Teenage Crime Wave
Director: Fred
Sears
Year:
1955
Rating: 6.0
Those darn kids. Kidnapping, murder, stolen cars.
This film digs deep into the underbelly of our youth's psyche. In the preamble,
they warn us, "One of the greatest and fastest growing plagues of our complex
social system is the rise of juvenile delinquency. And like any serious disease
depends upon proper treatment in time lest it spread and infest others."
The 1950s were filled with movies about teenagers gone bad. In the same year
as this, Blackboard Jungle and Rebel Without a Cause were released. Maybe
Brando started it all with The Wild One in 1953. Those were top shelf movies,
but there were plenty of trashy B films as well - Female Jungle, High School
Confidential, High School Hellcats. This one at 76-minutes with an unknown
cast clearly is meant for B territory, but it is surprisingly rough and nasty.
A forerunner of more violent films that were to come like Badlands.
The two teenage psychos in particular are
well-acted. By the end, you want them dead or facing the chair. Unable to
feel anything but anger. No expectation or desire to live long. Terry and
Mike are lovers. And killers. Terry played by Mollie McCart is a dangerous
package of rage and sexual yearning. She is sitting at a bar lookng bored
and desirable, flirting with a middle aged rumpled man. He picks up on the
cue and sidles over to her like sludge. Let's go to my place. My kind of
girl, he replies. He is the patsy. Her boyfriend Mike (Tommy Cook) knocks
him on his head. He deserved it. And the crime spree is started. They take
a family hostage after killing a guard in a prison break and most of the
film is their interaction with the hostages. It keeps up your interest as
the two psychos begin to lose it. You might expect that they will go soft,
see the error of their ways. Not these two. Nice ending at the Griffith Observatory.
Directed by Fred Sears and distributed by Columbia.
