HAIR METAL MOVIE MADNESS #10: REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS (1986) has a rockin’ and controversial soundtrack! by COOP

Posted on August 29th, 2009

Many of us grew up in the 80’s watching the movies and listening to music. One song from that era can bring back so many great memories. Sometimes… songs remind us of movies (or vice-versa). HAIR METAL MOVIE MADNESS brings back those memories by connecting the songs we loved from the 80’s to the movie(s) they were attached to. Visit The Small Town Critic every Saturday to rock out with us to the songs and movies that shaped a generation…

Possibly the first “smutty” movie I ever saw, Reform School Girls (1986) is not a movie to be taken seriously. At all. I didn’t understand that when I first saw it. I thought all R-rated movies were serious and therefore this was serious. I figured reform schools were evil places filled with bad, naked women… something that scared yet intrigued me. Kinda made me feel like “bad girls” new secrets and things that normal people weren’t supposed to know about. Mystery and danger.

Thus started my obsession of hard rock-n-roll/metal women like Pat Benatar, Lita Ford, the girls of Vixen, Sandi Saraya, etc… It also got me interested in female actors that projected the same attitude on screen. Kim Basinger, Heather Thomas, Tawny Kitaen, Christina Applegate, etc.

But Wendy O. Williams, she scared the hell out of me. She was tough, looked like a biker and always half-naked. I was pretty sure she could kick my ass, even as I got older. I had heard (not seen at the time) about her on-stage performances with The Plasmatics and I was positive she was a freak, but I first learned of her from the movie Reform School Girls.

RSG revolves around a good girl who gets caught up with a bad crowd and ends up… guess where? Inside she meets a fascist warden (Sybil Danning), a psychopathic nurse (Pat Ast) and an antisocial gang leader (Williams). As the institution becomes more cruel in its treatment of the inmates, even the evil ones stand with the good ones to fight the system… and get naked in the process.

Extremely cliche and exploitive plot, but it’s campy treatment and racy levels of smut guaranteed it a cult following. Williams proved to be a freaky aberration of the film. Not a pretty face but fit, intimidating and when I learned she had sung the awesome theme song at the end, she had my respect.

THE SONG:

“It’s My Life”, written by the lead members of KISS for Wendy O. Williams proved to be her biggest commercial hit. The video for the song features her destroying things (TVs, furniture, a house), wrestling other females and performing a spectacular stunt where she jumps from a moving car unto a moving airplane. The crazy woman actually did it herself.

Williams was actually a misunderstood health nut and animal rights activist, back before it was cool. Feeling misunderstood and depressed, she pulled a Kurt Cobain and killed herself back in 1998 to make a statement. Her legacy endures. There was even talk back in 2007 that Hayden Panettiere would play her in a biopic. So far it appears to be just a rumor but hey, I’d pay to see that.