Marv Grant (Pittman) is a high school student who lives with his deadbeat, alcoholic father. At school he begins dating the attractive Betty Alexander (Virginia Aldridge), who eventually manipulates him into writing her English class term paper for her. Marv does this, but the subterfuge is easily uncovered by the professor. Betty fails the class, and the professor withdraws his recommendation from Marv's college application, without which Marv has no chance of earning a scholarship. In anger, Betty throws Marv over and returns to her old boyfriend, Vince, revealing that she had only been using Marv from the beginning.

At his part-time job at the docks, Marv overhears his boss plotting a drug transaction worth $1 million cash. The money will be kept in the office safe prior to the deal. In despair, Marv plots to steal the money, with the help of safecracker Harry March and Sam Tolman, to cure troubles with his father and Betty and he secures $550,000 of the take for himself. He tells Betty about the pending robbery to entice her to marry him, and she apparently accedes. In reality she secretively tasks her boyfriend, Vince, to steal the money from Marv.

Marv and his associates steal the money, but things then go horribly wrong when it's discovered Marv's father has hanged himself, then Vince and two accomplices intervene and shoots Sam, and he is horrified. When Betty arrives on the scene soon afterwards, Vince accuses her of making him do this, and he kills her, too. Vince's accomplices flee, but the police soon arrive where they shoot Vince and the drug importer. Marv is arrested and the money falls into the water, being lost.

• Tom Pittman as Marv Grant
• Virginia Aldridge as Betty Alexander
• Howard Veit as Vince Rumbo
• Malcolm Atterbury as Mr. Grant
• Stanley Adams as Harry March
• Louis Quinn as Samuel Tallman

The film was financed by Roger Corman who was particularly impressed by the performance of Tom Pittman in the lead.^[2]

In February 1959 Filmgroup announced they would release ten films. Their first movies were High School Big Shot (1959) and T-Bird Gang (1959) produced by Stanley Bickman.^[3]

Mystery Science Theater 3000 edit

In 1994, the film was featured in a sixth-season episode of the movie-parody series Mystery Science Theater 3000 alongside the 1954 short film Out of This World. The main topics of ridicule were Marv's wimpy demeanor, huge lips and awkward appearance, his father's pathetic alcoholism, and the overall bleak nature of the film. There was also a running gag involving Tom Servo singing "Don't Pay the Ferryman" whenever characters reached the car ferry, leading to Mike Nelson throwing him across the theater out of frustration.

The ending in particular prompted the writers to dub it "one of the most depressing films we've ever seen" and include a skit where the characters of the show "kill" each other with water guns to mock the fact that most of the major characters were killed in a brief moment of time, nearly one after the other.

The episode was available on DVD by Shout Factory on March 28, 2017 alongside the original unriffed film as a special feature.^[4][5]

• List of American films of 1959
• Jam Handy - the production company responsible for the 1954 promotional short film featured on the episode Out of This World

• High School Big Shot at IMDb  
  • MST3K episode at IMDb
• High School Big Shot is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive
• The official MST3K treatment on Shout! TV