Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Director: Allan Moyle
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
By night, shy student Mark Hunter (Slater), resentful because his family has moved from New York to an Arizona backwater, retires to the basement to become pirate radio DJ Hard Harry, so named because he pretends to masturbate on air. Mixing outrage, Leonard Cohen and social commentary, his show becomes compulsory for the youngsters at Hubert Humphrey High School. They phone and write in with problems ranging from teen pregnancy to loneliness, but when one listener commits suicide, Hard Harry is charged with criminal solicitation. Now all they have to do is find him... Writer/director Moyle turns what could have been a wallow in teen angst into something altogether more forceful. The perfectly cast Slater effectively propels the film, his intensity and dry delivery giving it a definite edge, as does a soundtrack which includes Ice T, Concrete Blonde and the Cowboy Junkies.Author: CM
Cast & crew
Director: Allan Moyle
Producer: Rupert Harvey, Sandor Stern
Cast: Christian Slater, Scott Paulin, Ellen Greene, Samantha Mathis, Anthony Lucero, Andy Romano, Annie Ross full cast
Duration: 102 mins
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
A Bond a day: No.5 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'
Join Time Out as we revisit the 21 official James Bond movies to celebrate the release of 'Quantum of Solace'
Steve McQueen on 'Hunger'
Dave Calhoun meets artist Steve McQueen’s whose debut feature film, ‘Hunger’, is the story of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands
Producer Stephen Woolley on ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’
Stephen Woolley, recalls the near catastrophes he had to contend with in bringing Toby Young’s memoir to the screen
Paul Newman: 1925 – 2008
Paul Newman died at his Connecticut home this weekend, at the age of 83. We look back at one of the great movie careers of the twentieth century
Richard Attenborough: interview
‘Entirely Up to You, Darling’ is the long-awaited autobiography from Sir Richard Attenborough. David Jenkins meets him in his Richmond home
Hard hacks to follow
To celebrate the release of 'How To Lose Friends and Alienate People', Time Out pick some of the toughest journalistic gigs in cinema








What do you think?
Post your review now