classicsoncall Almost from the outset, I couldn't find very much that was credible about this movie. It starts with Christian Slater portraying a disaffected teen who has difficulty adjusting to high school in Arizona having moved from the East Coast. Okay, I'll grant some separation anxiety from his friends back home, but Slater's character is a good looking, fashionably dressed enough teen who shouldn't have had any trouble making new friends or introducing himself to girls in his class. That he couldn't even look one in the eye defied any kind of logic that I can come up with. Then there's the social milieu at Hubert Humphrey High School. It appeared that EVEYONE going to school was ready to plunge into anarchy after listening to Hard Harry's (Slater) pirate radio broadcasts. That's just not reality. I know the movie was trying to make a point about teenage angst and alienation, but even so, there would have been some responsible students somewhere in those corridors who wouldn't go along with Harry's broadcasts to defy all forms of authority. And finally, there was Mark/Harry's home life. Didn't his parents hear him screaming downstairs during his radio outbursts? And I won't even get into how easy it would have been to discover who was doing those shows if a fellow student like Nora (Samantha Mathis) was able to figure it out. Okay, so it's almost three decades since this movie came out, but I can't imagine how authorities would have been that clueless to scope out Harry's location and put an end to his nonsense sooner than they did. A recent incident at a local high school near me that threatened the safety of students resulted in three neighboring school lock-downs within a half hour.

AaronCapenBanner Christian Slater plays Mark Hunter, a shy teenager who has just moved from the East coast to Arizona. His parents give him a short wave radio set that he turns into a pirate radio station where his shyness evaporates, and instead he uses the handle "Hard Harry", where he vents his frustrations and confusions to his fellow teenagers, who it turns out are very receptive to this message, and "Hard Harry" finds himself the most popular and influential person in town, much to his high school principal's consternation. Things take a dark turn when a troubled teenage listener commits suicide, and the authorities become eager to shut down his illegal broadcasts.Smart and appealing film has a fine performance from Christian Slater, that really speaks to the hearts and minds of teenagers, and still rings true. Dramatically uneven, but will resonate strongly with people who like to listen to talk radio.

Howlin Wolf To me, it's the perfect companion piece to Heathers. It has the same message, but this time Slater's character is the voice of reason who the audience can side with, instead of an agent of destruction...Many of the same themes are touched upon in the two films; how hard it is to be an adolescent when you feel like you're being disenfranchised, and the sense of feeling shepherded into the uniform lines of conformity that produce the obedient workers of the future. However, in contrast to the dark tone of "Heathers", "Pump up the Volume" strikes an optimistic note of people banding together to build something, rather than the savage nihilism that says to induce change, you have to completely obliterate things and start again.Ultimately, doing your best to get the message heard makes a heck of a lot more sense than simply putting a bomb under the problem, and then absolving yourself of the results.

Bifrostedflake I first saw this film around 1996, when I was 13 and just going into that 'I hate the world and everything about it' phase that most teenagers go through. I fell in love with it there and then and over the years I've owned 5 separate copies.Not just because of the unbelievably brilliant soundtrack, not just because of the real and relate-able characters, not just because of the engaging and original plot, but because I still feel now, what I first felt when I saw the film. Sometimes everyone feels that they're alone and it takes another voice, one coming from a someone you might not even ever have met reminding you that everyone feels that crushing loneliness and only you can change that.Even now that I'm nearing my mid-twenties and every time I watch this film I want to 'Rise up in the cafeteria' and 'stab my teachers with a plastic fork.' Being a teenager sucks, its probably the most free time of your life, but everything from parents, to homework, to hormones prevents most from truly enjoying the experience.I want every teenager to watch this film, I want every person who looks back on their teen years with regret to watch this film, I want every person who's forgotten what its like to be a teenager to watch this film. I think there's room in just about everyone's heart for it.