Cry-Baby: the most rock’n’roll movie of the 90s

The action of the movie Cry-Baby (Cry Baby, 1990) takes place in Baltimore, Maryland. The year is 1954. There are decent Clean boys-girls studying at the local high school (The Squares), but the drop of tar in this barrel of honey is a gang of Dirty Guys (The Drapes) and a handful of these hooligans are run by someone Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker (Johnny Depp). His trick is that he can accidentally drop a single tear, which the girls really like, and cutie Allison (Amy Locane) is so crazy! He also sings, plays the guitar and drives a motorcycle!

Johnny Depp’s star has already ascended to the Cry-Baby in the series “Jump Street 21”. But it was in the Cry-Baby that he had his first major role in a feature film. In a Cry-Baby, he is the idol of women’s hearts, a handsome macho man, the dream of any girl. If in Jump Street he played a young undercover cop, then here he is a rockabill bad guy. After the Cry-Baby, he had “Edward Scissorhands”, “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and “Arizona Dream”, where Johnny played strange hairy men. But without Cry Baby, he wouldn’t be the Johnny that everyone knows and loves him. Embodying the image of a sexual rebel of the 50s, he secured the place of the main heartthrob of Hollywood.

Kim McGuire responded to the ad “a girl with a beautiful figure and a scary face is needed, who is proud of it,” director John Waters previously wrote a script for a film about The Hatchet, but it didn’t go beyond the script. The effect of the Clumsy Muzzle was primarily due to the grotesque make-up – when people met Kim, who in ordinary life had a completely expressionless face, they noted that she actually looked much better. The film was ready already in July 1989, but at the test screenings the episodes with the Clumsy Muzzle were so well received that in the fall the director shot a couple more scenes with her, which were included in the final version.

Despite the fact that Depp was previously engaged in music, he is still more of an actor than a musician. He could not be considered a good vocalist, and all his parts were performed by James Intveld, a rockabilly musician from Los Angeles. This is one of the claims of Depp’s fans to the film – indeed, it would be interesting to hear Johnny sing rockabilly, because he then sang for Sweeney Todd. But no one knew that Johnny would go so far, and therefore, musically, they decided not to take any chances.

As for Intveld, he started back in the 80s with The Rockin’ Shadows, but then the band broke up due to the fact that his brother Ricky Intveld, along with the bassist, went to the Stone Canyon Band to Ricky Nelson. Later in 1993-95, James Intveld joined the band The Blasters as a lead guitarist, from where its co-founder Dave Alvin left in 1986, who wrote two of the best songs for Cry-Baby, King Cry-Baby and High School Hellcats, and also produced the soundtrack.

One of the standout songs in Cry Baby is Please Mr. Jailer. If we highlight the best musical moments, then it will be Please Mr. Jailer and King Cry Baby. The female part in King Cry Baby and Teenage Prayer was performed by Rachel Sweet.

It’s cool that in the movie there is a grandmother with whom Allison is friends. This fact makes the Cry-Baby related to European films (remember the Boom). And Allison has the type of American girl who lives next door.

The film Cry-Baby was conceived as a parody of the narrow-minded youth comedies of the 50s, but largely thanks to Johnny Depp and the fact that the film turned out to be funny and musical, after a decade it became a cult, although at one time it was coolly received. At the end of the film, everyone learned to drop one tear, or even two at once…