Originally published at: Watch this insanely dated 1978 musical, "Junior High School" starring a young Paula Abdul | Boing Boing
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It’s the warbly music transfer in the opening that really makes this click.
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That opening shot really kicks arse.
Edited for missing plurality.
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The director made a pretty good career for himself as a producer and director.
He also wrote The Gate.
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This video is perfect for anyone trying to prove that musicals are a genre of ear pain that should be scrubbed from the earth.
I mean, I like some musicals a lot (some of my best friends are musicals 
) but, oy, this one was painful to listen to, even just skipping through the video.
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A movie about Junior High School kids made 43 years ago is “dated”? Imagine that. A movie made 43 years before 1978 would be made in 1935 and would have looked dated to these kids. That’s just how time works.
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If you had asked me when it was made just from the music, I would have guessed it was from the mid 1960s. I find it hard to believe it wasn’t dated when it was made.
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So much bullying…feels legit for a 1978 junior high.
I’m guessing budget constraints had something to do with it. Of course, it does remind me a lot of the kind of music we suffered through in chorus or band classes back then.
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Exactly as I remember it - books randomly knocked to the ground, things grabbed away for impromptu keep away, and just general inexplicable cruelty.
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This reminded me way too much of the unrestored People’s Temple death tape, one of the most grim recordings of all time, also from 1978. Of course, that one sounded the way it did due to weak batteries in a cassette recorder in remote Guyana. Not sure why this one sounds so bad, but it’s too hard on the ears to even enjoy as camp.
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Came here to say that I was expecting, perhaps via long-latent reflex, the “Coronet” logo to appear.
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From the looks of it, this was made the year after Grease; so maybe the filmmakers were trying to recreate a period sense on a shoestring.
I really like the school architecture in this; it looks so sharp and clean in the sunlight.
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Yeah you can’t really complain about “off-key singing” when the entire soundtrack is off-key!
Paula’s singing is much more in-key in this clip via “A Current Affair” from 1991 where they got a better copy of the movie (though the VHS of the Current Affair episode is pretty low quality itself)
Also I think they need to upscale the resolution on this like they do for those films from the 1890s.
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It’s more that it’s “dated” as in “time-stamped” to that exact time period, in a way that few films are, since it seems to use actual students and a lot of the clothes and styles aren’t made more “hip” for the movie.
When the 3 guys in tandem reach in their back pocket and pull out combs instead of phones even I was a little surprised.
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The direction, camera work and editing occurred before music videos took film making on a downward spiral of fast cuts and often indiscernible imagery. By today’s often unpalatable standards of film production, JHS may be dated but it was very well done for the pre-MTV era.
Ok I’m only 5 minutes in and, no, it’s just not tenable to blame the onset of “MTV editing” for making this movie look bad by comparison to today’s standards. It’s just bad. And that’s already grading on a curve for being made by film students.
(cued up to best moment so far)
though i will credit the dance bit that preceeds it:
I’ll wait until the mood is right to watch this.
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Reefer Madness was made in 1936, and in 1978 we would go to see it at midnight showings in smoke-filled theaters while laughing maniacally at how dated it was.
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This movie really brings the wow.
…
And flutter
(I’ll see myself out)
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