True story: I haven’t been watching many movies lately. One big reason is that I have recently become addicted, and I mean ADDICTED to The Wire. I know, I know, I’m only about eight years late on this but it got me thinking about one of my other favorite Baltimore stories. One far less gritty, more musically inclined and with more campiness than few other than John Waters can pull off. Waters takes the saccharine charm of a Norman Rockwell painting and adds his trademark fearless directing style, a dash of sex appeal courtesy of Johnny Depp and porn-star Traci Lords and sets it to all to best/worst Du-wop songs you’ve ever heard.
You see as in most high school films there are two opposing tribes. It’s the leather clad delinquent “Drapes” versus the douchey babershop quartet “Squares” in a battle of wits, dancing and games of chicken. It goes without saying that Johnny Depp is a total babe as a rebel that can shed one “single salty tear” to make the girls swoon. His silly performance is rounded out by pouty sex kitten Traci Lords, pregant scrapper Ricki Lake, the lovable Kim McGuire as Hatchet-Face and cameos from Iggy Pop, Willem Dafoe, and Patty Hearst. I’m saying, if you’re gonna watch a ridiculous high school musical it might as well be this one.
“He sort of smiled and kissed me goodbye
The tears were beginning to show
As he drove away on that rainy night
I begged him to go slow
But whether he heard, I’ll never know”
- The Shangri-Las
