The jd movies: when the youth was wild and not boring

I haven’t been a teenager since 2003, but there hasn’t been a decent teen movie since 1995. Have you seen Down To You? There’s this bit where Freddie Prinze Jr is meeting his girl for an extra special date and he sees her, he gasps with love and excitement at what she’s wearing. When it pans across to her, you see she’s in a floor length grey dress, with a really high neck that doesn’t hug her figure at all. It’s so incredibly underwhelming, unsexy and boring it makes me shed a tear for the youth of today. Way to make teenagers look bland and middle-aged, Hollywood.

WORDS: ROBERT FOSTER

When teenagers were first invented back in the 50s, they didn’t think about lame shit like ‘but where will I be in five years time?’, ‘I’ve got to think about the long term’ or ‘what will my mother think of this boy?’, they were more into carrying flick knives and dying in car crashes, which is a million time better to look at and hear about than Freddie Prinze Jr not having any nads.

The teen movies they made back then featured no forward planning, having time outs to think things through or fretting about the most sensible course to take at college – they went straight for the jugular and showed teenagers losing it, killing people and fucking shit up. Except the protagonist always got his comeuppance as they had to disguise them all as morality tales so parents didn’t get upset, kind of like how the voiceover on ‘Britain’s Most Dangerous Drivers’ sounds concerned but it’s actually just car crashes for you to beat off over.

These movies were called JD movies, partly because it stood for Juvenille Delinquent and partly because it stood for James Dean, who was essentially who the main protagonist was always based on. Recently I got really into the idea of these movies and got a load on DVD, if I’m honest they’re pretty badly thrown together. You’re probably better off getting the spirit of the films from the trailers, which are on Youtube in abundance. They make me want to drive really fast round Dead Man’s Curve and stab up my ‘math’ teacher.

Here’s a couple of trailers and some posters for you. I found the posters here.

bishopdante

When teenagers were first invented back in the 50s, they didn’t think about lame shit like ‘but where will I be in five years time?’, ‘I’ve got to think about the long term’ or ‘what will my mother think of this boy?

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that sounds pretty 50s square hit parade buttoned up to me. It would seem somehow culture has slid back to there! I've lately noticed entire enormous repressed & squared-off events run by the fuckin' peewee herman clan. Egg sandwiches & pinafores. I kid u not.

NICK

JD can also stand for 'Jender Discombobulation'like Plato being totally gay for Jim in 'Rebel' then going ape-shit with a .45 when he gets rejected! Also, Jim totally had the hots for Buzz. Check out their steamy exchange before the chicken run. Hot stuff.