Cooley High

An American International release in a long held-over run at the Fox Theater

Cooley High was conceived by executives of American International Pictures Corporation as a black takeoff on American Graffiti. What it turned out to be, however, is something leagues above the usual "blaxploitation" flick. The makers and actors of Cooley High have indeed captured a slice of ghetto life that is almost as accurate, as funny, and as touching as if they had started out to be seríous in the first place.

The story is about two chums who attend Cooley Vocational High School in Chicago during the early sixties. "Preach" is a cat too-smart-to-study, and lust a little homely-looking, who wants to be done with school so he can go to California and pursue his poetry and an acting career. His closest friend is a handsome hero to the girls and a natural basketball champion. Together they and their friends enjoy a romp through the Windy City (with some of Motown's best music of the period as a backdrop) that includes skipping class, making out at parties, fightmg, and getting in trouble with their well-meaning teacher-who only wants them "to be able to put 'high school diploma' on a job application" when they need to later.

The high point of hilarity comes when the two join a couple of do-ragged young hoods in a joy ride in a stolen Cadillac. The event finally ends in tragedy, however, when police track down the car thieves, who believe that Preach and his basketball-hero buddy have turned them in. The senselessness of the black hoodlum street ethic comes home at the end, when Preach reads his last poem to his friend in the local graveyard.

Anyone who went to high school in the last twenty years will love Cooley High, and some of us may even learn something from it.

- Frank Bach