The Girl in Lovers Lane

In reading the other reviews and/or remarks, I have to disagree with any references with regard to both male characters or one male character referenced as being gay. That is so ridiculous. The more accurate relationship between the two males, rather should be seen as older big brother and younger naive brother. Bix, like any older brother looks out and protects a younger less worldly brother. In addition, I think that Bix is afraid of making a commitment to Carrie, because he's never allowed himself to be close to a woman in a relationship, and now because he's starting to feel something for Carrie, he's fearful and ready to run. Now, with regard to the story's resolution (Act III), Carrie just suddenly screaming just made no real sense.

This is a film I would have thought I would be seeing as part of one of those Something Weird Video double feature disc's. Pretty much your typical 1950's "troubled youth" films. Though this one is a bit talky and light on the action, I did enjoy it somewhat. I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for these kinds of films. Basically you have this young guy who leaves home in order to come to terms with the fact that his parents have decided to get a divorce. He meets Bix, a road weary and very experienced drifter. They end up in a small town and stay longer then they expected which leads to romance, complications, confrontation, rape and murder. Brett Halsey stars as Bix and gets fine support from Joyce Meadows and a perfectly cast Jack Elam as the town letch. All in all, it's no great shakes but it is entertaining enough.

Like probably 90% of the people writing reviews for this movie, I saw this on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Joel and the bots did an excellent job of riffing on this movie, and I thought that it was one of the funnier episodes.

This being said, however, this wasn't a particularly horrible movie. Especially compared to some of films they ran on MST3K.

It had it's weaknesses: the movie had about zero budget and so things like the costumes and set design were horrible. The plot, also, digressed in spots. On the whole, though, the acting was competent and the story held my interest. I actually found myself caring about the characters.

It wasn't a perfect movie, but it was nowhere near as bad as the usual MST3k fare such as "Giant Gila Monster" and "Manos Hand of Fate." As such, it doesn't really deserve to be mocked as much as it has been. It was a B-Movie from the 50s, but it was a watchable one.

The Girl in Lovers' Lane: 3 out of 10: Homoerotic subtext in the movies is a well known phenomenon. Plenty of dissertations have come out of film schools about the hidden subtexts in such films as Top Gun and Spartacus. The Girl in Lover’s Lane certainly fits the homoerotic trope. In fact, it is so blatant and over the top even MST3K, whom rarely notes such things in their riffing, simply cannot avoid it.

The film is about two drifters. One a rich kid (Lowell Brown) running away from home with a hundred dollars and no street smarts, the other is a professional hobo (Brett Halsey). The hobo saves the kid from a gang of thugs and they end up in a small town consisting of a diner, a pool hall and a whorehouse. Our drifter scholar gets a second look from the diner’s waitress (Joyce Meadows as the titular Girl in Lovers Lane) who clearly is past the age of being choosy and whose only other prospect is creepy Jack Elam doing a Steve Buscemi impression.

On the surface, this seems like a strange film for the MST3K treatment. While the cast are to old for the characters they are playing, the acting is actually pretty good with both Brett Halsey and Jack Elam giving solid performances. The story is slight, but hardly The Robot vs. Aztec Mummy material and the production values are cheap back lot, but relatively competent.

It is the strange Batman and his ward homosexual undercurrents that make this film both awful and hilarious. Halsey’s over the top objections to the kids attempts to get laid in the whorehouse are hilarious, his inability to commit to the waitress (or at the least get past first base) are telling, and the dozens of glances between him and the kid; a hand on shoulder, the sleeping arrangements, blowing off dates with the girl so he and the kid can shave each other. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out this undercurrent.

For years, when MST3K fans have been polled about which riffed films were "not completely terrible," this movie has come up (along with the Godzilla and Gamera movies). It's easy to see why - unlike complete train wrecks like Space Mutiny and Manos the Hands Of Fate, you can tell that this could have been a halfway decent film if it had a little more of a budget - better sets, better costumes, a competent script editor to fix the problematic ending. The acting isn't terrible, some of the characters are actually likable, and Jack Elam's villain is genuinely creepy. It made for a very underrated MST3K episode - one of the funniest of the later Joel era. (The show's writers reported being genuinely traumatized by the film's ending - and you just KNOW that it was a rare film that could get that crew to genuinely care about the characters).