WAH Zine
29 YOUTH MOVIES TO WATCH THIS SUMMER Right you have no excuse, summer is fast approaching! So what film to watch? Instead of deciding on one of those shitty new horror movies where you can guess the whole plot by the title, why not get a little educated with some classic, cult and amazingly creative youth films. Here’s some top picks…CLUELESS (1995)90’s high-school fashion at it’s best. Pop-socks, checks, patent rucksacks. Cher, Tai and Dionne - what names – talk about nouveau riche. Makeovers, sex and popularity are the aim of the game here. Insult inspiration galore in this movie – ‘You’re a virgin who can’t drive!’ Oohh that’s harsh. CRUEL INTENTIONS (1999)A very raunchy teen adaptation of the novel ‘Les Liasons Dangereuse’, Ryan Phillippe is a mega rich player dickhead, Sarah Michelle Gellar is his manipulative bitch of a step sister and virginal Reese Witherspoon is the subject of their twisted little bet – can Ryan bed innocent Reese? If he loses, Michelle gets his vintage Jag, if he wins he gets Michelle…but will he still want her?   CRY BABY (1990)Johnny Depp is bad-bad boy Cry Baby Walker who is after a goody-goody girl who he hopes will make him the happiest juvenile delinquent in Baltimore. Getting married and living in suburbia are the done thing, but that all goes out the window when he shows up looking rockabilly hot - the girls decide they’re so tired of being good! Check out the original Hairspray by the same wacky director, John Waters.DON’T TELL MOM THE BABYSITTER’S DEAD (1991)Mum treks off to Australia for the summer leaving an adolescent Christina Applegate with her unruly siblings and an ancient babysitter - who subsequently pops off. Faking her age and nabbing a job as a glamorous company director’s assistant is her only hope of making any cash in the meantime. The fact that all her mates are down the beach and her colleagues are out to rumble her secret make the experience all that wrist-slittingly more enjoyable for her. EMPIRE RECORDS (1995)Teen angst couldn’t be higher in a movie about an independent record store in big danger of being swallowed up by the corporate machine and with only its employees possessing the passion to save it. It turns out that the employees also seem to all have rather a passion for each other. This film has got sex, drugs, alternative rock, arguments, cat fights and more issues than the back catalogue of Vogue. FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982)Sean Penn is constantly stoned and Matthew McConaughey actually looks good in tight pink jeans. All the young ‘uns at school get initiated by their elders into their world of snogging, drinking and beatings. This movie is well known for it’s infamous bikini scene with Phoebe Cates. What a bod. GHOST WORLD (2001)Quirky movie set in the summer after high-school graduation with Scarlett Johannson and Thora Birch. As two bored teenagers in a small U.S town, their time is spent procrastinating at the local diner, reading the romantic classified ads and playing pranks on fellow social outsiders. The designer Luella used their miss-matched mini’s with tee’s, geeky glasses and clumping boots as inspiration for her Spring/Summer 08 collection. Also the cat mask that Thora wears is immense - go buy yourself one on Ebay UK for about eight quid. GREGORY’S GIRL (1981)Schoolboy Gregory falls deep for the feisty new star on the football team, Dorothy. God, Gregory is more awkward than your dad dancing at a wedding but you can’t help but find his entrance into the world of dating somewhat endearing. Watching young Scottish boys trying to get their end in is hilarious, and the girls can always see it coming.HEATHERS (1988)These girls are the typical bitchy Queen bees of their 1980’s high school, taking the royal piss out of anyone fatter, geekier or less heterosexual than themselves. They love to play a bit of croquet, but unfortunately for them Christian Slater and Winona Ryder have other, more fatal games in mind. Worth watching for the big hair, shoulder pads and egos.KIDS (1995)Director Larry Clark made a cult classic here. Hot, hot summer in 90’s NY. Virgins, skate parks, drugs, and reckless youth’s. A young Chloe Sevigny tries to stop a horny dickhead from spreading his HIV seed to every young girl in Manhattan. Lesson from this film - wear a condom - remember it only takes one!  Once you have stomached all the issues this has to throw at you, watch Clark’s BULLY. ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979)Riff Randell is a rock and roller who loves the Ramones. Miss Toger is the new principal who wants to destroy all her rock and roll dreams. Its up to Riff and the rest of the pupils to stop Miss Toger from her evil reign by taking over the school and having the Ramones play there, with explosive results! LEON (1994)Also known as ‘The Professional’, this gritty tale sees a pre-pubescent Natalie Portman witness her scummy family savaged and killed by a bent cop and his gang of drug thugs. French hit man Leon comes to her rescue, protecting her from Gary Oldman’s psychotic character, and training her up as his murderous sidekick.  On one condition -  she keeps quiet and does his dishes. LITTLE DARLINGS (1980)American 1980’s all-girl summer camp on heat. Food fights, sneaky trips to perve on boys and a race between rival girls to lose their virginity. Can you recognise Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon as a young girl and Matt Dillon as the local hunk?LOLITA (1997)The original B+W Lolita was filmed by Stanley Kubrick, but here is the remake with Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith in 1940’s America. A tale of a precocious 13 year-old seduced by her mother’s literary lodger. The outfits are divine, but the story of paedophilia based on Nabokov’s novel is fascinating, if hard to fathom.  ME WITHOUT YOU (2001)Michelle Williams puts on a not too bad English accent for this one. We watch her going through teenage angst in 70s/80s suburbia. Always in the shadow of her beautiful, charismatic if totally unstable best friend Marina (Anna Friel) whose mum is addicted to Valium and dad is neither home nor away.  Oh and her fit older brother keeps cropping up to tempt Michelle Williams from her oh so safe and guarded life….MY SUMMER OF LOVE (2004)A bored ‘rah’ Emily Blunt stumbles across chavy Mona in the hot Yorkshire fields. They explore each other’s differing habitats of sprawling country manor and converted run down pub/Jesus worshipping stop house. Obsession and titillation make this film a great little British gem. Emily Blunt gets her tits out,  if you’re into that type of thing, and yeah the girls have a fumble in each other’s jungles too. NOW AND THEN (1995)Christina Ricci, Thora Birch. Four best friends return to their small American hometown 20 years later to relive the summer of 1970. You could compare the characters to little mini-mes of the Sex and the City girls; there are four stereotypical characters here…tomboy, prude, affected, and the one who is sexually old before her time. A great film to watch on a Sunday afternoon. Bicycle geeks check out for these girl’s wheels and dribble.PRETTY BABY (1978)This film caused a lot of controversy as it follows the story of a girl born into a 1917 New Orleans whorehouse. Brooke Shields was only 12 when filming her nude scenes, it was this graphic display of child nudity and the auctioning off of her virginity that hit a nerve when it was released in the late 70s. ROMEO + JULIET (1996)We all know the story, but done here in a modern way, it has to be seen just for the pure hotness that is Leonardo Dicaprio in a chain mail vest. Shot by Baz Luhrmann, director of Moulin Rouge, he makes this film visually beautiful in so, so many ways. If only we could really live in his brightly coloured world.SPUN (2002)You’ve never seen Mena Suvari look this frigging rough, her teeth are something else, and she is constantly constipated due to her smacked up drug addiction.  This ain’t going to get better with her bf the dealer and addict. Ross, is scratching around, getting mixed up with Mickey Rourke’s beefed-up meth dealer character ‘The Cook’, an exotic dancer and the cops resulting in an adventure only experienced when you’re on cloud cuckoo land. Look out for Brittany Murphy’s bleached denim, it’s lush, end of.STAND BY ME (1986)River Phoenix (before he died of a drug overdose outside Johnny Depp’s club in L.A) had proper stardom ahead of him. His performance in this film was one of his best. Set in the 1950s, a group of 12 year old boys go on an overnight hike to find a missing kid’s body. This isn’t a gruesome one - despite the mention of dead children’s bodies and all – it’s mostly a coming of age story about boys ‘finding themselves’ in a woods in Oregon.TANK GIRL (1995)It’s 2033, no water on Earth for 11 years, therefore survival of the fittest/craziest. Was the costume designer on speed for this one? So random and kick-arse. Based on the cult comics of the same name, the animated graphics which randomly pop up throughout the film still make it look fresh. TAXI DRIVER (1976)Jodie Foster plays a teenage prostitute called Iris  (she may be a hooker but hell you could still channel that wide brim hat, crop top and fringed bag look she had going on this summer) Robert De Niro’s lonely mentally unstable taxi-driver character tries to save her from the fucked-up nightlife of New York City. He gets obsessed with trying to clean the scum off the streets, but his powerless personality doesn’t stand up to much, so he does what every other guy with no balls thinks is a good idea to get attention – buy four handguns and assassinate politicians.THE CRAFT (1996)The new girl at an L.A Catholic school intrigues three social outcasts when they discover she has natural witch powers – they have found their forth member of their coven. United by all having various messed up issues often seen in teen movies – wacko mum and dad, self-esteem, racism - they conquer it all with spells, and with deadly effect.  THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999)Five sisters (one being the little minx Kirsten Dunst) live in a leafy 1970’s American suburb. Mum and Dad are weirdo strict – you know the type, think they’re doing it for the kids’ but are actually making their offspring detest them. All the girls want is to be free to kiss boys and listen to rock ‘n’ roll records - not much to ask is it? Deceit, suicide, infatuation and constraint are major themes in this movie. So beautifully shot, and directed by uber cool babe Sophia Coppola, Josh Hartnett is just one more reason to watch.THIRTEEN (2003)Tracy was playing with Barbie’s before she met messed up mini-woman Evie, who gets this straight-laced schoolgirl into sex, drugs and nicking money like it was going out of fashion. Tracy’s mum thinks she is turning into a little slut, just like her mate Evie with her tacky thong muffin-tops and obsession with piercings. Watch and enjoy, just don’t aspire to be them - there are too many dumb girls like that who care too much about how many boys want to fuck them.THIS IS ENGLAND (2006)Such a good film. British subculture captured across the summer of  ‘83. Mods, New Romantics and Skinheads. Based on director Shane Meadows experiences growing up in Nottingham. Becoming a united force through what you wore, listened to and believed in is integral to 12 year old Shaun, even if that means a bit of bullying and racism as a result. Here he gets wrapped up with the older boys in a uniform of Ben Sherman shirts, DMs and shaven heads.TRUE ROMANCE (1993)Patricia Arquette is an adorable call girl, Alabama; she is shit hot in her pink leopard print leggings and shiny blue sunnies and p.s. she makes a brilliant fancy dress character. Christian Slater is the comic book store geek who falls for her big time - who wouldn’t. They steal drugs from her pimp, try selling it in Hollywood, and attempt to live happily ever after. A modern Bonnie and Clyde. But does it ever end in fluffy clouds? Course not, that wouldn’t be true romance…WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995)Oh dear no one gets the ‘affectionately’ gibed ‘Weiner-dog’, she certainly comes across a little ‘special’ shall we say. If her classmates aren’t calling her a lezza, they’re calling her a freak. With a perfect sugarplum suck- arse little sister and neglectful parents her only distraction comes in the form of the new older lead singer in her brother’s band…but as if he is going to take any notice of an 11 year old, she’s got more luck with the school bully. NAOMI SMART

Mar 22 -

29 YOUTH MOVIES TO WATCH THIS SUMMER

Right you have no excuse, summer is fast approaching! So what film to watch? Instead of deciding on one of those shitty new horror movies where you can guess the whole plot by the title, why not get a little educated with some classic, cult and amazingly creative youth films. Here’s some top picks…

CLUELESS (1995)
90’s high-school fashion at it’s best. Pop-socks, checks, patent rucksacks. Cher, Tai and Dionne - what names – talk about nouveau riche. Makeovers, sex and popularity are the aim of the game here. Insult inspiration galore in this movie – ‘You’re a virgin who can’t drive!’ Oohh that’s harsh.

CRUEL INTENTIONS (1999)
A very raunchy teen adaptation of the novel ‘Les Liasons Dangereuse’, Ryan Phillippe is a mega rich player dickhead, Sarah Michelle Gellar is his manipulative bitch of a step sister and virginal Reese Witherspoon is the subject of their twisted little bet – can Ryan bed innocent Reese? If he loses, Michelle gets his vintage Jag, if he wins he gets Michelle…but will he still want her?  

CRY BABY (1990)
Johnny Depp is bad-bad boy Cry Baby Walker who is after a goody-goody girl who he hopes will make him the happiest juvenile delinquent in Baltimore. Getting married and living in suburbia are the done thing, but that all goes out the window when he shows up looking rockabilly hot - the girls decide they’re so tired of being good! Check out the original Hairspray by the same wacky director, John Waters.



DON’T TELL MOM THE BABYSITTER’S DEAD (1991)
Mum treks off to Australia for the summer leaving an adolescent Christina Applegate with her unruly siblings and an ancient babysitter - who subsequently pops off. Faking her age and nabbing a job as a glamorous company director’s assistant is her only hope of making any cash in the meantime. The fact that all her mates are down the beach and her colleagues are out to rumble her secret make the experience all that wrist-slittingly more enjoyable for her.

EMPIRE RECORDS (1995)
Teen angst couldn’t be higher in a movie about an independent record store in big danger of being swallowed up by the corporate machine and with only its employees possessing the passion to save it. It turns out that the employees also seem to all have rather a passion for each other. This film has got sex, drugs, alternative rock, arguments, cat fights and more issues than the back catalogue of Vogue.

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982)
Sean Penn is constantly stoned and Matthew McConaughey actually looks good in tight pink jeans. All the young ‘uns at school get initiated by their elders into their world of snogging, drinking and beatings. This movie is well known for it’s infamous bikini scene with Phoebe Cates. What a bod.



GHOST WORLD (2001)
Quirky movie set in the summer after high-school graduation with Scarlett Johannson and Thora Birch.
As two bored teenagers in a small U.S town, their time is spent procrastinating at the local diner, reading the romantic classified ads and playing pranks on fellow social outsiders. The designer Luella used their miss-matched mini’s with tee’s, geeky glasses and clumping boots as inspiration for her Spring/Summer 08 collection. Also the cat mask that Thora wears is immense - go buy yourself one on Ebay UK for about eight quid.

GREGORY’S GIRL (1981)
Schoolboy Gregory falls deep for the feisty new star on the football team, Dorothy. God, Gregory is more awkward than your dad dancing at a wedding but you can’t help but find his entrance into the world of dating somewhat endearing. Watching young Scottish boys trying to get their end in is hilarious, and the girls can always see it coming.

HEATHERS (1988)
These girls are the typical bitchy Queen bees of their 1980’s high school, taking the royal piss out of anyone fatter, geekier or less heterosexual than themselves. They love to play a bit of croquet, but unfortunately for them Christian Slater and Winona Ryder have other, more fatal games in mind. Worth watching for the big hair, shoulder pads and egos.



KIDS (1995)
Director Larry Clark made a cult classic here. Hot, hot summer in 90’s NY. Virgins, skate parks, drugs, and reckless youth’s. A young Chloe Sevigny tries to stop a horny dickhead from spreading his HIV seed to every young girl in Manhattan. Lesson from this film - wear a condom - remember it only takes one!  Once you have stomached all the issues this has to throw at you, watch Clark’s BULLY.

ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979)
Riff Randell is a rock and roller who loves the Ramones. Miss Toger is the new principal who wants to destroy all her rock and roll dreams. Its up to Riff and the rest of the pupils to stop Miss Toger from her evil reign by taking over the school and having the Ramones play there, with explosive results!

LEON (1994)
Also known as ‘The Professional’, this gritty tale sees a pre-pubescent Natalie Portman witness her scummy family savaged and killed by a bent cop and his gang of drug thugs. French hit man Leon comes to her rescue, protecting her from Gary Oldman’s psychotic character, and training her up as his murderous sidekick.  On one condition -  she keeps quiet and does his dishes.


LITTLE DARLINGS (1980)
American 1980’s all-girl summer camp on heat. Food fights, sneaky trips to perve on boys and a race between rival girls to lose their virginity. Can you recognise Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon as a young girl and Matt Dillon as the local hunk?

LOLITA (1997)
The original B+W Lolita was filmed by Stanley Kubrick, but here is the remake with Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith in 1940’s America. A tale of a precocious 13 year-old seduced by her mother’s literary lodger. The outfits are divine, but the story of paedophilia based on Nabokov’s novel is fascinating, if hard to fathom. 

ME WITHOUT YOU (2001)
Michelle Williams puts on a not too bad English accent for this one. We watch her going through teenage angst in 70s/80s suburbia. Always in the shadow of her beautiful, charismatic if totally unstable best friend Marina (Anna Friel) whose mum is addicted to Valium and dad is neither home nor away.  Oh and her fit older brother keeps cropping up to tempt Michelle Williams from her oh so safe and guarded life….


MY SUMMER OF LOVE (2004)
A bored ‘rah’ Emily Blunt stumbles across chavy Mona in the hot Yorkshire fields. They explore each other’s differing habitats of sprawling country manor and converted run down pub/Jesus worshipping stop house. Obsession and titillation make this film a great little British gem. Emily Blunt gets her tits out,  if you’re into that type of thing, and yeah the girls have a fumble in each other’s jungles too.

NOW AND THEN (1995)
Christina Ricci, Thora Birch. Four best friends return to their small American hometown 20 years later to relive the summer of 1970. You could compare the characters to little mini-mes of the Sex and the City girls; there are four stereotypical characters here…tomboy, prude, affected, and the one who is sexually old before her time. A great film to watch on a Sunday afternoon. Bicycle geeks check out for these girl’s wheels and dribble.

PRETTY BABY (1978)
This film caused a lot of controversy as it follows the story of a girl born into a 1917 New Orleans whorehouse. Brooke Shields was only 12 when filming her nude scenes, it was this graphic display of child nudity and the auctioning off of her virginity that hit a nerve when it was released in the late 70s.


ROMEO + JULIET (1996)
We all know the story, but done here in a modern way, it has to be seen just for the pure hotness that is Leonardo Dicaprio in a chain mail vest. Shot by Baz Luhrmann, director of Moulin Rouge, he makes this film visually beautiful in so, so many ways. If only we could really live in his brightly coloured world.

SPUN (2002)
You’ve never seen Mena Suvari look this frigging rough, her teeth are something else, and she is constantly constipated due to her smacked up drug addiction.  This ain’t going to get better with her bf the dealer and addict. Ross, is scratching around, getting mixed up with Mickey Rourke’s beefed-up meth dealer character ‘The Cook’, an exotic dancer and the cops resulting in an adventure only experienced when you’re on cloud cuckoo land. Look out for Brittany Murphy’s bleached denim, it’s lush, end of.

STAND BY ME (1986)
River Phoenix (before he died of a drug overdose outside Johnny Depp’s club in L.A) had proper stardom ahead of him. His performance in this film was one of his best. Set in the 1950s, a group of 12 year old boys go on an overnight hike to find a missing kid’s body. This isn’t a gruesome one - despite the mention of dead children’s bodies and all – it’s mostly a coming of age story about boys ‘finding themselves’ in a woods in Oregon.

TANK GIRL (1995)
It’s 2033, no water on Earth for 11 years, therefore survival of the fittest/craziest. Was the costume designer on speed for this one? So random and kick-arse. Based on the cult comics of the same name, the animated graphics which randomly pop up throughout the film still make it look fresh.




TAXI DRIVER (1976)
Jodie Foster plays a teenage prostitute called Iris  (she may be a hooker but hell you could still channel that wide brim hat, crop top and fringed bag look she had going on this summer) Robert De Niro’s lonely mentally unstable taxi-driver character tries to save her from the fucked-up nightlife of New York City. He gets obsessed with trying to clean the scum off the streets, but his powerless personality doesn’t stand up to much, so he does what every other guy with no balls thinks is a good idea to get attention – buy four handguns and assassinate politicians.

THE CRAFT (1996)
The new girl at an L.A Catholic school intrigues three social outcasts when they discover she has natural witch powers – they have found their forth member of their coven. United by all having various messed up issues often seen in teen movies – wacko mum and dad, self-esteem, racism - they conquer it all with spells, and with deadly effect. 

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999)
Five sisters (one being the little minx Kirsten Dunst) live in a leafy 1970’s American suburb. Mum and Dad are weirdo strict – you know the type, think they’re doing it for the kids’ but are actually making their offspring detest them. All the girls want is to be free to kiss boys and listen to rock ‘n’ roll records - not much to ask is it? Deceit, suicide, infatuation and constraint are major themes in this movie. So beautifully shot, and directed by uber cool babe Sophia Coppola, Josh Hartnett is just one more reason to watch.



THIRTEEN (2003)
Tracy was playing with Barbie’s before she met messed up mini-woman Evie, who gets this straight-laced schoolgirl into sex, drugs and nicking money like it was going out of fashion. Tracy’s mum thinks she is turning into a little slut, just like her mate Evie with her tacky thong muffin-tops and obsession with piercings. Watch and enjoy, just don’t aspire to be them - there are too many dumb girls like that who care too much about how many boys want to fuck them.

THIS IS ENGLAND (2006)
Such a good film. British subculture captured across the summer of  ‘83. Mods, New Romantics and Skinheads. Based on director Shane Meadows experiences growing up in Nottingham. Becoming a united force through what you wore, listened to and believed in is integral to 12 year old Shaun, even if that means a bit of bullying and racism as a result. Here he gets wrapped up with the older boys in a uniform of Ben Sherman shirts, DMs and shaven heads.

TRUE ROMANCE (1993)
Patricia Arquette is an adorable call girl, Alabama; she is shit hot in her pink leopard print leggings and shiny blue sunnies and p.s. she makes a brilliant fancy dress character. Christian Slater is the comic book store geek who falls for her big time - who wouldn’t. They steal drugs from her pimp, try selling it in Hollywood, and attempt to live happily ever after. A modern Bonnie and Clyde. But does it ever end in fluffy clouds? Course not, that wouldn’t be true romance…

WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995)
Oh dear no one gets the ‘affectionately’ gibed ‘Weiner-dog’, she certainly comes across a little ‘special’ shall we say. If her classmates aren’t calling her a lezza, they’re calling her a freak. With a perfect sugarplum suck- arse little sister and neglectful parents her only distraction comes in the form of the new older lead singer in her brother’s band…but as if he is going to take any notice of an 11 year old, she’s got more luck with the school bully.



NAOMI SMART


An homage to all the girls we love... WAH started out as a printed fanzine in 2005 in London, UK. Now we post the images and videos that remind us what it feels like to be a girl... Edited by Charlotte Roberts and Sharmadean Reid