Richard Linklater (director, Dazed and Confused): Like for most people, Over the Edge hadn’t hit my radar when it first came out. But it’s just a great teenage movie. I was only a couple years out of my teens [when I saw it], and I had some exposure to these planned, suburban communities that had been springing up throughout the ’70s. The movie is a perfect mix of all the conformity and boredom that goes along with the local geography of these places, and the natural restlessness, anger, and antagonisms of the teenage years.

I’d like to think that Over the Edge influenced Dazed and Confused, especially along the lines of its honest depiction of the teens themselves—flawed, romantic, angry, bored. Over the Edge not only has the courage of its own convictions, but it provides the ultimate in teenage revenge fantasies—what so many of us would like to do at that age: firebomb the school with the P.T.A. inside. I’ve always said, half jokingly, that that’s the truest ending to any real teenage movie I’ve ever seen.

From Vice’s oral history of Over the Edge.

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