Rumble on the Docks

What's worse in this one?

The acting? Possibly... The directing? Maybe... The writing? Ding, ding, ding!

James Darren is the best of the bunch, but most of the "kids" are terrible performers. Notably bad is Laurie Carroll as the dimwit love interest.

Fred Sears was a B-Movie machine, including "Rock Around the Clock" and "Earth vs the Flying Saucers", so this was about par for the course.

Somehow it took two people to scrabble this garbage heap script together, Lou Morheim and Jack Dewitt (of "A Man Called Horse" fame). The story is preposterous enough, but some of the "I believe the children are our future" dialogue is vomit inducing!

Don't watch this movie!

This film is finally available. I got it at Amazon.com as a manufactured on demand. The DVD says digitally remastered and since it is in the widescreen format I believe them. Anyway, it's James Darren's first film and he does admirably carrying the film. He plays Jimmy Smigelski, the leader of a gang, the Diggers. Robert Blake plays his pal Chuck. I liked most of the performances, however, Laurie Carroll as the love interest for Jimmy was weak. I can see why she is basically unknown today. It's too bad they couldn't have gotten someone like Susan Kohner for that role. Anyway, the film is well worth a look if only because of how they managed in the 1950s to do a film about tough street kids in which no one as much as says damn and still managed to be convincing.

Even by 50s juv delinquent pic standards the acting of James Darren and (especially) Laurie Carroll, to mention nothing of the lifeless screenplay by Lou Morheim and Jack DeWitt and the even more somnolent camera of Fred Sears, is unacceptable. Always nice to see Bobby B as the defender of Womanhood, though, huh? D plus.

If there's such a thing as a parallel universe, this is the campy, boring, egregious version of Kazan's classic. It's all here: A gang named Stompers and a gang named Diggers. They're unrealistically entwined with non-union dockworkers versus the alternative.

There's the quintessential, immigrant parents of the male lead. There's the stereotypical, female love interest. There's even the pre-pubescent kid that gets the plot rolling in the first 15 minutes.

Robert Blake has a minor role. I'm so sorry Hell Town was canceled.

West Side Story took place in Manhattan; and this story takes place on the docks of Brooklyn. I grew up in Union City, less than a mile from Hoboken, where they filmed On the Waterfront, so I am quite familiar with life on the docks.

This film does not have the production values of West Side Story, or the emotional intensity of On The Waterfront, but it did capture the atmosphere of starting unions where the mob was entrenched. It took until Jimmy Hoffa until the mob was greatly reduced from the docks; and even then, they made Hoffa the foundation of Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands.

In this film, James Darren does his best James Dean imitation, while the crooked union boss, Timothy Carey does his Johnny Friendly imitation of Lee J Cobb. I noted that Robert Blake did not make a great impression in this film, but the talented Jimmy Carey was great as a heavy, and even better in Fargo.

The film has good scenes, some corny ones, and a few violent ones, but it holds up pretty well.