The Beatniks

One of the very worst of the "troubled teenager" genre so popular in the late '50s/early '60s. Tony Travis as Eddie Crane is a dull hero who seems to be wandering aimlessly through life (and this movie), his girlfriend is about as interesting as dishwater, and his beatnik friends, especially Peter Breck as the horribly over-the-top Moon, give new meaning to the word "stereotype". However, I urge everyone to see the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of The Beatniks - it's hilarious.

I watched this movie because of my interest in voice actor Paul Frees, who wrote and directed "The Beatniks." He also wrote the lyrics to all the songs in the picture, with music by Eddie Brandt (who had worked with Spike Jones). In the Frees biography, his ex-wife (who stars in it) warns readers NOT to bother watching it because it's AWFUL. She claims that Frees knew nothing about directing, and that the photography and sound were also terrible. And she was right: this movie is a stinker, loaded with clichés about teenage troublemakers and also the entertainment industry of the 50s. It never really getting off the ground, leaving in the "deep Frees."

This is my largest complaint; no Beatnik culture, no snapping fingers and performance poetry, marijuana, not even the stereotypical black clothes and sunglasses -- how can you get that part wrong? Instead the "Beatniks" are mostly your typical 50s squares and range to a geek-greaser (Mooney) and the lone woman in the group, think of a "Grease" Frenchy-Rizzo mix.

Since, the majority of the plot of this movie revolves around Eddie's musical ability the audience gets plenty of solo performances. The music is fine for a low budget movie like "Beatniks", nothing you will remember past the end credits. Again, even when Eddie was a "Beatnik" he wasn't singing Beatnik music, more like Mel Torme-like crooning.

Other glaring mistakes in this movie is the continuity (see the GOOFS section) and the character of Moon is just ridiculous, with a catch phrase that will live on forever (I'm gonna MOON ya'!). The Eddie character is a little annoying in his inconsistency -- is he a goon with a heart of gold or just a jerk? All in all this is a very, very bad movie.

First, a caveat: There are no actual beatniks in this film. Nary a beret or black turtleneck or bongo to be seen. As for the movie itself, to steal a line from Roger Ebert, "The Beatniks" is transcendently bad. It soars above ordinary badness as the eagle soars above the mosquito.

The plot is a common one of the era: kid from the wrong side of the tracks is spotted by a talent agent, but alas, his crazy friends ruin it all for him. To call the characters two-dimensional is an insult to planar surfaces. To call the plot threadbare is an insult to rags. To call ... Oh, never mind. You get the idea.

The entire production screams, "high school drama club project," though the actors playing the teens are a bit long in the tooth for the youth set, dig it? MST3000 had great fun with it, though, and thus it's worth a watch.

Maybe for the time is might have been, especially with a tag-line like that. This pretty obscure film is about Bad singers, Sleazy Talent scouts, teen gangs, robbery and general pandemonium. No Beatniks here, really. Ginsberg and Kerouac probably couldn't believe what they had wrought-this certainly was not it.

If you want to see a better example of one of the so called "beatnik" films that were created around 1959 to 1961, (where Exploitation Producers latched onto popular media phrases like "Beatnik"), check out The Beat Generation starring Mamie Van Doren, or Beat Girl starring a then unknown Oliver Reed. Although these were not about 'niks they had a somewhat inkling to what a "beatnik" was.

As with all exploitation films very few of the catch phrases and trends used in marketing the films were used very accurately, nevertheless the films did make obscene amounts of money because they were presented to the public within a few months of a trend that was in high gear.