‘The whole incident points to a fundamental moral breakdown in our society...’
In November 1981, 14-year-old high school student Marcy Conrad was raped and murdered by 16-year-old Anthony Broussard. If that isn’t terrible enough, what makes this case even more shocking is that Broussard showed the body to at least 10 other people and it still took days for the body to be discovered by police because none of the kids involved wanted to get into trouble. Screenwriter Neal Jimenez used this macabre tale as the basis for his script for River’s Edge, Hemdale Film Corporation picked it up for distribution and Tim Hunter was brought in to direct. The result is an odd little film that has been mostly forgotten about now but perhaps deserves a reappraisal…
A group of teenage burnouts led by the intense but charismatic Layne (Crispin Glover), attempt to cover up the death of their classmate Jamie at the hands of their psychotic friend John (Daniel Roebuck). The starry cast is rounded out by Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye and Dennis Hopper.
We need to talk about Crispin Glover. Anyone who has witnessed his bizarre but compelling performance in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter will know that Glover has an erratic and idiosyncratic acting style that is all of his own. He’s only a supporting character in that film, but in River’s Edge he is front and centre, and his performance… well… it’s certainly something. Anyone who can appear in a film with Dennis Hopper and still be the craziest person in the cast should be respected and probably feared. That being said, Hopper is also doing a load of crazy stuff here and the two of them together makes for a truly singular cinematic experience. On the other side of coin and seemingly appearing in a totally different film are Reeves and Skye, both of whom deliver likeable and captivating performances as the film’s collective moral compass. They also offer an antidote to the detached and apathetic atmosphere that pervades the rest of the narrative.
River’s Edge could only have come out in the ’80s and yet, in the light of all the gun violence that has occurred in the American school system since the film’s release, it’s also weirdly prescient. Well worth checking out.
