Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955)

Strong and Moving!

One of my all time favorites.

Memorable, crazy movie

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

"Teen-Age Crime Wave" is clearly intended as an exploitational film--to scare the audience and sensationalize the topic of juvenile crime. Plus, it's doggone silly because the teens in the film are all closer to their 30s than their teen! Oddly, this sort of bizarro casting was the norm in the 1950s--even with higher quality films of the genre such as "Rebel Without a Cause" where only one member of the starring cast was high school age! Yet, in spite of its low budget and all its other obvious shortcomings, there is something strangely entertaining about this film and I do recommend it--but still give it a 5 due to the production values. As far as entertainment goes, it's far better. The acting is good for unknowns and the script is excellent--probably too good for a film of such low pedigree! It's a great film for exploitation lovers or someone wanting something different.The film has a familiar theme--similar to "The Desperate Hours" in that a group of psycho criminals take a family hostage and spend much of the film menacing them. A similar low-budget film made just a few later is the surprisingly good "The Sadist"--by Arch Hall--a man known for genuinely crappy films! It's well worth seeking if you like "Teen-Age Crime Wave".

**SPOILERS** Your usual troubled youth of the 1950's movie that has the distinction of being filmed at the famous Griffin Park Observatory just two months-in January 1955- before the granddaddy of all 1950's troubled youth movies was filmed there "Reble Without a Cause".In "Teenage Crime Wave" we have these two crazy mixed up kids Mike & Terry, Tommy Cook & Molly McCart, who get themselves in hot water by gunning dawn a deputy sheriff during an escape, with Terry being the one who does the escaping, attempt. Along with both Mike & Terry is Jane, Sue England, who was being transfered to a womens detention center for armed robbery. As we've seen earlier in the film Jane was an innocent bystander, but go tell that to the judge, when both Terry and Mike mugged Freddy Boy, George Cisan, who picked up Terry at a sleazy bar thinking that he'll score with her.Now on the run from the state troopers the three end up at the Grant House where both Tom & Sarah Grant, James Bell & Kay Riehi, are preparing to spend the Thanksgiving Holiday with their son handsome US Army hero Ben, Frank Griffin. Not realizing the fix that they find themselves in the two fugitives from the law not only hold the Grants, together with Jane, hostage but tip off the police in getting their not too bright friend Al, Jimmy Ogg, to drive over to the place with a carload of weapons! This has Al, when he resist arrest, get gunned down by the state troopers who then, knowing where Al was headed, surround the Grant house!***SPOILERS*** Besides having, because of his incompetence, the place surrounded by the police Mike also has his girlfriend Terry fall for the handsome Ben who just about had it with his both bizarre and mindless behavior. The movie ends with Mike trying to elude the police by getting himself trapped like a rat, with all escape routes blocked, at the Griffin Park Observatory. Knowing that his brief, and very unsuccessful, crime career is over-with his girlfriend Terry gunned down by the police- Mike finally comes to his senses. It's then that the cops, together with war hero Ben Grant, put the cuffs on him and haul the notorious "Cry-Baby Mike Denton" away to face ultimate justice.

It must have been impossible for tourists and even working astronomers to study the stars from Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles that year with two films being done on location there. One of them became a classic and of course that's Rebel Without A Cause.Then there's Teenage Crime Wave which seems to have been based somewhat on the Charles Starkweather/Caril Ann Fugate story. Starkweather and Fugate were a pair of thrill kill seeking young people who went a murder spree around this same period. Tommy Cook who was trying to establish himself in adult roles at the time plays a kid who sets his girl friend, Molly McCart free as she's going to jail for robbery. A second girl, Sue England, is also freed and she becomes the Patty Hearst of the piece, ostensibly trapped by circumstances with these two punks. The film is about their escapades and eventual downfall at Griffith Park Observatory.Cook and McCart are really a pair without any redeeming value unlike even the hoodlum kids in Rebel Without A Cause. The dialog and the situation will give you a chuckle and at times border on the hilarious.It's like Reefer Madness with guns.

This film made for a hilarious MST3K show, so I'm kind of surprised no one has commented on it yet. At any rate, It's a fairly typical "juvenile crime" flick of the fifties that might hold your interest on it's own. The actress who plays the good girl is a real dish; and the character of Terry makes the film somewhat ahead of it's time in that the movie asks for sympathy for her despite the fact that She is really, really mean. These movies where a gun is held on the good people by the bad guys can rate some suspense in spite of themselves. Kind of fun in any case, and it uses the Griffith Park planetarium just like in "Rebel Without a Cause".