There are some movies that just take us back to a certain time in our lives and this one takes me back to my early teens.
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Full of teen angst and rebellion and boasting a great soundtrack, this movie stars Christian Slater (True Romance), Samantha Mathis (American Psycho) and a very young and almost unrecognisable Seth Green (Austin Powers trilogy).
This is what it’s about:
By day Mark Hunter (Slater) is a painfully shy school boy in a new town, but by night, using short wave radio equipment his parents bought him to talk to his friends back east he becomes “Hard Harry”, a confident and influential voice over the airwaves with an ever growing audience.
When one of Mark’s listeners takes his own life after calling into his show the police are on the hunt to find out the real identity of Hard Harry, shut down his broadcast and bring him to justice for the recent suicide.
I remember watching this film virtually on repeat as a teenager! Maybe something in me identified with his character, who knows…
On a geeky note, I love that Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis reunited six years later in the 1996 action/thriller, Broken Arrow (also starring John Travolta). She then went on to star (albeit briefly) alongside Travolta again in The Punisher (2004) - I’m a bit sad like that.