Pump Up the Volume

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.