In the 50s you had James Dean and Marlon Brando and then...you had the rest of the wanna-bes. These are all MST3K episodes.
The Violent Years: Written by the great bad filmmaker Ed Wood, this is the overwrought story of four rebellious girls who pull small robberies for kicks. They hold up a gas station, a couple pulled over to make out, and finally they ransack a school as part of some Communist plan for world domination--or something. But most of them are killed during this, except the lead girl who somehow got pregnant and dies giving birth in prison. A judge then lectures her parents for an interminably long time basically telling them it was all their fault. It's made slightly better than an Ed Wood film, but not by much.
The Beatniks: The misleading thing about the title is the juvenile delinquents in this movie are not beatniks in any way, shape, or form. They don't hang out at coffeehouses, they don't read or write poetry, and they don't wear black turtlenecks or berets. Basically they're just hoodlums who commit petty robberies and hassle adults. But the ringleader of the gang is overheard singing in a diner by some record scout and so he begins a career singing swing music. Because all beatniks were into Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin music, right? Um, no. Not at all. This is basically the kind of movie where they probably just came up with a title for the posters and marquees and didn't really care if the actual movie fit it in any way. Anyway, the ringleader's followers become jealous of him and wind up bringing him down until they kill each other. Hooray?
The Rebel Set: The guys in this movie are actually more of Beatniks than the "beatniks" in The Beatniks. They hang out at a coffeehouse, where an old guy recruits four of them to rob an armored car while on a layover taking a train from New York to California or something. One of them is a failed actor and another a failed writer and then there are two other guys and the old guy disguised as a priest who all get back on the train with their loot. As you'd expect, though, someone starts eliminating them to take the loot for himself until only the failed actor is left. As far as heist movies go it's not terrible but it's not exactly Ocean's 11 either. The parts in the coffeehouse are kind of goofy and as you'd expect not exactly George Clooney or Brad Pitt type talent.
A funny thing in retrospect is throughout the movie Joel and Crow repeatedly call the old train conductor guy "Merritt Stone," to which Tom Servo keeps screaming, "It's NOT Merritt Stone." At the end of the movie, Servo dressed as Hercule Poirot deduces that "Merritt Stone" is actually Gene Roth. The funny thing now is that you can go on IMDB.com and find out in about 30 seconds that Servo is right: "Merritt Stone" is Gene Roth. It reminds me of an old Lawrence Block book where to find out an actor's name they wound up calling SAG when now you can just look it up online in seconds. Progress!
So there you go, some real wild rebels there.
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