The Flaming Teenage (1956)

The Flaming Teenage is a 1956 American moral panic movie. This time the moral panic is about teenagers and alcohol. All it takes is one drink to set a good well-behaved young man on the downhill slide into the nightmare world of depravity and crime.

In fact this movie is more of a moral lesson about what to expect from the exploitation movie business, as we will soon see.

It starts, like so many similar films, with a guy in a suit sitting behind a desk informing the audience of the horrors they’re about to see and warning that this could happen to your son.

Then we see a teenager staggering down a road dead drunk picked up by the cops. The next day the kid’s dad decides to teach him a lesson - he takes on a tour of the city’s bars and night-clubs. Once Junior witnesses the degeneracy to which alcohol inevitably leads he’ll be too scared ever to touch a drink again.

Then we get the narrator back again to inform us that now we’re going to see the real-life story of Fred Garland, another chilling illustration of the perils of the demon drink.

Fred Garland is a very young man who has his own business - a small-town candy store. Fred has a nice girlfriend named Mary. But he isn’t happy. He hates small-town life. He dreams of making it big in the big city.

One night at a party someone slips something into his drink - alcohol! Fred and Mary only drink soda pop and fruit juice. That one taste of booze will destroy Fred’s life!

Fred sells the candy store and moves to New York. He becomes a theatrical producer and then a booking agent but by now he’s hooked on the booze. He stumbles from disaster to disaster and like everyone who makes the mistake of taking one drink he ends up as a dope dealer and a drug addict and winds up behind bars.

He doesn’t just wreck his own life - he breaks Mary’s heart and he breaks his parents’ hearts.

I believe this movie was originally shot in 1945 (under the title Twice Convicted) but unreleased at the time and then released in 1956 with additional footage to make it look like a new movie. This was not an uncommon practice in the classic exploitation movie days. In this case the formula was to take a very dull 1940s moral scare exploitation movie and add some contemporary footage with teenagers and crazy rock’n’roll music to convince audiences foolish enough to part with their money that they were going to see an exciting contemporary story of thrill-seeking teenagers.

The contrast between the new footage (with 1950s fashions and music) and the old footage (with fashions and music from more than a decade earlier) is quite jarring. There’s no logical connection whatsoever between the new footage and the old. The new footage is quite amusing with its ridiculously over-earnest tone. The old footage is just stodgy and melodramatic (but not melodramatic in a good way).

The acting, in both the new and old footage, is astonishingly amateurish.

Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. (best known for directing The Blob) and Charles Edwards are the credited directors but I have no idea which of them directed which bits of this composite movie but I believe that Yeaworth probably only directed the Fred Garland footage. Yeaworth spent the latter part of his career making religious films which won’t surprise you after seeing The Flaming Teenage.

Alpha Video have released this movie paired this with another “these crazy teenagers today” moral scare movie, The Prime Time. The transfer is fullframe (which is quite correct) and it’s fairly typical of what you expect from Alpha Video - it’s dark and murky and image quality is a bit on the fuzzy side. But it’s watchable. Sound quality is OK.

The Flaming Teenage has a few (a very few) amusing moments but mostly it’s about as exciting as reading temperance tracts. If you’re expecting a fun juvenile delinquent flick you’re in for a disappointment. It doesn’t even have camp value. Not recommended but if you buy the disc to get The Prime Time and you’re incredibly bored and you can’t find anything else to watch then I guess you could risk it. Just make sure you have a generous supply of alcohol on hand.

The Prime Time (1960)

The Prime Time is a 1960 low-budget American exploitation movie which is one of those “these crazy teenagers today” movies.

Jean Norton (Jo Ann LeCompte) is seventeen and she’s running with a wild bunch and she’s out of control. These kids stay out all hours of the night (sometimes after ten o’clock) , hanging out, listening to rock’n’roll and drinking soda pop like it’s soda pop. This kind of immorality is bound to lead to consequences.

Jean’s parents think she’s dating a nice boy named Tony (James Brooks) but Tony is just a blind. Tony drives her to the Golden Goose Lounge and from there she meets her real boyfriend, a detective named Mack. Tony isn’t happy with this arrangement because he’s sweet on Jean but she isn’t interested in him. Jean and her cop boyfriend often rendezvous at the Beard’s pad. The Beard is a crazy cat who’s more or less a beatnik and he’s a painter, which is every bit as bad. And he paints pictures of women without any clothes on.

The trouble starts one night when Tony drops Jean off as usual but the cop boyfriend can’t make the date so he tells her to go to the Beard’s pad.

Jean, being a crazy out-of-control teenager, asks the Beard to do a nude painting of her and then things get really out of control.

Tony is in a real bind. He’s gone to the Golden Goose to meet Jean and take her home but Jean doesn’t show. Tony goes off looking for her but all he finds is her car, abandoned.

Tony’s parents and Jean’s parents are plenty mad but they don’t seem to know what to do. So Tony and his friends decide to play detective. They’re going to find out where Jean has gone to.

Curiously enough although the parents call the cops the cops don’t seem to do anything at all so all the detecting is done by the teenagers.

We know Jean has landed herself in deep trouble but we don’t know how deep. Maybe she’s lying dead somewhere, maybe she’s left town (as she’s been threatening to do).

This movie was made just about the time that the sexploitation was boom was starting. The fist nudie-cuties had already appeared. The Prime Time isn’t quite a nudie-cutie but it does feature some nudity when the kids go skinny-dipping in the lake.

It’s kind of a transitional movie, bridging the gap between the 1950s exploitation movies (focused on juvenile delinquency and the immorality of teenagers) and the early 60s sexploitation movies. A bit in the same mould as Louisiana Hussey although Louisiana Hussey is a much better movie.

James Brooks, who plays Tony, looks very much like Stephen Brooks (the star of the early seasons of The F.B.I.) - in fact he looks so much like him that I suspect that either he is Stephen Brooks, or maybe his twin brother).

Jo Ann Le Compte is OK as the wild child Jean. She’s supposed to be seventeen but she looks like she’s closer to thirty. Ray Gronwold is reasonably effective as the sleazy beatnik painter. Look out for Karen Black in a small rôle. Apparently her nude scenes were cut from the final print.

This movie was produced and co-written by Herschell G. Lewis and it’s sometimes believed that he directed it. That doesn’t appear to be the case. The credited director is Gordon Weisenborn. The directing is pretty uninspired but it’s nowhere near dull enough to be a Herschell G. Lewis film. The legendary David F. Friedman also had a hand in the making of this movie.

Alpha Video have paired this with another “these crazy teenagers today” movie, Flaming Teenage, on a single disc. The transfer is fullframe (which is quite correct) and it’s fairly typical Alpha Video quality - it’s a bit on the dark and murky side and image quality is none too sharp. But it’s quite watchable.

The Prime Time isn’t very good but it has some camp appeal and some amusement value and some actual rock’n’roll. And it’s an interesting look at how youth culture was perceived in 1960. It’s enjoyable enough if you dig this sort of stuff and you’re in the mood.

Kitten with a Whip (1964)

Kitten with a Whip is a 1964 juvenile delinquent melodrama (based on Wade Miller's novel of the same name) which despite its indifferent reputation is very much worth seeing and not just for Ann-Margret's awesomely over-the-top performance.

It's an absolute must-see for Ann-Margret fans and for aficionados of juvenile delinquent movies.

Here's the link to my review of this kitschy delight at Classic Movie Ramblings.

The Rica Trilogy 1: Rica (1972)

The Rica trilogy might not be exactly classics of the pinky violence genre but they are at least representative of that genre.

The first film in the series, Rica (Konketsuji Rika), was released by Toho in 1972. This is an interesting reminder that although Toei is the studio most associated with pinky violence the other Japanese studios also dabbled in this disreputable but lucrative genre.

The gimmick to this series is that the lead character is half-Japanese and half-American, as is the actress (Rika Aoki) who plays her.

Rica is a girl with plenty of reasons to be bitter. The reason she’s mixed race is that her mother, a Japanese schoolgirl, was raped by American soldiers during the Korean War. Rica herself was raped by one of her mother’s boyfriends. As you might expect she has a bit of a problem with anger. She’s found a way to deal with this. She finds that committing acts of extreme violence helps.

Now Rica has another problem, and another reason to be angry. She’s the boss of a girl gang and gangsters have raped and kidnapped seven of her girls. Even worse, the girls have been sold into sex slavery to feed the appetites of American servicemen in Vietnam. Being a girl boss she’s going to have to do something about it. It’s a matter of honour.

It all gets very complicated from here on in, with rival yakuza gangs and rival girl gangs and betrayals and strange alliances. Rica gets sent to a Christian reform school but soon escapes. In fact she gets sent to the reform school several times but security is not exactly tight. She makes a bitter enemy, Dragon God Reiko. Reiko is the girl boss at the reformatory but Rica has a problem with any kind of authority figures.

This movie contains all the key pinky violence elements. There’s graphic violence (some very graphic indeed), there are countless rapes, Rica gets chained up, there are full-scale gang fights, there’s a fair bit of consensual sex, there’s prostitution, there are drugs, there’s sex slavery, there are vicious girl-on-girl fights, there’s some nudity. Rica also finds love. He’s a gangster of some kind but he’s a good gangster.

Rica’s world is not a world divided into criminals and law-abiding citizens, it’s a world divided into honourable criminals and dishonourable criminals. Authority figures play very little part in this world and they’re usually corrupt and inept (although the Japanese Christian lady who runs the reform school is surprisingly enough portrayed as quite well-meaning if a little naïve). In this world girl juvenile delinquents usually have a sense of honour. In pinky violence films girl juvenile delinquents are often portrayed as being essentially samurai, living by the honourable code of the warrior.

The main problem with Rica is the lead actress. It’s not that Rika Aoki is terrible. She isn’t. And she does look like an athletic sort of girl. The problem is that if you’re a pinky violence fan you’re going to immediately compare her to Meiko Kaji and Miki Sugimoto and she’s not in the same league as those ladies. She doesn’t quite have their looks, or their acting talent or their charm. Most crucially, she lacks the charisma that Miss Kaji and Miss Sugimoto have in spades. But she’s OK. And she’s quite attractive, but not in an obvious sex kitten way.

Rica also lacks the visual inspiration of the better pinky violence movies. On the other hand director Kô Nakahira can’t be faulted for his pacing. This is a movie that never stops for a second.

Japanese exploitation movies often had political themes. There’s a bit of an anti-war theme here, with American deserters from the Vietnam War treated sympathetically. They’re the only Americans sympathetically treated. There’s a fair bit of bitterness here about the American occupation. On the other hand, while Rica’s mother was raped by an American soldier (and the mother of one of her gang members suffered the same fate) the real anger here is directed at Japanese yakuza (with perhaps some help from corrupt authority figures) selling Japanese girls as sex slaves. The fact that they’re going to be used as sex slaves by Americans does seem to intensify the anger a little but of course that could be put down to nationalism rather than overt anti-Americanism. The important thing is that the political angles are not laboured - this is an exploitation movie, its job is to deliver excitement and sleaze and that’s what it concentrates on doing.

There’s one odd scene of Rica singing and dancing in a night club in a bikini. What’s odd about it is that you expect it to get sleazy but it doesn’t. It could just about pass muster in a Hollywood beach party movie. Incidentally, as was quite common in Japanese exploitation movies, the lead actress does her own singing.

The Media Blasters Rica DVD set includes all three movies on three discs. The anamorphic widescreen transfer for Rica is excellent.

Rica is a roller-coaster ride of sleazy thrills. If you like the pinky violence genre you’ll find it worth your time. It’s not difficult to see why this movie was successful enough to spawn two sequels. Recommended.

Jailhouse Rock (1957)

It’s many years since I’ve seen an Elvis Presley movie but since I like his music and since his movies certainly qualify as cult movies I thought it was about time I checked out a few of them. Jailhouse Rock, released by MGM in 1957, was his third movie. His first two movies had been hits but Jailhouse Rock is definitely a bit more ambitious. It features great songs and it makes an attempt to be at least somewhat gritty.

The character he plays, Vince Everett, is a nice guy but he’s impulsive and he has a temper. He gets into a bar fight. He’s trying to defend the honour of a lady (who probably isn’t much of a lady) but he gets carried away and the guys dies and he finds himself serving a prison sentence for manslaughter.

His cell mate is a broken-down country singer named Hunk Houghton (Mickey Shaughnessy) who is the prison entrepreneur. If there’s a way of making money in prison Hunk knows it. Hunk teaches Vince that if you don’t have money in this world you’re nothing but he also gets Vince interested in the idea that you can actually earn a living as a singer.

After being released Vince meets music industry insider Peggy Van Alden (Judy Tyler). His first attempt at stardom fails but Vince is not a guy who gives up easily. They start their own record company and pretty soon Vince is the biggest sensation in the music business. He’s on the way to fame and fortune but he’s also in danger of losing his basic decency. Too much fame and fortune too soon can be a dangerous drug. And the inevitable romance between Vince and Peggy seems destined to crash and burn.

This is of course a musical and it pretty much follows the long-established template for movie musicals. It borrows elements from the classic backstage musicals and it’s your basic rags-to-riches story wherein the star makes it to the top but then they’re going to have to learn that there’s more to life than money and fame. Musicals don’t require complicated plots and the plot in this movie is more than adequate for the purpose.

As an actor Presley is actually not that bad. In Hollywood he quickly gained a reputation for professionalism and for being, by Hollywood standards, a remarkably polite and easy-going guy. He refused to take acting lessons but he took acting quite seriously. What’s interesting is that he really is acting here, he’s not playing himself. Vince is not at all like Elvis. He’s surly and rude and bad-tempered and he tramples over other people’s feelings. It’s not that Vince is a bad guy. He would never actually cheat anybody. He won't even cheat Hunk even though Hunk tries to cheat him. There’s a lot of good in Vince. He just needs to grow up and he needs to think before he acts.

This was the era of the brooding self-pitying new style of star like Marlon Brando and James Dean who were seen by Hollywood as the key to attracting a younger audience. The performances of Brando in movies like The Wild One and Dean in Rebel Without a Cause now seem embarrassing but Presley’s performance stands up quite well. He didn’t know anything about Method Acting techniques. He just followed his instincts and as a result his performance comes across as more natural and less contrived. He wasn’t a great actor by any means but in a rôle like this he’s fine.

Judy Tyler is the perfect leading lady for Elvis. As Peggy she’s strong-willed but feminine and while she’s not going to let Vince walk all over her she’s not going to give up on him either. Tragically Tyler was killed in a car accident at the age of 24 shortly after shooting of the film was completed.

It helps if a musical has good songs and that’s where Jailhouse Rock really scores.

The tricky part for Elvis was that Vince, when he’s first trying to get a break in the music industry, is really not very good so in the early songs he has to come across as a mediocre singer and it’s not easy for a great singer to sound mediocre. He does this pretty well. He manages to make those early songs sound slightly lifeless. Of course Vince soon learns what he’s doing wrong as a singer and then Elvis gets to give us some truly great local performances.

The Jailhouse Rock number was Hollywood’s first ever attempt at a rock’n’roll big production number in the classic movie musical style and it’s great. Elvis rejected the initial choreography explaining that he just couldn’t do that type of dancing so the choreographer then built the whole routine around the type of dancing that Elvis could do. The results are superb. The (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care production number is in a different style but it’s just as good.

The Blu-Ray release is excellent. The black-and-white cinematography looks terrific and there are a couple of worthwhile extras including an audio commentary.

This is not a big-budget blockbuster but neither is it a low-budget affair. Production values are quite high. Having Elvis as the star in 1957 was pretty much a guarantee of box-office success (and it did extremely well) so it was obviously considered worthwhile to spend some real money on the production. It’s well made and the acting performances (Including Elvis’s) are a cut above B-movie standards.

Jailhouse Rock combines all the virtues of the traditional Hollywood musical with the energy of rock’n’roll and the charisma of Elvis. Highly recommended.

Malibu High (1979)

When you watch a movie made in the 70s with a title like Malibu High you know what to expect. In this case your expectations are going to prove to be dead wrong. This is not a teen comedy, or a sex comedy. It’s not a teen melodrama. Deciding what it actually is presents a bit of a problem. There is teen melodrama here and the central character is a high school senior but mainly this is a crime thriller - although you won’t know that until about halfway through the picture. 

Kim Bentley (Jill Lansing) is just your average high school student but things are starting to go wrong for her. This is 1979 and the American Dream is still alive and this is southern California, the very epicentre of the American Dream. If you’re a bright, pretty high school student and you have rich parents the world is your oyster. Unfortunately Kim is not exactly a bright student. She’s flunking every class. And her parents are not rich. Her father killed himself and her mother struggles to keep things afloat financially. Worst of all her boyfriend Kevin (Stuart Taylor) has dumped her. To rub salt into the wound he’s dumped her for spoilt rich girl Annette Ingersoll (Tammy Taylor).

Everything Kim wanted seems like it’s being taken away from her. She had desperately wanted to graduate from high school, and she is still madly in love with Kevin. Kim decides that something has to be done and she’s going to do it. The first thing is to do something about her grade point average. That’s not too difficult. If her teachers won’t listen to her she’ll just sleep with them and then blackmail them.

Kim also decides she needs to earn some money. For a girl with her modest accomplishments being a hooker seems like the best bet. Tony (Al Mannino) is a sleazebag dope dealer who operates from a van which also serves as a kind of mobile mini-brothel. Kim is soon the star attraction. In fact she’s the only attraction but she’s a major drawcard.

Soon Kim has attracted the attention of a big time pimp, Lance (Garth Howard). This is a chance to earn real money and to show up that snooty bitch Annette. It’s not quite as simple as that however. Kim has taken a step into another world, the world of organised crime. At this point the movie changes gears and Kim starts to change as well, discovering a side of herself that she might have been better off not discovering. Lots of good girls go bad but very few do so quite as spectacularly as young Kim.

It’s hard to say just how seriously we’re supposed to take this picture. It’s not played for laughs at any stage but the plot is utterly outrageous. In some ways it’s more like a 1950s juvenile delinquent movie than a 70s teen exploitation movie. Everybody’s playing it straight but the content is totally off-the-wall.

This was the last of the handful of films directed by Irvin Berwick and while his approach is straightforward and conventional it’s effective enough. The scenes of violence in the latter part of the movie are handled well. He also knows how to pace a movie.

The acting is pretty average for the most part (sometimes below average) which is not surprising for a low-budget movie released by Crown International and destined for the drive-in circuit. The one exception, and it’s a major exception, is Jill Lansing as Kim. She gives the character real depth. Kim is not exactly a sympathetic character but at least we can understand how she got to where she is and we can see that her emotional wounds are very real and very raw. This was Jill Lansing’s only movie role and she then dropped out of sight never to be heard of again. Which is a pity since this performance should have landed her parts in more prestigious movies.

As an added bonus we get to see a very great deal of Miss Lansing’s naked breasts and rather lovely they are too. For the late 70s this is a movie that (despite the subject matter) is fairly restrained on the sleaze front. Apart from a brief glimpse of pubic hair early on all we see is breasts (admittedly with great frequency) and the sex scenes are positively coy. Miss Lansing’s breasts were however presumably enough to keep the attention of young male viewers at drive-in screenings and they also get a fair amount of violence. Unusually though for this type of movie there’s also enough to keep female viewers interested with Kim’s romantic woes and her vendetta with the self-satisfied rich girl Annette.

Kim’s confrontation with the headmaster is the film’s most bizarre episode. It’s bizarre in a good way. I think. It’s definitely bizarre in an interesting way.

A very pleasant surprise is the extremely good anamorphic transfer included in Mill Creek’s Drive-In Cult Classics: 32 Movie Collection. I believe there’s also been a Blu-Ray release!

Malibu High is a strange one. I can’t decide if it’s a bad movie with a good movie inside it struggling to get out or if it’s a good movie with a bad movie inside struggling to get out. It is original and it is entertaining. It’s perhaps too dark in tone to qualify for camp status, but much too outlandish for the arty crowd. And probably too weird for mainstream audiences at the time. It was popular enough with its intended audience. If the story is too over-the-top for you you can always just wait for yet another topless scene from Jill Lansing. 

Movies like this are the reason why it’s worth delving into the strange and often murky world of drive-in fodder. Every now and then you come across a classic of the genre such as this. Highly recommended.

Reform School Girl (1957)

The title of AIP’s Reform School Girl (1957) gives you a pretty good indication of  what to expect although fans of the juvenile delinquent film genre may find this one a bit on the tame side. In fact they may find it very much on the tame side.

Seventeen-year-old Donna Price (Gloria Castillo) lives with her aunt and uncle and it’s not a happy life. The uncle keeps making passes at her. Then a double date goes badly wrong for her. Her date, Vince (Edd Byrnes), beats up her uncle and the teenage foursome then head off in a car Vince has stolen. Vince is a big man, in his own mind at least. He thinks he’s a tough guy and tough guys don’t worry about speed limits. Predictably he runs across a local cop who does bother about speed limits, there is a chase and a man is killed. Vince’s tough guy act might not convince most people but it’s enough to intimidate a seventeen-year-old girl. Donna refuses to squeal on Vince (who took off before the police arrived) and as a result she is sent to reform school.

The Hastings School for Girls is full of what 1950s audiences would consider to be tough cookies. Donna does her best to put on a tough act herself but basically she’s just confused and suspicious.

Then along comes idealistic young teacher David Lindsay (Ross Ford). Idealistic young teachers are bad enough but Lindsay is also a psychologist. Being a psychologist it goes without saying that his understanding of human behaviour is basically zero. Lindsay is not merely hopelessly naïve, he is also a bleeding heart, in a big way. He is convinced that the girls need to be treated with kindness and respect. Not surprisingly the girls despise him immediately.

Working in the school’s vegetable garden Donna makes the acquaintance of a local boy, Jackie Dodd (Ralph Reed). This boy arranges a double date for Donna and one of the other girls, Ruth (Jan Englund). How do you arrange a date with girls confined in a reform school? That’s easy. Jackie knows a way to get over the fence.

Mr Lindsay spots Donna heading off to meet Jackie at ten o’clock that night and it gives him an idea. Maybe having dates would be good for the girls? Why not organise a dance for the girls and some of the local girls? The school’s headmistress Mrs Trimble is understandably sceptical but Mr Lindsay convinces her that it would work if it was properly supervised and if the boys were the right sorts of boys. And that should be no problem because naturally the respectable parents of nice boys will be absolutely thrilled by the idea of their sons socialising with reform school trash. The 50s was the beginning of the Age of the Bleeding Heart and Mr Lindsay gets his way.

Things seems to be looking up for Donna but Vince is about to throw a spanner in the works. He’s getting increasingly jumpy, fearing that the police may be about to nab him for the hit-and-run killing. He figures that since the only witness was Donna it might be a good idea to do something about shutting her up for good. His first plan is to make use of one of the girls in the reform school, a girl who was sweet on him for a while, to make Donna appear to be a stool pigeon. That way the other girls will take care of his problem for him.

That plan sets up the sorts of cat-fights that the audience for this type of film would have relished and it does liven up the action for a while at least. When Vince decides to adopt a more direct approach to his problem the stage is set for the exciting climax, which sadly proves to be conspicuously lacking in actual excitement.

Writer-director Edward Bernds had an extremely prolific career in B-movies. He does a competent job here but the story really needed a bit more spice. If you’re going to do a juvenile delinquent movie you might as well make it as sleazy and as outrageously trashy as you can and this one is a bit lacking in both sleaze and trash value.

Gloria Castillo does a decent job as Donna. Edd Byrnes manages to make Vince very creepy and to emphasise the basic cowardice under his tough guy exterior. Ross Ford can’t do anything with the character of Mr Lindsay - he’s just too dull, too earnest, too dedicated, too caring and just generally too irritatingly perfect.

The Region 1 DVD release is barebones but perfectly acceptable.

Reform School Girl is mildly entertaining but it certainly isn’t one of the better 50s juvenile delinquent movies. Worth a rental if you’re a JD movie completist.

Youth Runs Wild (1944)

Youth Runs Wild was a 1944 product of Val Lewton’s legendary B-movie unit at RKO, but if you’re expecting it to be like his horror movies you’re going to be disappointed.

When we think of juvenile delinquent movies we naturally think of the 1950s, but in fact they were being made as early as the 1930s, Dorothy Davenport’s 1934 The Road To Ruin being an outstanding early example. The Road To Ruin was an exploitation movie, made outside the studio system and not subject to the Production Code, and it was therefore able to be fairly racy with drugs, booze and even nudity being featured. Youth Runs Wild on the other hand was a product of the studio system, and it’s very much blander.

Frankie Hauser (Glen Vernon) is 15 years old. He lives with his parents and his older sister Mary, whose husband Danny has gone off to war. Frankie is in love with the girl next door, Sarah. She’s an older woman, being 16 years old. The Hausers are an ordinary decent family.

Frankie had never been any problem to his parents, not until recently. Now he’s been playing truant from school. Both Mary and his parents are inclined to suspect that Sarah has been a bad influence on him, and this suspicion grows much stronger when Frankie finds himself hauled before a Juvenile Court. Frankie is now forbidden to see Sarah. Danny, now returned to the US after being wounded, is assigned parole of Frankie and his two youthful partners in crime.

Sarah has her own problems. Her parents are only interested in partying and as far as they’re concerned she’s just in the way.

Both Frankie and Sarah have been seeing quite a lot of Larry Duncan (Lawrence Tierney) and his girlfriend Toddy (Bonita Granville). Larry always seem to have lots of money, and this makes Frankie feel very inadequate. Frankie’s problem is that he is still just a kid, and he’s in too much of a hurry to grow up. Watching people like his brother-in-law Danny go off to war makes him feel even more of a kid. With the US war effort in full swing Frankie feels he is missing out, that kids only a few years older than him are in uniform and getting the respect that goes along with that.

The movie limps along to a painfully predictable ending, with an even more painful epilogue of government propaganda about the ways juvenile delinquency is being solved. The movie mostly takes the line that everything is the parents’ fault, although rather disturbingly it seems to imply that the government can and will fix everything.

The problem with this movie is that Hollywood had not yet invented the teenager, producers were not yet aiming movies specifically at the teen market, and teen subcultures   had not yet been recognised. As a result the movie lacks the focus on the clothes, the style, the music of teenagers that 50s juvenile delinquent movies have. It comes across as a movie aimed at the parents, intended as a stern warning of the dangers of neglecting their kids. Socially conscious movies with a message are almost always cringe-inducing and this particular movie is a prime example of that tendency. The screenplay is unbelievably clumsy and heavy-handed.

Mark Robson directed a couple of notable pictures for Lewton in the 40s, but this movie lacks the style of the Lewton horror films. The B-movie budget is painfully apparent and the story does not offer the opportunities for hiding the modest budget by the use of low-key lighting. The result is a movie that looks as dull as the story it is telling.

The acting is uniformly unimpressive, but given the blandness of the script, the terrible dialogue the actors had to work with and the heavy-handed message incorporated into virtually every scene, you really have to feel sorry for the cast. There really wasn’t much they could do. Even Lawrence Tierney seems unusually dull - Larry is just not a bad enough villain to give Tierney anything to sink his teeth into.

Youth Runs Wild remains no more than a curiosity in Val Lewton’s filmography. It lacks the camp value that makes 1950s juvenile delinquent movies so much fun and it’s painfully earnest. It’s a movie that wants to be an exploitation movie but everybody involved in making it was much too timid to go that route. It’s interesting to see a 1944 movie grappling with a phenomenon that was only just starting to attract attention, and also grappling with the stresses that the war imposed on people on the home front, but sitting through this movie is quite a chore, even with a running time of just 67 minutes. If nothing else, it proves that even Val Lewton could make a bad movie.

The Cool and the Crazy (1958)

The Cool and the Crazy is a 1958 juvenile delinquent classic which provides everything than fans of this genre expect and love. But despite all this it remains just a trifle disappointing.

Bennie (Scott Marlowe) is the new kid at school. At first he’s an outsider but his craziness soon makes him not only popular, but the leader of the gang. Bennie’s defiance of authority is calculated to make him a hero, and this pose really is calculated. Bennie is not what he seems to be. He’s a drug dealer and he’s been infiltrated into the local high school to get the kids hooked on drugs.

The proves to be extremely easy. The other kids want to do everything that Bennie does. If  Bennie smokes dope they want to smoke dope. And if Bennie takes harder drugs they’ll want to follow him in that as well.

The previous gang leader, Stu (Dick Jones), is soon pushed aside and he’s the first to get hooked. He’s vulnerable because he’s lost his leadership position.

The one kid who doesn’t quite go along with Bennie is Jackie (Richard Bakalyan). He’s fallen for a girl and he’s more interested in her than in drugs. But Jackie will run into other problems. When his friend Cookie gets into real trouble and needs money for drugs Jackie is tempted into stealing to help him out. Ironically he doesn’t realise it’s already too late for Cookie.

Bennie has his own problems. He’s rather too fond of sampling the merchandise he peddles, and his drug supplier Eddie (Marvyn J. Rosen) doesn’t like that. Eddie knows that a doper is not a reliable employee and he soon casts Bennie adrift. What is Bennie to do now? He needs the drugs, he needs the money, and he’s come to enjoy the adulation of the other kids and now that’s threatened. Bennie becomes increasingly desperate and out of control.

Of course this is an easy movie to mock with its somewhat dated attitudes towards drugs, although when you consider what the drug culture was about to do to America then maybe it’s not so funny after all. Pretty soon there would be a lot of Cookies and Bennies.

Scott Marlowe is superb as Bennie. It’s not difficult to believe that he would easily convince kids that he was super-cool and he has plenty of charisma. This role was a gift from the gods for a young actor and Marlowe makes the most of it, overacting outrageously but very effectively. It’s unfortunate that his subsequent career wasn’t more distinguished.

Richard Bakalyan is good as Jackie although I personally found him to be a bit disturbing, which is a slight problem since he’s the only really sympathetic character in the movie. Gigi Perreau as Amy, Jackie’s girlfriend, gets very little to do. She’s a touch on the insipid side but that possibly makes her a fairly realistic teenager. Marvyn J. Rosen makes a great heavy. Sadly this was his only movie.

Director William Witney made several notable juvenile delinquent movies and other assorted B features before concentrating mostly on television work. There’s nothing startling about the job he does here but he’s efficient and he keeps things moving along.

There are some classic juvenile delinquent movie moments in The Cool and the Crazy, especially the scenes involving Bennie’s desire to drive his car between two motorcycle cops. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out why this is such a classic moment.

The British DVD release from Direct Video is barebones but of good quality.

This movie is mostly going to be enjoyed for its camp value, but that’s why juvenile delinquent movies are so much fun. The Cool and the Crazy is not quite in the front rank of JD movies - it doesn’t have the awe-inspiring weirdness of a movie like the Ed Wood-scripted The Violent Years . But it’s still a must-see for fans of the genre, if only for Scott Marlowe’s performance.

The Girl in Lovers’ Lane (1959)

The Girl in Lovers’ Lane has a bit of a problem. The poster and the title both suggest a sleazy exploitation juvenile delinquent movie but really it tries to take itself quite seriously as a Social Problem movie.

The problem is that it didn’t have the budget or the production values to get itself taken seriously by the sorts of people who loved Social Problem movies back in 1959. It was always going to end up on the drive-in circuit where audiences were going to expect to see a sleazy exploitation juvenile delinquent movie.

Danny Winslow (Lowell Brown) is a pleasant if slightly naïve teenager who gets all broken up when his parents decide to divorce. So he run away from home. He tries hopping a freight train but his innocence gets him into trouble straight away. He gets beaten up. And then he wakes up in the freight train to find that a young drifter has stolen his wallet.

The drifter is Bix Dugan (Brett Halsey), but he’s actually not a bad sort. He gives the wallet back. And the money. If the kid had been just a common thief and the money had been stolen money (as he’d assumed) he’d have kept the wallet. But he’s not the type to steal from poor dumb innocent kids like Danny. Pretty soon he finds that Danny intends to follow him around like a lost puppy. Bix is tough and streetwise but he’s tolerant and hanging around with a lost puppy who has a big bankroll doesn’t seem like it would be too much of an ordeal. He won’t steal from Danny but if Danny wants to pay for them both to get some decent food and pay for a room so that Bix doesn’t have to sleep in freight cars for a while he’s not going to complain.

They end up in a small town called Sherman. There’s not much in Sherman but there’s a diner with a pretty waitress. Her name is Carrie (Joyce Meadows) and within about thirty seconds she’s developed a huge crush on Bix. Bix is a good-looking guy and Carrie is the sort of girl who’s always been afraid of boys but she thinks Bix is actually sensitive underneath his cynical exterior. Which he is.

It’s not all pleasantries though. The local juvenile delinquents decide Danny is an easy mark. And now Danny gets his first lesson in Being a Man. Bix explains that sometimes you have to fight rather than run away, so Bix and Danny do fight back and they manage to persuade the juvenile delinquents that they should look for easier marks elsewhere. In today’s era of Political Correctness it’s an unfashionable message but it has to be admitted that Bix has a point.

There are bigger problems to face. There’s the creepy town sleaze Jesse (Jack Elam) who is stalking Carrie. Bix figures that Jesse, while undeniably creepy, is no real threat. That turns out to be a Big Mistake that will have very fateful consequences indeed when the movie suddenly turns very dark indeed.

The most fatal and the most common error made by low-budget film-makers is slow pacing. The Girl in Lovers’ Lane certainly suffers from that fault.

It’s the sort of movie that modern audiences are going to mock (and the MST3K crowd apparently mocked it unmercifully). Director Charles R. Rondeau doesn’t have the skill or the budget to make this movie live up to its own ambitions and while it does have some exploitation elements it doesn’t have enough to make it as an exploitation flick.

The acting is actually rather good. Jack Elam is convincingly sinister and Brett Halsey is very good. Lowell Brown and Joyce Meadows are adequate. This probably counts against the movie as far as cult fans are concerned. We actually care what happens to the characters and Bix in particular is a character with a certain amount of depth. That tends to make it more difficult to enjoy the movie as just a goofy juvenile delinquent flick.

In this modern age most attention is going to be focused on the homoerotic subtext. That says more about this modern age than it does about the movie. A failure to comprehend a different era and an obsession with homoerotic subtexts mean that any older movie that deals with male friendship is going to be interpreted in this way. In fact there is no homoerotic subtext.

The Girl in Lovers’ Lane is a very unlucky movie that fails by virtue of the fact that it’s not good enough to be taken as seriously as it takes itself and it’s not bad enough to be a camp classic.

High School Caesar (1960)

I love juvenile delinquent movies, and High School Caesar ticks all the relevant boxes. It has drag racing, it has the good girl pitted against the bad girl, it has half-baked psychoanalysis to explain the characters’ motivations, it has high school dramas treated as the stuff of epic tragedy.

Most of all it has that peculiarly American concept, high school as a metaphor for life.

Matt Stevens is the Al Capone of his high school. He runs a protection racket, plus a very lucrative racket in stolen exam papers and a crooked dance racket. To ensure the growth of his criminal empire he needs to be elected as student body president and it goes without saying that the election is accompanied by widespread corruption and intimidation.

Matt has a rival. His rival’s name is Kelly. Kelly is just as good-looking and popular as Matt, and he has his own band of devoted followers and supporters. The difference is that Kelly is a responsible and decent young man. He organises drag races, but he is careful to make sure they take place on deserted stretches of road so that no-one will get hurt.

Matt’s loyal lieutenant is a kid known as Cricket. Cricket is in awe of Matt, because Matt controls everything that matters. Matt’s corrupt organisation produces a healthy financial profit in which Crocket shares, plus Matt controls access to the girls. When Cricket says he wants to date the new girl at school, the beautiful blonde Wanda, Matt assures him that he’ll organise it.

This is where Matt’s smooth organisation encounters its first problems. He instructs his girlfriend Lita to inform Wanda that she will now be dating Cricket, but Wanda prefers hunky blonde nice boy Bob to creepy and geeky Cricket. And Lita starts to show signs of rebelling since she suspects that Matt has eyes for Wanda.

Of course a showdown between the two rival leaders is inevitable, and being a juvenile delinquent movie the showdown must take the form of a drag race. And now Matt’s supremacy is really endangered, since his dad’s Cadillac convertible proves to be no match for Kelly’s car. Matt is humiliated, and vows he will have his revenge. Meanwhile Cricket has been humiliated as well. Wanda just refuses to understand that she’s supposed to date the boys Matt tells her to date. And when Matt can’t deliver on his promise to provide his second-in-command with the girl he promised to him Matt’s prestige really starts to totter. The tragedy is moving to its inevitable conclusion.

No movie of this sort would be complete without a psychiatric explanation of the failings of the juvenile delinquent. We learn that Matt is fabulously rich, but he’s all alone. His parents send him monthly cheques, very substantial cheques, but they’re too busy jet-setting around Europe to bother with their son. He has lots of money, and he has servants, but it doesn’t compensate for the lack of parental love. He’s a poor little rich boy.

He has a lucky gold coin that his father gave him, a coin that will play a vital part in the plot, but it’s also a symbol. It’s all his father has given him, but Matt didn’t want a gold coin, he wanted a real father.

John Ashley plays the role of Matt and surprisingly enough he can in fact act. I’m not saying he’s a great actor or even a very good one, but he’s competent. The other actors are up to basic B-movie standards, but they’re all quite entertaining.

Daria Massey makes a rather effective bad girl. We know she’s the bad girl because she has black hair, as distinct from the good girl Wanda who has blonde hair because she’s, you know, the good girl.

High School Caesar is in the public domain and can be obtained from the usual sources for such movies. My copy came in the St Clair Vision boxed set Classic Teenage Rebels - all PD juvenile delinquent movies, the transfers are what you expect but it’s cheap and the movies are terrific.

High School Caesar is everything you could ask for in a juvenile delinquent movie and if you enjoy the genre then it’s highly recommended.