universalize their story,” he says. “To make an audience relate to what they see on screen no matter how removed from their own life experience that may be.”

That’s certainly been the case for many of the films he went on to make in the wake of Volume, with Soderberg, a longtime collaborator (among their many collaborations, Martinez scored the pandemic drama Contagion, which found a new audience this year ) and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn.

“In the case of Steven, it was my first offer to score a feature film and I sensed a positive artistic rapport between us. So saying yes to him didn’t require a lot of brainpower,” recalls Martinez. “With Nicolas, I was able to see a very advanced edit of Drive and it was love at first sight. I have a poor track record of predicting the commercial success or failure of any film in a rough cut, but commercial potential aside, I connected with Drive . I could easily see myself getting up every day for the next couple months and being inspired to work on it, so that was another easy ‘yes.’”

Understandably, much has changed for Martinez since Volume .

“It was only my second film score, so my technical and musical skills developed rapidly at that time. Not only was I limited in my musical abilities, much of the available computer technology for film scoring was brand new, as well as unfamiliar even to people who had been in the business longer than I,” he says. “And I had learn it all on the job. It seemed like I would have one or two musical and technical epiphanies every day, and there was always some bigger, better and cheaper piece of gear that I had to buy and learn how to use in order to make the job easier.”

Martinez’ interest in and ability to play with the advancements of music technology has ensured his place among the finest film composers of our time. But the former rock ’n roller doesn’t take himself too seriously. “These days, I can be seen at the Valley Circle freeway entrance off the 101 freeway holding a cardboard sign that reads ‘Will score for food.’” he says, before sharing details of his next project. “Earlier this year, I scored a streaming series for Amazon entitled The Wilds and it will be available mid-December. It is the story of 10 teenage women and so once again, I found myself putting on my teenager hat and straining to recollect my high school days.”

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Pump Up the Volume

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Christian Slater has been frittering away his talent lately in such junk as The Wizard, Tales From the Darkside and Young Guns II . For a while it looked as if the anarchic wit he brought to his starring role as the psycho teen with the Jack Nicholson drawl in Heathers might have been a fluke. His new movie, Pump Up the Volume , is certainly no Heathers — though it also concerns disaffected teens. But Slater gives an electrifying performance.

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He plays Mark Hunter, an introverted student at Hubert Humphrey High School, in a suburban community in Arizona. Mark is horrified that his parents have moved from Manhattan to a place he thinks of as nowhere. At night, Mark pads down to the family basement, where he uses a radio console to create a pirate radio station. On his nightly broadcasts, Mark is no longer just another unhappy kid; he’s Hard Harry, the radical host of a local show that speaks to others as frustrated and angry as he is. Hard Harry likes to pretend he’s masturbating on the air. “Here it comes,” he wails to his listeners, “another gusher.”

No one guesses Mark is Hard Harry except the rebellious, poetry-spouting Nora, well played by Samantha Mathis. The two loners feel equally alienated from their parents and a school that expels even average students to artificially raise its academic rating. Mark and Nora seem about to make a personal connection when Mark learns that a depressed caller has killed himself. The suicide precipitates a crisis and the hokey worst in a screenplay that keeps handing out pat answers to questions about sex, drugs and death. Writer-director Allan Moyle ( Times Square ) is trying to make big statements about the lethargy of youth and what strong music and talk can do to shock youth awake. You can admire Moyle’s ambitions — he’s out to fashion a metaphor for these troubled times the way Eric Bogosian did in Talk Radio — but Moyle doesn’t have a trace of Bogosian’s keen intelligence or abrasive wit. What he does have is Slater. It’s almost enough. Roaring into the microphone with all the passion he can’t put into his life, Slater gives this movie what it otherwise so desperately lacks: a reason for being.

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PUMP UP THE VOLUME

Profanities and obscenities; rap music advocating sadistic sex, crack use and suicide; female nudity and suggested masturbation; several replicas of the male sex organ; contempt for parental, school and police authority; homosexuality; nihilism; theft; and, teen smoking.

More Detail:

Mark Hunter, a shy teenager alienated from his family, has just moved to a suburb of a large, Arizona city, where he feels trapped and disconnected in “white bread land.” To relieve boredom and vent hatred for his new school, Humphrey High, Mark sets up a renegade radio station in his room using the shortwave set his parents gave him to communicate with friends back East.

Mark can barely speak to fellow students at school, but is persuasive and uninhibited on the air. His “Talk Hard” program, which glorifies sex and profanes adults and America, rapidly builds a teenage following. Broadcasting punctually at 10 p.m. every night, the disturbed D.J.’s influence begins to grow, as teens tune in on the sly to listen to Mark’s smutty philosophical rambling and erotic raging (he frequently pretends to masturbate on air and plays sexually explicit rap music). Many of his phrases are unprintable here.

Flowing from the premise that today’s teenagers are bogged down by boredom in a world where “everything has been used up,” he tells his listeners how “everybody has sold out” and “America has evolved into a smug and sleazy country, a place you can’t trust…. There is nothing to look forward to and no one to look up to.”

When students begin spreading bootleg tapes of his defiant and offensive broadcasts, school officials are outraged and start looking for the anonymous troublemaker. Mark’s parents, meanwhile, are oblivious to what is happening, blithely going about their daily concerns which don’t include Mark. Mark’s talk-radio antics go too far when a desperate listener phones in before committing suicide, as the D.J. is just a little too flip about the promise.

Aided by the FCC, the police finally track down Mark after he goes mobile for his final broadcast by stealing his mother’s jeep. As Mark is taken into custody in a powerful slow-motion sequence, other pirate radio stations spring up all over America, showing that Mark’s voice will continue, through others, to proclaim rebellion.

PUMP UP THE VOLUME portrays American youth with vivid starkness to pinpoint a real problem: a generation unable to identify with parents, causes, or religion. Unfortunately, the movie does not offer a real solution, but instead touts sexual gratification and living beyond the limits of propriety as the only things that give meaning to life.

Like MTV, PUMP UP is doubly powerful in that music is combined with film to get across its messages, one of which is suicide. Mark comments that “being young is sometimes less fun than being dead,” and theorizes that suicide is a “simple solution.” A background rap song suggests driving one’s car into the ocean. In discussing death, Mark asks, “assuming heaven, who would ever want to go there? (Expletive) boring.”

Another message is to show parents as weak in their own ideals, stupid and unable to communicate. Mark’s parents, whose only goals in life are power and money, seem like phonies to him. Furthermore, Mark sees his father as a sellout because, as a ’60s radical who pushed for change, he bought into the yuppie system by becoming a county schools commissioner. Worse, when his father discovers a girl in Mark’s bedroom, he encourages her to stay, and leaves with the comment, “Now, that’s my kind of homework!”

Homosexuality is endorsed. When one caller asks, “Why is one person born one way and one person is born another?” Mark responds, “Nobody knows why.” This discourse assumes that homosexuality is an inborn condition which the Bible says is a lie.

Climbing teenage rates of suicide, drug use, pregnancies, school drop-out, depression, and alienation — these dilemmas have only one solution: faith in God’s living Son, Jesus Christ. This is the message that today’s parents need to hear, as these teenagers are direct evidence of their parent’s moral emptiness. Until we revive and instill a spiritual dimension to our lives, anything else will be a band-aid on a mortal wound.

However, PUMP UP THE VOLUME calls one to be a follower of the rebel Barabas, not Jesus, the reconciler. In fact, supposedly mature 60-year-old men were so “pumped up” by the movie’s forceful suggestions, that they were heard repeating the film’s obscenities upon leaving the theater.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please address your comments to:

Robert Shaye

New Line Cinema Corp.

575 Eighth Avenue

New York, NY 10018

(212) 239-8880

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Pump Up The Volume 1990

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Pump Up the Volume
Rated: 4/4 May 12, 2022 Full Review Jason Bailey Flavorwire As a movie, 'Pump Up the Volume' is a lot like a teenager: at times unbearably self-important and pretentious (Nora's poems, good lord ...
Pump Up the Volume
As a movie, 'Pump Up the Volume' is a lot like a teenager: at times unbearably self-important and pretentious (Nora's poems, good lord), yet undeniably, and admirably, earnest. Full Review | May ...
Pump Up the Volume (film)
Pump Up the Volume is a 1990 American coming-of-age teen comedy-drama film written and directed by Allan Moyle. ... The film received generally positive reviews from critics and is currently rated 79% at Rotten Tomatoes based on 39 reviews. ... The movie won the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle International Film Festival, ...
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
pump up the volume is one of the best teen movies of the 90's! it's smart,and very thought-provoking. this is the second most thought-provoking teen movie of all time. second only to the breakfast club. pump up the volume is in the top 3 of the best teen movies of the 90's! it's also very entertaining,and sometimes funny. but a lot of the movie ...
Talk Hard: The Making of the Teen-Angst Classic 'Pump Up the Volume
Pump Up the Volume hardly made a dent at the box office, landing in the 15th position during its opening week at a time when theaters were dominated by Ghost, Flatliners, and Presumed Innocent.But ...
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Pump Up the Volume: Directed by Allan Moyle. With Anthony Luke Lucero, Andy Romano, Keith Stuart Thayer, Cheryl Pollak. Mark runs a pirate radio station and causes an uproar when he speaks his mind and enthralls fellow teens.
Pump Up the Volume Blu-ray Review: An Internet Origin Story
But the film remains too potent, prescient, and pissed off to write off as a cultural curio. It details what happens when a large group of underheard voices is suddenly encouraged to scream as ...
Pump Up The Volume Review
Pump Up The Volume Review. A shy teenager finds it hard to communicate with his fellow high school pupils by day, transforms himself into the outrageous pirate radio DJ Hard Harry. As those ...
Pump Up the Volume
Washington Post. Unlike "Heathers," a satiric treatment of teen suicide, Pump Up the Volume is passionately caring. It's a howl from the heart, a relentlessly involving movie that gives a kid every reason to believe that he or she can come of age. It appreciates the pimples and pitfalls of this frightening passage, the transit commonly known as ...
Pump Up the Volume critic reviews
Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed. X Register Pump Up the Volume ... Pump Up the Volume Critic Reviews. Add My Rating Critic Reviews User Reviews Cast & Crew Details 77 ...
Pump Up the Volume: can Christian Slater's teen movie become a musical
W atching the macabre 1989 high school movie Heathers, you may not have thought it needed show tunes.But after an off-Broadway run, Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy's brutally funny, candy ...
Pump Up the Volume
Those who would bundle Pump Up the Volume with the other numerous teenage-oriented movies to dot the '80s and '90s cinematic landscape do the film and themselves a great disservice. Pump Up the Volume is smart, perceptive, thought-provoking, and well acted. It examines issues that the average teen/high school film rarely addresses.
‎Pump Up the Volume (1990) directed by Allan Moyle • Reviews, film
Like the bastard child of all the 80's feel-good John Hughes movies, Pump Up The Volume takes a lot of the same tropes from those films and turns them on their head. Unlike those Hughes films, the adults in this film are almost pure evil, with the student body being called to action by the cause celebre created by a fly-by-night pirate radio dj ...
Pump Up The Volume
American film critic first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. *** Subscribe To the channel and keep up...
Movie Review
Movie Review - Pump Up The Volume August 16, 2012 ... Pump Up The Volume was - nay, is - one of my all time favorite films from the late 80's and early 90's, and it spoke to me at the precise time in my life when things were most confusing: my high school years. As Dan mentions in his list, it's a terrific Teenage Rebellion film ...
Cliff Martinez Recalls Scoring 'Pump Up the Volume,' How It Shaped
It was 30 years ago, in August, that Pump Up the Volume came out on the big screen, with its reluctant hero, "Hard Harry," played by Christian Slater, urging his young listeners to find their ...
Movie Review: Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Directed by Allan Moyle •1990 • Color Synopsis: By day, Marc Hunter(Christian Slater) is a painfully shy new kid in a small Arizona town. But by night, he's ...
Pump Up the Volume
Pump Up the Volume. By Peter Travers. August 22, 1990. Christian Slater has been frittering away his talent lately in such junk as The Wizard, Tales From the Darkside and Young Guns II. For a ...
PUMP UP THE VOLUME
PUMP UP THE VOLUME portrays American youth with vivid starkness to pinpoint a real problem: a generation unable to identify with parents, causes, or religion. Unfortunately, the movie does not offer a real solution, but instead touts sexual gratification and living beyond the limits of propriety as the only things that give meaning to life.
Pump Up The Volume
A movie with a message, Pump Up the Volume is a raw and witty celebration of free speech that will make you laugh, make you cheer and make you think. By day, Mark Hunter (Christian Slater, Very Bad Things, Broken Arrow) is a painfully shy new kid in a small Arizona town. But by night, he's Hard Harry, the cynical, uncensored DJ of a pirate ...
Trailer HD
Pump Up The Volume (1990) #WarnerArchive #WarnerBros #PumpUpTheVolumeBy day, Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) is a painfully shy new kid in a small Arizona tow...
Pump Up The Volume 1990
Publication date. 1990-08-22. Topics. Pirate radio, free speech. Language. English. Pump Up the Volume is a 1990 comedy-drama film written and directed by Allan Moyle and starring Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis. Addeddate. 2017-05-07 01:16:29.

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Talk Hard: The Making of the Teen-Angst Classic ‘Pump Up the Volume’

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Pump Up the Volume: can Christian Slater’s teen movie become a musical hit like Heathers?

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Pump Up the Volume (United States, 1990)

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