Joyous day for Dada Debaser as Allan Moyle's classic teen drama Pump Up the Volume (1990) is finally out on blu-ray today. Sure it's already available in other world regions, and I could have just as easily imported it, but times are tough and I can't be arsed shelling out extra for what's probably an old transfer on a barebones disc from Warner Bros. Ideally, it should have gotten the deluxe treatment like Christian Slater's other nineties classic True Romance (1993) did, but beggars can't be choosers after waiting all these years.
The second film in what's unofficially dubbed (by me anyway) "The Christian Slater Trilogy", Pump Up the Volume was one of the few films that really seemed to nail the disillusionment of Gen X and what seemed like an oppressive period in time keen to suppress various media; especially in film and music. Regardless of today's contrarians, the film was able to tap into a generational zeitgeist.
Favourite trivial detail from the film is Christian Slater's shock jock alter ego Happy
Harry Hardon sharing the same initials as the autoritarian high school he
attended, Hubert Humphrey High, as evident in the school's letterman jackets. Not being an American meant we never had letterman jackets at our school, which is a shame. As a seventies baby, I always wanted one ever since Starsky & Hutch (1975 - 1979) used to be on TV.