Juvenile Delinquency. Marijuana (1936), Cocaine Madness (1935), Reefer Madness (1936), Assassin of Youth (1937), Boys Town (1938), Blackboard Jungle (1955), Rebel Without A Cause (1955), pictures on troubled teens were a dime a dozen. If there’s a worry, there’s a film about it. Rope (1948), East of Eden (1955), Blue Denim (1959), The Young Savages (1961), ahhh… to be young again. Or maybe not. Phoning Grandma, Frank-N-Forcer, The Waiter-Baiter, Is This Love?, E. E. Cummings, Gangland, Giant Glasses, “I’m a Janitor.” “Now is this a teenager who strangles or a person who strangles teenagers?”, “Geez look at that. Even dead she looks great. She can wear anything. Oh, I hate her”, “I think the dog did it, Ed.” “Well that was fun” or “Congratulations, it’s over. And tell her what she’s won, Johnny”?
I haven’t seen this one in quite a long time, but my memory is that it’s another no budget, amateur cast productions, and that gives it a certain charm. And it didn’t steal no bike, neither!
John Humphreys, who played Mikey, died earlier this year. He was at one of the original MST3K Convenion-Con-Expo-Festa-Ramas. I would have loved to have met him.
Apparently, he grew up to become a speech therapist.
The short applies the “Goofus and Gallant” formula to the romantic relationships of two college roomies. But even considering how shorts of this type tend to present the two situations as extreme contrasts, Peg still comes across as a colossal idiot. The sad part is that her self-destructive behavior isn’t that implausible.
The feature can be described as what you would get if you crossed a 1950s teen angst film with a slasher flick. There’s even a female victim who gets killed by the mad strangler while she’s nude. Though the vintage of the movie means viewers don’t get to see anything.
It’s not all that memorable except for Mikey, the younger brother of the film’s brooding persecuted teen. Mikey could be described as what Mr. B Natural would be like as a whiny chump with no social skills. Even those of us who once resembled Mikey in our younger days may have trouble resisting the urge to give him a wedgie or at least a wuss slap.
Ah, this one is a classic for me. It isn’t a murder mystery, as it should be pretty obvious 5 minutes in who the murderer is. The protagonist is a member of a “gang” of drag racing teens, but there is very little drag racing in the movie. Someone actually thought “Yipes Stripes” was a good enough song to put in a movie, proving this film is not a musical. Mikey is the most endearing character in the movie, and he betrays us all by revealing himself to be a common bicycle thief. I guess the point is that you shouldn’t judge people by appearances, since the gang is pretty harmless, and Mikey is the criminal amongst them. But then, you can absolutely judge the murdering janitor by his disheveled appearance and crazed mannerisms. Absolutely a perfect movie for riffing if there ever was one.
On a side note, the movie is so visually lacking that I always think of it as a black and white film until I start watching it, or see the stills. In looking up info on the director and cast, I found out that it was actually re-released in black and white in 1990, just a few years before MST3K picked it up. I wonder if I might have actually seen the B&W version before MST3K riffed it (or maybe even after).
Not only that, but it’s in a scene that takes place the day after a murder. It’s one of the jarring and tasteless things that add to the stench of this movie.
The main lesson of the marriage short is that it’s probably bad to make daughters suppress their [ahem] urges until marriage. Because if they feel any kind of attraction to anyone at all, it’s likely to lead to behavior like this.
Me as well. I think of this as black and white and I’m unsure why. The subject matter so fits black and white movies then it might be a factor. Possibly I saw this before in b/w yet I’d have recalled it somehow.
