SHOWBIZ 7s: Favorite high school movies from a genre star

Sam Huntington first came to our attention as a sweet-faced teen rocker in “Detroit Rock City,” the 1999 film about a group of high school friends who sneak out to a KISS concert. It was awesome, and Huntington was the most awesome part about it.

Since then we’ve seen Huntington in “Not Another Teen Movie” and in a small part in “Superman Returns.”

This week his film “Freshman Orientation” receives a very limited release. It’s a story about a guy who goes to college, falls in love with a girl and, to win her affection, pretends to be gay. “It’s just a crazy movie,” Huntington said. Then he added he made it five years ago.

Because Huntington has been playing high schoolers for most of his career, we asked him to tell us his seven favorite high school movies.

1. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” “That’s the epitome for me. Ferris Bueller is one of the greatest characters ever written. It just happens to be a high school movie.”

2. “American Pie.” “That movie made a lot of people laugh very hard. It was kind of gross-out, but grounded. That was kind of the fad there for a while, and it paved the way for its sequels, and I think it was really smart casting. That movie is great. It is kind of a cliché to say it is great. But it is.”

3. “Rushmore.” “Wes Anderson is kind of a god.”

4. “Election.” “Reese Witherspoon’s performance was fantastic, that was a defining moment for her. I love the darkness of it. It is fun and dark. You don’t see that that often. And [Matthew] Broderick is so blissfully pathetic in that film.”

5. “The Breakfast Club.” “It’s just an all-around classic. That group of people in that set-up that was like, let’s throw these actors in detention and see what happens and it was kind of free form. There wasn’t like a common motivator, it didn’t need it. Untraditional.”

6. “Say Anything.” “That was Cusack’s defining moment. He’s almost become like a symbol of that kind of awkward high school guy. He’s so relatable and especially in that movie. It is a great high school love story, it doesn’t have that traditional ending. The dad goes to jail and it was kind of awkward and sad.”

7. “Better Off Dead.” “It is such a fun movie. First of all I love ski movies and that is so ridiculous and so funny and such a symbol of that generation of film.”