All class: The 25 most iconic high school movies

It’s impossible to hear The Go-Go’s’ “We Got the Beat” and not want to throw on Amy Heckerling’s classic about Southern California high schoolers in the early 1980s. Sean Penn’s perpetually stoned surf rat Jeff Spicoli remains one of the most quoted characters of the decade, but the film endures due to writer Cameron Crowe’s keen observations of the teenage social scene (which he gleaned by going undercover at a San Diego high school) – and, y’know, Phoebe Cates stepping out of a swimming pool in a red bikini to The Cars’ “Moving in Stereo”.

Michael Schultz’s coming-of-age drama was one of the first movies to capture the hopes and heartbreaks of high school from an African-American perspective. Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs are unforgettable as Preach and Cochise, two best friends navigating the none-too-friendly streets of Chicago’s North Side as they near the end of their senior year. Without it, we wouldn’t have Boyz II Men’s cover of G.C. Cameron’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye” or the beloved sitcom “What’s Happening”.

John Hughes shook up the film industry in 1984 with this PG-rated teen comedy about a young girl (Molly Ringwald) who’s miffed at her parents for forgetting her sixteenth birthday. Hughes doesn’t skimp on the kind of idiotic behavior expected from movies of this nature, but he evinces genuine empathy for his female protagonist, which was almost unheard of from a male director at the time. His absurdist comedic flourishes and unenlightened ethnic humor occasionally clash with the film’s kind-hearted nature, but, tone-wise (especially when you consider his National Lampoon writing), it’s a marvel it wasn’t more mean-spirited.

Richard Brooks’s stilted problem picture about juvenile delinquents running wild in an inner-city high school earned four Academy Award nominations and much critical acclaim, but it’s remembered today for the breakout performance from a young Sidney Poitier and the rousing opening credits scored to Bill Haley & His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock”. Much to the chagrin of pearl-clutching parents all over America, rock and roll was here to stay.

By far the superior juvenile delinquent drama of 1955, Nicholas Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause” is culturally significant as the film that immortalized James Dean as a teen idol less than a month after he proved all too mortal by smashing his Porsche 550 Spyder into a Ford Tudor on California’s U.S. Route 466. Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo are sensational as troubled youngsters engaging in all manner of anti-social behavior. Knife fights, chicken races and the Griffith Park Observatory became all the rage in the years to come.

Five high school students – a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal – spend a Saturday detention together, and learn that they’re as alike as they are different. John Hughes tapped into the aimless Gen X zeitgeist, and essentially launched the careers of his “brat pack” stars. Simple Minds’s “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” became an all-time teenage anthem, while the great Paul Gleason cemented his status as the go-to character actor for clueless authoritarian blowhards. 

One year after he directed Jack Lemmon to a Best Actor nomination for his moving performance in “Tribute”, Bob Clark made the most notorious teen sex comedy of the 1980s. Loosely based on his own high school exploits, Clark simultaneously sends up and celebrates the behavior of hormonally addled young men – and to say these misadventures play rather problematically today is an understatement. The film’s raunchy pièce de résistance, a girls’ shower peep show that goes painfully awry for one of the lads, was so outrageous that Fox marketing executives teased it on the poster. Two sequels and countless imitators followed.

A box-office bomb upon its 1988 theatrical release, this Michael Lehman-directed/Daniel Waters-scripted satire turned into a cult sensation on home video, and has since spawned an (as-yet-unaired) MTV series and a stage musical. More significantly, it made Gen-X icons out of Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, and entered phrases like “F— me gently with a chainsaw” into the lexicon. Waters’s pitch-black take on teen suıcide was scandalous thirty years ago, and, judging from recent (misguided) think pieces, retains the power to offend fragile sensibilities today.

Cameron Crowe returned to high school with his 1989 directorial debut, and knocked out one of the most beloved romantic comedies of all time. Granted, John Cusack’s tenacious courtship of Ione Skye might be frowned upon today (particularly his blaring of the song they first had sex to outside her bedroom window), but Crowe hits the perfect emotional pitch from the outset; first love is a life-or-death proposition when you’re a teenager.

Tina Fey’s adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s “Queen Bees and Wannabes” painted a brutally accurate portrait of twenty-first century high school social drama, leaving most of us relieved our teenage years were long behind us. It’s as much a pop-cultural point of reference for millennials as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” is for Gen X-ers, and made stars out of Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried. Alas, it remains the career peak for the supremely talented Lindsey Lohan, whose career decision making over the last fifteen years has left much to be desired.

Screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg mined their longtime friendship for this explosively funny night-in-the-life romp of two horned-up teenagers tasked with buying booze for a high school rager. Christopher Mintz-Plasse became an overnight sensation as the fake ID-bearing McLovin, while Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Emma Stone all received a massive career boost. Extra pop cultural cache: the three-letter lament “FML” was coined in this movie.

Lukas Moodysson’s coming-of-age dramedy about two teenage girls falling messily in love with one another is plenty iconic in its native Sweden (where it has a much different title), and patiently waiting to catch on elsewhere twenty-one years after its theatrical release. Perhaps the titular association with Robyn’s classic single could compel viewers to give this deeply moving (and painfully funny) film the shot it richly deserves. The movie features the greatest Foreigner needle-drop cue in film history! What are you waiting for?

John Hughes was hitting on all cylinders when he cast his muse Molly Ringwald as the nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks who falls for preppie Andrew McCarthy – much to the dismay of lovelorn outsider Jon Cryer. The film’s mid-‘80s fashions have gone from hot to horrid to retro-chic to retro-hideous over the last thirty-three years, but the music (probably the best soundtrack ever assembled for a Hughes movie) and the saccharine love-conquers-class theme still connect.

Amy Heckerling’s good-hearted riff on Jane Austen’s “Emma” resides worlds away from the sex-crazed antics of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, and, given its surreally wealthy setting, doesn’t feel as much like a nostalgia piece. Alicia Silverstone is perfectly cast as the smarter-than-she-acts teenager Cher who wants only for other people’s happiness. Heckerling’s effervescent direction and wittily perceptive writing are nicely complemented by star-making supporting turns from Paul Rudd and the late Brittany Murphy.

This last-day-of-school masterpiece from Richard Linklater did for 1976 what “American Graffiti” did for 1962. Even if you weren’t a glint in your parents’ eyes forty-three years ago, you’ll catch a Carter-era contact high from this ensemble romp that essentially introduced the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Renée Zellweger and many others to moviegoers the world over. The soundtrack is jammed with ‘70s earworms, and the dialogue is Linklater at his amusingly digressive best.

Mud-slinging campaign tactics get applied to a high school presidential election in Alexander Payne’s darkly funny adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s satiric novel. Between Reese Witherspoon’s nakedly ambitious Tracy Flick and Matthew Broderick’s vindictive Jim McAllister, it’s hard to find a rooting interest – which is, of course, the point. Even at this level, politics is a dehumanizing profession that brings out the worst in individuals, regardless of their intentions.

Paul Brickman’s Reagan-era satire about a suburban Chicago teenager who makes a short-term killing in “human fulfillment” (aka prostitution) while his parents are away on vacation was a massive pop culture phenomenon that turned a five-year-old Bob Seger song (“Old Time Rock and Roll”) into a Top-40 radio sensation, made Ray Ban sunglasses a must-own accessory and, oh yeah, launched Tom Cruise’s into superstardom. Unlike many ‘80s hits, “Risky Business” has aged remarkably well, particularly in the wake of the recent college admissions scandal. Princeton can always use a guy like Joel.

Sissy Spacek wreaks bloody, fiery revenge on her cruel classmates in Brian De Palma’s ferociously cinematic take on Stephen King’s classic horror novel. The tormenting of poor Carrie White is so nightmarishly heightened (by a clique of troublemakers that includes John Travolta, Amy Irving and Nancy Allen), you can’t help but cheer as she condemns them to a hellish death at the senior prom. The most frightening individual in the film is Piper Laurie, who earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her gloriously over-the-top performance as Carrie’s evangelical mother.

Peter Bogdanovich’s black-and-white triumph about a small, dying Texas town made stars out of Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd, and presented a harshly unsentimental view of youthful yearning. Your dreams of becoming your best self, of leaving your go-nowhere friends behind to make it somewhere on the map that matters, are probably not going to be realized. The evidence for this discomfiting conclusion is all around you; once upon a time, the adults in your town dreamed of doing likewise.

Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty star in Elia Kazan’s controversial-for-1961 drama about a young girl’s sexual awakening in the harshly proscriptive time-and-place of 1928 Kansas. The film marked Beatty’s big-screen debut, and catapulted him to stardom – for this alone, it is iconic. But its Wood’s film, and while the timidity of the material shortchanges her, she’s nonetheless captivating as a teenager pressured to repress her libidinal urges.  

Max Fischer is a precocious nightmare of a boarding school student who puts on elaborately staged productions of ‘70s films like “Serpico” and brazenly courts his institution’s new first grade teacher (Olivia Williams). He’s not at all likable or relatable, and yet Wes Anderson’s sophomore feature makes him an utterly compelling protagonist. Anderson’s deft use of British Invasion cues (as well as an Ashby-esque preference for Cat Stevens) was unique at the time. His entire aesthetic came together in one film.

Bill Forsyth’s films are so whimsically unassuming that it’s hard to term any of them “iconic”, but this lovely little yarn about a strange young man who falls for the girl who supplants him as his soccer team’s forward is one of the most acutely observant movies about young love ever made. It’s a film of unusual pleasures and moments that most screenwriters wouldn’t think to capture, but it all adds up to something melancholy and stirringly true. 

Stay gold, Ponyboy. It doesn’t get more iconic than Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s YA classic, “The Outsiders”. The cast is comprised of soon-to-be stars (e.g. Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane and Tom Cruise), and the Greasers-vs-Socs rivalry dials into a class-consciousness that the target audience is beginning to understand, but has yet to articulate. It’s a formative, almost mythic work.

Depending on your worldview, this is either an irresistible escapist fantasy or a Leni Reifenstahl-esque piece of privileged propaganda. Subtext aside, it’s possible and entirely reasonable to regard this John Hughes comedy as a carefree, anti-authority lark about a kid who simply doesn’t want to go to school. Dig deeper, and you might not like what you find. There’s an argument to be made that this is the most iconic film of the 1980s, what with its material obsessions (e.g. Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari), new technology fetishes (e.g Ferris’s computer and synthesizer) and inexplicable Charlie Sheen cameo.

“Romeo and Juliet” by way of the San Fernando Valley. Martha Coolidge had to wait seven years after her feature debut to make this gem of a teen movie about a valley girl (Deborah Foreman) who falls for a nice-guy punk (Nicolas Cage). The film was made to capitalize on Moon Unit Zappa’s novelty hit, but Coolidge runs with her opportunity; this is a splashy, unabashedly goofy romantic comedy with a semi-serious undercurrent. It’s a deftly directed movie that shows off Coolidge at her humanistic best.