High school student Mark Hunter lives in a sleepy suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, and broadcasts an FM pirate radio station from his parents' basement which functions as his sole outlet for his teenage angst and aggression.

The station's theme song is "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen and there are glimpses of cassettes by alternative musicians such as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Camper Van Beethoven, Primal Scream, Soundgarden, Ice-T, Bad Brains, Concrete Blonde, Henry Rollins, and Pixies.

Fellow student Nora De Niro deduces that Mark is Hard Harry, and attempts to assuage the guilt he feels over Malcolm.

The radio show becomes increasingly popular after Harry apologizes to Malcolm for not telling him not to follow through, and exhorts his listeners to confront their problems instead of surrendering to them through suicide.

At the climax of his speech, overachieving student and consistent listener Paige Woodward jams her medals and accolades into a microwave, causing an explosion which injures her face.

Mark’s father, school board commissioner Brian Hunter, confronts Principal Loretta Cresswood demanding to know why she systematically expelled students with low test scores.

After his film Times Square, a new wave comedy, was taken away from him and re-edited, Allan Moyle retired from directing and began working on screenplays.

Moyle has described the film's protagonist as an amalgam of Holden Caulfield and Lenny Bruce[2] and the "Hard Harry" persona as a guy who "has to get credibility as an outsider.

The consensus summarizes: "Pump Up the Volume can be a bit overbearing, but this is one teen drama with the courage of its convictions -- and a killer soundtrack."

Working within the confines of the teen-age genre film, however, Pump Up the Volume still succeeds in sounding a surprising number of honest, heartfelt notes".

[11][12] In 2019, Point Park University's Conservatory of Performing Arts announced that it would be producing the world premiere production of the musical adaptation in conjunction with RWS Entertainment as a part of their 2019-2020 season.

[13] The world premiere production was set to open April 3, 2020, at Pittsburgh Playhouse's Highmark Theater, but was put on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.