WHITE PUNKS ON DOPE

WHITE PUNKS ON DOPE

RIVER’S EDGE (Island Pictures)

Bill Holdship

River’s Edge is one of the most powerful movies of this or any year. Loosely based on a true incident, the plot revolves around a 16-year-old high school psycho (Daniel Roebuck) who strangles his girfriend for no other reason than a cheap thrill, leaves her body in the woods, brags about it, and then takes his clique of stoned heavy metal friends to see the corpse when they don’t believe him. No one narcs on the killer for two days, mainly because the speed freak leader (Crispin Glover) of this pack presents a moral code that says their obligation is to protect their living friend. After all, he explains, “Jamie is dead. She was our friend, too, but there’s nothing we can do for her now.”

To be fair, screenwriter Neil Jimenez and. director Tim Hunter tried to instill some humanity into at least two of the teenage characters, Matt (Keanu Reeves) and Clarissa (lone Skye Leitch). But even they have little grasp of their own emotions; too many drugs, too much TV and the wasted skeletons of the ’60s “counterculture” have numbed them to the realities of murder and death. “I cried when the guy in Brian’s Song died,” says Clarissa. “Why can’t I cry for Jamie?” These kids can’t even bring themselves to cry for their murdered friend when they attend her funeral at the film’s conclusion. Spiritually and emotionally, they all have as much life as the open-eyed corpse that stares back at them on the river’s edge.

These kids live in a world of moral chaos with no ethical codes on which to build a life. After all, don’t Motley Crue have a "romantic" song about a guy who kills his girlfriend on their latest LP? Isn’t the newspaper headline about some guy who strangled his girlfriend in Central Park because she “hurt” him during sex? Besides, murder is something everyone’s grown up surrounded by on TV and the nightly news. You can’t even trust the President or the preacher. Everything means less than zero.

When Johnny Rotten snarled “no future” in 1977, there was a rage and purpose behind it. It was powerful, and it was an anthem. But these kids would have no use for Johnny Rotten. For one thing, they listen to bands like Slayer and Agent Orangemusic that literally resembles the sounds of Hell, and I’m not talking Tubular Bells here. But beyond that, there never was any hope of a future for these kids in the first place— no chance of even dancing to a beat of the living dead—and they take that for granted. Nothing matters, and it doesn’t matter if it did. And the film’s scariest premise is that the next generation of teens—exemplified by Matt’s angelic-looking but demonicacting little brother (Joshua Miller)—may prove to be even more confused and psychotic.

These kids have inherited the “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll” war cries of the '60s much too long after it lost any semblance of social conscience and began its flirtations with glorified decadence. Acid evolved into horse tranquilizers. Sex is something you use. Rebellion against social injustice has evolved into rebellion solely for its own sake. And an ex-’60s radical schoolteacher sighs “You missed my point” after, having explained about the civil rights and anti-war marches of his era, one of his students exclaims: "It would be so cool to ‘off’ a cop.” River’s Edge is a definite indictment of the ’60s—an ex“flower child” mother allows her 16 and 10-year-old sons to smoke dope in the house (in front of their pre-school sister) just so long as it doesn’t come from her own private stash—and yet this isn’t any ultraconservative tract.

“We were children once playing with toys” went the Traffic song, and toys—or, more specifically, dolls—are a glaring symbol throughout River’s Edge. The most important of these dolls is “Ellie,” a lifesized sex doll that belongs to Feck (Dennis Hopper), the one-legged ex-biker who supplies the kids with dope and gives the teenaged strangler asylum in his house when the police finally pick up his trail. There’s something very wrong if Hopper doesn’t get an Oscar this time for his brilliant portrayal. Feck is a psychotic symbol of the worst sins of the ’60s—he claims to have murdered his own girlfriend in the name of love many years before—and yet, strangely, he’s the closest thing the film has to a “moral center.” Even he’s aware, in his psychotic glaze, that there has to be a reason for everything, and he’s totally bewildered by these kids whose actions have no rhyme or reason at all. You almost feel sorry for him when he hugs "Ellie” near the film’s conclusion, muttering “You were never supposed to get old.”

River’s Edge is both a brilliant movie and a shocking movie—but, strangely enough, it’s also a very funny movie. There are many hilarious scenes throughout the film, thanks primarily to the powerful performances of all concerned. You can’t help but roar when you see Hopper hobbling into a convenience store with “Ellie” in his arms, as the teenage psycho holds a gun to the cashier’s head. And in the telltale scene, Hopper asks the young strangler: “But did you love her, man?” "She was alright” is the almost Belushi-esque reply—and the audience howls if only because laughing hurts less than crying.

Above all, River’s Edge is probably the horror movie of this decade. The difference is these zombies are real.