| Overview: | Teens and crime are usually a staple in j.d. movies but the High School Big Shot here isn't really a delinquent in the usual sense of the word. Just the opposite: he's the smartest kid in school. Unfortunately, he's also living in a doomed, bleak, morbidly film noir world, and is madly in love with The Absolute Wrong Girl. Meaning the poor bastard hasn't got a chance.
TOM PITTMAN (who, at 26 years of age, is way too old to be playing a teen) is creepy smarty-pants Marvin Grant, "My brains have been sort of a curse." His only friend at school is Mr. Carter (PETER LEEDS), the English teacher, who's also trying to get Marvin a scholarship because the kid can't afford college. In fact, his widowed, jobless, alcoholic dad is so broke, the old guy borrows three bucks from Marv so he can go on a date! (Mr. Grant is played by familiar character actor MALCOLM ATTERBURY. You know the face: he's the guy who waits for the bus by the cornfield with Gary Grant in North by Northwest.)
So it's a Big Deal when sexy Betty (VIRGINIA ALEXANDER), "the best-looking chick in the whole school," sticks up for Marv just as tough guy Vince Rumbo (HOWARD VEIT) is about to clobber him. Even more shocking is that Betty breaks a date with Vince so she can go out with Marv: "Boy, she sure got salty in a big hurry!" Marvin, of course, falls madly in love with her. So much so that he even agrees to secretly write her term paper — which, as it turns out, was all that Betty really wanted him for. Unfortunately, Mr. Carter catches the deception and angrily cancels Mary's scholarship, while Betty goes back to making out with Vince on the street.
It's enough to make a good kid go bad. Which is what happens when Marv, working as a shipping clerk on the docks, overhears his boss (professional Milquetoast BYRON FOULGER) talking about exchanging a million bucks in cash for a shipment of heroin. Marv quickly enlists the aid of dapper Harry March, "the best safe cracker around," who's played by loud comic actor STANLEY ADAMS (Jerry Lewis' boss in The Errand Boy). The plan is to liberate the money from the boss's safe before the deal happens, and do it all in under ten minutes. But then the love-sick fool tells Betty all about it, thinking she'll have him once he's rich. And though the greedy little bitch wants the money alright, she'd rather get it from Vince than Marv, and orders Vince to go rob the robbers. All of which leads to a nasty end for just about everyone....
Hilariously mean-spirited (wait'll you see what happens to Marv's dad), High School Big Shot infuses virtually every scene with the happy-go-lucky message that, yes, kids, Life Stinks! Unfortunately, it's a lesson poor Tom Pittman learned all too well when he died in a car accident the same year he completed working on this.
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