Heaven Help Us is a 1985 American drama film directed by Michael Dinner, which follows a group of misfit teenagers (Andrew McCarthy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kevin Dillon, Malcolm Danare, Patrick Dempsey, and Stephen Geoffreys) and teachers (Jay Patterson, Wallace Shawn, John Heard, and Donald Sutherland) at a Catholic all-male preparatory school in 1965. During the film, the teens clash with some of the faculty members, experience first love and come of age.
Michael Dunn (McCarthy) is a new transfer student to St. Basil's in Brooklyn. He befriends the bespectacled Caesar (Danare) and reluctantly bonds with Rooney (Dillon), an underachieving prankster, and his friends. He also finds himself drawn to Danni (Masterson), a troubled girl who helps run the soda fountain across the street from the school. Finding themselves in conflict with some of their repressive teachers, Dunn and his friends get involved in various school hijinks and misadventures.
The film was released on February 8, 1985.
Tropes for the film:
- Apathetic Student: Rooney, who is repeating a grade. He enlists Caesar to do his schoolwork for him so he will not be held back again. He still doesn't graduate that year.
- Assimilation Academy: St. Basil’s is a strict all-boys Catholic school that promotes conformity.
- Caught in the Rain: While Dunn and Danni are walking on the beach, it starts to rain and they take cover under the boardwalk.
- Confessional: The film, set at a Catholic high school, has The Bully advising the other boys on how to cut down on their penance by reducing the number of sins they confess to manageable but still believable levels, and then adding one lie to the list.
- Cool Teacher: Idealistic Brother Timothy is this in contrast to the sadistic and cruel Brother Constance.
- Coming of Age
- Corporal Punishment: Brother Constance uses a wooden board to beat the protagonist's hands in the middle of class. Later he uses a leather belt on a small group one at a time bent over a bench. Upset that one of them presents a written and valid exemption to this form of punishment, Constance then starts beating him in the face with the belt. Michael then chases Constance across the campus where they crash a school assembly. The teacher attempts to beat him right there on the stage and gets punched out to the roar of the entire student body.
- Everybody Smokes: Almost everyone smokes, including Brother Timothy and Dunn's little sister.
- High-School Dance: St. Basil's hosts one with the separate Catholic girls' school... which none of the teens enjoy much because the opening speech to the event was a Brother screaming at them about the dangers of lust.
- Honor Thy Parent: Michael’s grandmother wants to see him become a priest as his parents hoped. She openly hopes he'll become the first American Pope.
- It Amused Me: Rooney and his crew pull all kinds of pranks at school, from hijinks during Mass to impersonating a priest in the confessional booth.
- Local Hangout: The fountain shop across from St. Basil’s that occasionally gets raided by the Brothers.
- New Transfer Student: Michael Dunn.
- Raised by Grandparents: Michael and his sister Boo are raised by their grandparents following the death of their parents.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Brother Thadeus becomes one by the end, when he sides with the boys' account of Brother Constance's abuse and ships him off to somewhere he won't be a threat to young students. He then promotes Brother Timothy to the teaching vacancy, implying the culture at the school will be less punishing.
- Sadistic Teacher: Brother Constance. He's more than eager to use the paddle on any student who crosses him.
- Self-Abuse: Williams is a compulsive masturbator who's also pallid, twitchy, and socially awkward.
- The '60s: The film takes place in 1965.
- Skipping School: On a school field trip to see the Pope at a parade, the boys ditch the trip and catch an Elvis movie.
- Standing in the Hall: The movie has Catholic school students who have to kneel on the floor with their arms out, balancing heavy books.
- Stern Teacher: Brother Thadeus, the school headmaster.
- Teachers Out of School: Brother Timothy isn’t like all the other strict teachers, he’s a Cool Teacher. The teens at the soda fountain get nervous at his appearance in the hangout, fearing he will raid the place like the other monks. It turns he is just there to buy his cigarettes and is not going to punish anyone.
- Tomboy: Danni, the teen girl who runs the soda fountain and helps care for her mentally infirm father.
- Troubled Child: Michael's little sister is seen early on going to bed with flowers draped all around her like a funeral, and she asks Michael to perform Last Rites on her. She hasn't gotten over the deaths of her parents yet.
- Unishment: Dunn, Caesar, Rooney, Williams, and Corbett are suspended from school for two weeks for their involvement in the ending fracas. The boys are happy to be briefly suspended.
- Wham Line: "As I understand it, Brother Constance started it."
