So my Robert Altman love fest has begun. Once a week I’m hoping to watch a Robert Altman movie. My plan is to watch these in chronological order if I can get my hands on a copy.
Oh, little Tommy Laughlin! What have you done?
Tonight’s flick was The Delinquents from 1957. Based on the cover line of: The “Babyfaces” have just taken their first stumbling step down Sin Street, USA! – I kinda knew what I was in for. I’ve got a small collection of juvenile delinquent exploitation films. These are the kind of films you can find for a buck or two on dvd. Generally they involve bikers, or fast cars.
There are actually some amazing films in this genre, that usually have a great story to tell. Like these two.
Based on The Delinquents cover, I figured I was in for a juvy exploitation film with no soul. Although, the elements are there and it’s a half hazard script I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised.
It’s the story of Scotty and Janice who are going “steady”, and Janice’s parents just don’t like it. She’s sixteen, and he’s nineteen about to head to college. Janice’s daddy doesn’t like this steady business one bit, cause his little girl should be seeing all sorts of boys. After getting mixed-up in a fight with a couple of local tough gangs, Scotty makes some greaser friends who come up with a plan. If his new tough guy pal Cholly picks up his girl, then they can hang out anytime they want.
That’s the ticket!
As you can assume, it all goes downhill for Scotty and Janice from here. One party, a few drinks, and a rough nights sleep later is all it takes for Scotty and Janice’s naive young American world to come crashing down.
It could happen to you! Or you!
One of the first things I noticed was Tom Laughlin as Scotty, or billed in this as Tommy Laughlin. This must have been one of his first films. If you don’t know Tom Laughlin, then you don’t know Jack.
Billy Jack! Tom Laughlin was the director, star, and writer (along with wife Delores Taylor) of the four Billy Jack films. Probably a series that deserves a whole blog post to itself.
There weren’t any other notable cast members for me, though the acting was surprisingly good. A great sequence is when Scotty and Janice come back home from the party. He’s drunk and they are sneaking her back home. It’s very adorable and fun to watch.
Laughlin after a certain point seemed to be one of the worst in the group. He started strong, but slowly turned into a Brando/Dean wannabe. I’m assuming method acting is happening here, but I’m not sure it gets the results that he was hoping for.
I watched this movie on Netflix and I’ve noticed with quite a few movies I stream through the site that the quality is generally better than dvd. I couldn’t find this on dvd and I’m glad I didn’t. The filming was pretty fantastic for the most part. I’ve seen a lot of low budget b+w flicks from this time, and some can be very hard to watch. All soft, with focus slipping. There was a lot of really crisp clear lines in this.
The editing was decent as well, with quite a bit of coverage from the camera. Film language has of course changed in the last sixty years, but you can tell that a lot of the shooting work was thought through. Some of the cutting in the knife fight sequence left a bit to be desired, but the action in other scenes flowed really well.
The script was average for a film like this. I’m sure they wrote quick and shot just as fast, but the actors really do sell it and they bring a sweaty level of realism at times that might have matched something Cassavetes could have really done something with if the camera was freed of its tripod. Certain scenes were just that good.
An aspect of the film that didn’t work for me was a narration tacked onto the beginning and end of the flick. The opening narration gave it that old Dragnet docudrama feeling. The closing narration made it seem like the whole thing was an old Hays Code public service announcement flick. I’d be surprised to find out this was Altman’s idea. I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole thing without it.
All in all I liked it. I might watch it again one day. I would have never guessed this was directed by Altman if I hadn’t known, he’s a long way off from the likes of MASH. A bit of trivia from the IMDB says that Hitchcock liked this flick and gave Altman some directing work on his Alfred Hitchcock Presents based on it. This was the beginning of a long tv career for Altman.
It’s a fairly short running time at 72 minutes, which I’m sure helped it. I couldn’t imagine much more story being added without it becoming melodrama or preachy. So if you have Netflix and you’re in to old movies, or just like film history of some of our best directors I’d say check it out.
This ain’t no Sesame Street, kid!
The Husky Idler 