Heaven Help Us (also known as Catholic Boys) is a 1985 American comedy-drama film directed by Michael Dinner. It stars Andrew McCarthy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kevin Dillon, Malcolm Danare, Patrick Dempsey, and Stephen Geoffreys as a group of 1960s Brooklyn teenagers, with Jay Patterson, Wallace Shawn, John Heard and Donald Sutherland as the teachers and administrators at the private Catholic school the boys attend.
Plot
In 1965, Boston teenager Michael Dunn and his young sister Boo have been sent to Brooklyn to live with their Irish-Catholic grandparents following the deaths of their parents. Michael Dunn is enrolled at St. Basil's, a strict all-boys Catholic school. His grandmother is determined to see him fulfill his parents' dream of him joining the priesthood. Dunn befriends Caesar, an overweight, bespectacled student who enjoys reading and excels academically. Caesar helps Dunn catch up with the rest of the class, but because of their association, foul-mouthed bully and school troublemaker Ed Rooney pranks Dunn outside of the soda fountain across the street from school.
After Rooney pulls a prank on Caesar, teacher Brother Constance attempts to get Dunn to identify the prankster by striking Dunn's open palms with a paddle. Fed up with Dunn's refusal to rat out the perpetrator, Constance shoves him to the floor. Dunn lunges towards Rooney and the pair are separated. Dunn and Rooney are sent to the office of the headmaster, Brother Thadeus. Rooney, impressed by Dunn's refusal to snitch, attempts to patch things up between them, but Dunn wants nothing to do with him. After school, Rooney tells Dunn that if they do not become friends, he will have to continue in his harassment in order to save face. Reluctantly, Dunn befriends Rooney and his friends, sex obsessed Williams and naive Corbett.
Dunn also befriends Danni, a teenaged girl who runs the soda fountain across from the school and cares for her mentally infirm father. Danni's fountain shop is raided numerous times by the Brothers, who wish to catch St. Basil's students misbehaving. The raids leave the shop in shambles. After one raid, Dunn helps Danni clean things up, sparking a romance.
At the sacrament of confession, Caesar enters the confessional, but Father Abruzzi becomes preoccupied with another student's misbehavior. Rooney enters the priest's booth and hears Caesar's confession, giving him the penance of befriending Rooney and making sure he gets passing grades. As a result, Caesar tutors and befriends Rooney.
The relationship between Dunn and Danni further develops, culminating in a kiss under the boardwalk at the beach. One day, during one of the Brothers' routine raids, Danni takes a stand and locks them out. The Brothers leave, but later contact social services. A few days later, Dunn and his friends see police cars and a few of the Brothers surrounding the soda fountain door as Danni's father is led out in handcuffs. Dunn rushes in and finds that social workers are preparing to take Danni away. A shaken Dunn takes Danni in his arms. Weeping, she wants him to promise that he won't be sad over her departure.
An angry Rooney develops another prank with the help of Caesar, Williams and Corbett to get back at the Brothers for having Danni taken away. The boys sneak onto school grounds at night and cut the head off the statue of St. Basil. During a school assembly the next day, Rooney presents Dunn with a duffel bag containing the missing head. Brother Constance sees the bag and accosts the boys into the gym, where Constance hits Corbett and Williams with a leather strap in an attempt to extract a confession for the vandalism. Caesar presents Constance with a doctor's note, presumably to exempt him from corporal punishment. Constance drags the cowering Caesar to the floor, beating him with the strap. Dunn angrily shoves Constance to the floor and then flees, with Constance and the other boys following him. The chase ends in the auditorium during the assembly. Constance backhands Dunn and calls him a bastard. Dunn then retaliates by delivering an uppercut to Constance, knocking him to the floor and causing pandemonium as the student body rises to its feet and cheers.
Thadeus suspends all five boys for two weeks. He then presents Constance, who he claims started the altercation, with an order that he be transferred to another assignment where he will not work with children. The five boys walk out of the school downtrodden, but then joyfully realize that they will not have to attend school for two weeks.