New Granada tomorrow’s city…today
For a youth growing up in the late-seventies/early-eighties, Over the Edge was the cinematic equivalent of The Anarchist Cookbook. A film so influential, so inspiring, that it would be all too easy to stumble off into an epic love poem when considering it; a sloppy wet kiss chock full of thou arts and slobbery idioms.
(I will do my best to avoid falling into that trap here. However, I make no promises.)
Over the Edge was released on May 18th, 1979. I would have been seven years old then, going on eight. I seriously doubt any parent in their right minds – even my own – would have sent a child in elementary school to see this flick on a Saturday afternoon. Over the Edge fell somewhere between backward masking and heroin on the parental approval barometer at the time. With that in mind, I most likely caught up with the film when it debuted on HBO around 1981 or thereabouts.
But catch up I did. And I was hooked, man. Hooked from the very first puff. Grease may have been the film that planted the seeds of my misspent youth, but it was Over the Edge that sowed those seeds to fruition.
Over the Edge is set in New Granada, the suburban wasteland that blights every city in America. Acres upon acres of condominiums and planned communities. The sterile, fertile grounds that birthed a thousand punk bands. On the surface New Granada may look hospitable, clean and orderly. But it doesn’t take much of an imagination to envision running into Lord Humungus taking the gimp out for an afternoon stroll, or the Feral Kid down at the corner park, tugging at your shirtsleeves and offering up a dime bag.
I grew up around rec centers and small-town hustlers. Watching Over the Edge is like watching old home movies. Sure, the acting isn’t always spot on, but since when has acting ever gotten in the way of a good movie? (Exhibit A: Corman, Roger. See also: Psychos in Love, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.) Acting chops or not, those kids were real. Realer than any depiction of teenagers that I’d ever come across at the time. They weren’t Goonies, they were goons. And how I loved them for it. Fellow latchkey kids with gobs and gobs of unsupervised time on their hands. What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot actually. Just watch and you’ll see.
“You guys got a lot of laws, right? Well, let me tell you something. I only got one law. A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid!”
