By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1981 drama The Waves, a made-for-teens mini-feature deconstructing the insidious nature of radicalisation and group-think starring Bruce Davison.
After the violent horror and crushing sadness of what happened in Bondi on December 14, which was preceded by years of growing rancour in the general community, the subject of radicalisation has pushed its way forcefully to the front of the national consciousness. The manner in which young people are influenced so profoundly by others – and then twisted into creatures previously unrecognisable – has been a subject for heated debate, with the community gripped by a growing desperation to fight it and prevent more ideologically driven horror from exploding on our streets.
This current climate makes a viewing of the largely forgotten 1981 telemovie The Wave even more strange and disturbingly prescient. The Wave was an episode of the long-running and oft-maligned ABC Afterschool Special series, which ran from 1972 through to 1997, and featured stand-alone, message-driven narratives aimed directly at teens, usually clocking in at around 45 minutes. The series screened in the late afternoon on weekdays, right after school, and dealt with issues affecting teenage audiences, such as drinking, drugs, bullying, homelessness, child abuse, racism and so on. Though now generally sneered at for their preachy, sometimes simplistic approach, many of the ABC Afterschool Specials were punchy, direct, impassioned, controversial and purposeful, and several starred future big names like Jodie Foster, Rosanna Arquette, Matthew Modine, Rob Lowe, Viggo Mortensen and many more.
One of the most disturbing of all the ABC Afterschool Specials was unquestionably 1981’s The Wave, which was based on the real-life case of schoolteacher and writer Ron Jones, whose 1967 Third Wave experiment was designed to demonstrate how the philosophies of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Regime took hold of Germany and eventually upended the entire nation. The sub for Ron Jones in The Wave is high school social studies teacher Ben Ross, excellently played by veteran actor Bruce Davison, who is now best known for his character work on TV and feature films, but was a truly bright and engagingly unconventional star in the late 1960s and 1970s, delivering strong performances in edgy films like Last Summer (1969), The Strawberry Statement (1970), Willard (1971), Ulzana’s Raid (1972) and Short Eyes (1977).
After Ross’s largely disinterested students blankly question how the people of Germany could so easily swallow the teachings of Hitler and his Nazis, and then merely stand by as millions were killed in the concentration camps, the shocked social studies teacher opts to give his teenage charges a very harsh lesson in the concepts of group-think, acceptance through intimidation, and power in numbers. “Strength through discipline,” Ross intones. “Strength through community.” Ben Ross first gives his aimless students a sense of purpose, and then unites them as a movement with a name (“The Wave”), its own salute, matching clothes, and easily grasped concepts based on self-determination, but really designed to create an amorphous mob.
To the consternation of his wife (Wesley Pfenning) and the unseen school principal, Ross convinces his students to spy on each other to root out the dissenting and the disloyal, which destroys relationships and tests friendships at all turns. When concerned student Lauree (Lori Lethen) begins publishing articles in the school newspaper critical of The Wave, she experiences harassment at the hands of her fellow students and even violence courtesy of her Wave-obsessed boyfriend David (John Putch), who soon sees the errors of his ways and joins with Lauree in speaking out against The Wave. As the temperature continues to rise in the corridors of his school, Ben Ross eventually puts the brakes on his experiment, which closes out in a genuinely shocking climax.
While The Wave is certainly no keenly polished piece of high-class television (while Davison is excellent, some of the performances of the way-too-old-looking actors playing the students are forced and cloying), it is utterly gripping from beginning to end, and moves at a brisk, no-nonsense pace courtesy of director Alexander Grasshoff. Witnessing Ross’s students slowly change from giggling slackers into laser focused foot-soldiers unaware of where they’re really headed is truly chilling. The Wave – and the social experiment which inspired it – shows with striking clarity how easily a young mind can be corrupted by a charismatic adult with a cache of strongly voiced opinions.
As The Wave so cleanly demonstrates, young people crave a sense of belonging, desire a community that they can call their own, and feel invincible when they are part of a powerful group. They are also sensitive and not yet fully attuned to many of the complexities of the world. These are easy characteristics to exploit, and they make the world’s young people distressingly vulnerable to those with a corrupting philosophical seed to plant. The Wave shows how easily that seed can then sprout and grow…until it entangles everything in its path.
It might have been made for kids, but this is one ABC Afterschool Special that will stay with you long after its fiery climax has played out.
Availability: The Wave is readily available online, though it’s unfortunately not in great condition.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies The California Kid, The Cracker Factory, Night Terror, Inmates: A Love Story, The Shadow Riders, CHiPs: Roller Disco, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway, Young Love, First Love, Escape From Bogen County, The Death Squad, Hit Lady, Brian’s Song, The Defiant Ones, A Cry For Help, Trilogy Of Terror, Policewoman Centerfold, Smash-Up On Interstate 5, Something Evil, Savage, A Step Out Of Line, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, A Very Brady Christmas, The Gladiator, Elvis, The Rat Pack, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story, Terror Among Us, The Hanged Man, Hardcase, Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas, Vanishing Point, To Heal A Nation, Fugitive Among Us, To Kill A Cop, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Police Story: A Chance To Live, Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town and Tribes.
