It also featured musical performances by Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Ford, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and Brooklyn Dreams as "Professor La Plano and The Planotones".

In late-1950s New York City, WROL disc jockey Alan Freed (Tim McIntire) promotes his upcoming rock n' roll show at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, headlined by Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Coleman (John Lehne), targets Freed for allegedly inciting teenagers to wild and immoral behavior by broadcasting raucous and sexually suggestive rock n' roll songs, many of them by black musicians.

Freed also encourages Louise (Laraine Newman), a white teenage songwriter whose parents ignore her talent and disapprove of her associating with the Chesterfields, a black doo-wop group who perform her songs.

Freed himself suffers discrimination when he takes a racially mixed group of teenagers with him to look at a luxury home he wants to buy; the owner refuses to sell to him at any price.

[3] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that "'American Hot Wax,' which has a plot so thin you could thread a needle with it, chooses to see the era strictly in terms of the B-movie melodramas it produced.

"[7] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Director Floyd Mutrux and screenwriter John Kaye evidently fail to perceive that the liveliest elements in their movie contradict their admiring view of Freed as a pop-culture hero and martyr ... the filmmakers insist on looking at their subject matter through rose-colored glasses.