The Big Wheels (1967)

William E. Huntsberry

Avon Books

This is apparently a parable about political power set in a high school, but I will confess to being too stupid to really understand the lesson to be learned.  The summer before their senior year, six guys decide to put themselves into class leadership positions so as to influence certain key decisions for the upcoming term.  What starts as simply running for office eventually devolves into fraud and blackmail, but as most these underhanded dealings have to do with the Senior Prom, it's a little hard to find them too disturbing.  Today, of course, some kids in Junior High would have no reservations whatsoever taking out a rival pot or crack dealer with a Glock, so this daring expose/allegory is "quaint" by contemporary standards.  Much more effective in this regard is Rene Daalder's Massacre at Central High (1976), a film that uses American high school to stage an allegory about the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s.