On Easter Sunday, April 15/2001, The King of Punk, Joey Ramone was taken from this world. But he left behind not a small amount of himself on Video.
Aside from the many music videos he made with his band, THE RAMONES; Joey has made numerous appearances in movies throughout his life (I'll list a bunch at the end). But the Movie he will be remembered most for has got to be:
ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL
So Joey, whereever you are, this weeks movie of the week is for you!
For me ROCK N ROLL HIGHSCHOOL has always been the greatest of all teen-comedy movies. Todays sad and sorry ('Empire Records' and maybe 'Can't Hardly Wait' excepted) teen flicks could take a lesson.
The story is a simple one, Youth vs the Establishment. THE RAMONES come to town and as much as the Youth are excited, the Establishment (the highschool principal and the parents) get their ass-hairs up and, of course, there is a confrontation and the highschool gets nuked!!! Plus the RAMONES do some excellent tunes (including some live stuff from THE ROXY)...
Besides the RAMONES, the ever-cool PJ Soles (from Carrie), and Mary Woronov (Death Race 2000, Night of the Comet) play arch-nemisis' Riff Randall and Principal Togar respectively. And King of B-movie bit parts himself, Dick Miller (list of movies too long to fit in these brackets) plays a part as the police chief.
Now this flick comes from Roger Corman's New World Pictures and an interesting little known fact was that it was to originally be called DISCO HIGH (God forbid!!!) but after Director Allan Arkush heard the Ramones it was changed (just another way the RAMONES saved Rock N Roll!!). Incidentally Joe Dante (Piranha, The Howling) also, though uncredited, helped direct and has a writing credit.
This is one of those movies I watch over and over, and the kids love it too!!!
And now for a list of movies with appearances by JOEY RAMONE:
Final Rinse (1999)
We're Outta Here! (1997) (Ramones Documentary and Concert video)
Hard Core Logo (1996)
1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992) (Punk Documentary)
Lifestyles of the Ramones (1990) (Videography and Documentary)
Roadkill (1989)
If you know of any more that should be added to this list, let me know!
I've noticed Amazon is just ripe with all sorts of Ramones stuff, here is a selection of stuff I liked:
