The Wild Party (1956)

I love this movie so much

I wanted to but couldn't!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Anthony Quinn plays a faded football player in need of some hard cash and resorts to kidnapping with all sorts of mayhem resulting.He tries to roll a rich girl and her boyfriend and when that fails, he even tries to force the woman into marrying him. As the film goes along, Quinn becomes more demented, ranting and raving at will.We also see a story here of wealth versus those without it.Jay Robinson, who was always so good in biblical pictures, especially when he played Caligula, turns up as a cohort of Quinn who betrays him when the kidnapped guy offers him more money. This is also a story of when you're down on your luck, it continues that way.

A New York Times review of this film when it came out described it as 'stuffed with more sociological dressing than a Christmas goose". Made to cash in on America's fascination with films like 1953's "The Wild One" and 1955's "Blackboard Jungle", the picture devolves into a sleazy romp with Anthony Quinn as a washed up former football star reduced to conning unsuspecting victims in an attempt to make a buck and keep even bigger hoods off his back.There's a scene in the film that really got my attention in it's way of depicting how low one's lot in life can descend. A bum gathers empty wine bottles from garbage cans in a back alley and casually sips the remaining contents of those he comes across before adding them to his collection. The kicker is that he's in a hurry to finish before the 'real' derelicts come calling.Big Tom Kupfen's (Quinn) next big score involves the virtual kidnapping of a couple who if they had any street smarts at all, would have steered way clear of Tom and his questionable accomplices. In particular, knife wielding Gage Freeposter (Jay Robinson), who looked the part of a crazed lunatic who could do serious bodily harm, nevertheless came across as an incompetent boob who could scarcely manage to get out of his own way when the going got tough. He proved the point when he tried to cross his buddy Tom, and got summarily dumped out of Tom's window into an alley.There are elements of film-noir here if you consider Kathryn Grant's Honey character as the put upon femme-fatale, as her relationship with Big Tom suffers the old heave-ho whenever the more 'sophisticated' Erica London (Carol Ohmart) is on screen. She and Arthur Mitchell (Arthur Franz) are the victims of Big Tom's extortion scheme, but if you're waiting for a grand finish in the way of a Wild West showdown, you might be disappointed when Honey shifts her car into gear and puts the squeeze on her big bad beau. It's one of the more surreal endings you're apt to see in any film, and one that might have added the extra flavor to the Times' sociological dressing.

***SPOILERS*** After taking too many hits to the head as a professional football player washed up ex-Redskin running back Big Tom Kupfan, Anthony Quinn, has now become an annoying and pestering moocher to all those whom he comes in contact with. With his few odd-ball friends Big Tom is always planning to rip off unsuspecting people in elaborate con-jobs that mostly has him, who thinks that he's God's great gift to the female species, sweep ladies off their feet with his magnetic as well as animal charms.It's when Big Tom runs into this couple at a local L.A bar Navy Lt.Arthur Mitchell, Arthur Frenz, and his fiancée Erica London, Carol Ohmart, that his career as a con artist comes to an abrupt and shocking end. Getting both Arthur and his girl Erica to go to this sleazy underground beatnik joint "The Fat Man's" Big Tom gets to work on Erica as his friend and partner in crime Gage, Jay Robinson, lifts the keys to Erica's car. While all this is going on Arthur is slowing getting himself drunk on fee drinks supplied by "The Fat Man", Joseph J.Green.It's when the party is over at the "Fat Man's" that the real party begins at Big Tom's place a rundown and decapitated as well as roach and rat infested dive on the beach. With Erica not finding the keys, that Greg lifted from her pocketbook, to her car Big Tom graciously offers her and Arthur a lift home; Not to her and Arthur's place but his! And it's at Big Tom's place that the party to end all parties begins!What amazed me most, besides Mr.Quinn's over the top acting, was how both brainless and naive Arthur and Erica were in not suspecting what Big Tom & Co. were really up to in them trying to rip the couple off! Mindlessly going along like sheep to the slaughter with the very obvious, in what he's planning for them, mentally unbalanced Big Tom the two ended up being kidnapped as well as abused and tortured by him. As it turned Big Tom really got turned on by Erica who caveman style tried to forcefully take her away from her fiancée Arthur. Arthur who was no match for the hulking and sex crazed Big Tom ended up being a punching bag, with Big Tom doing all the punching,throughout almost the entire film! ***SPOILERS*** What finally put an end to Big Tom's sexually inspired insanity was his own fellow misfits Greg and his girlfriend Honey, Kathryn Grant, and pianist Kicks Johnson, Nehemiah Persoff. As things tuned out Big Tom's overconfidence in himself as a con-artist and womanizer in the end worked against him. And in the end Big Tom was brought back down to earth by non other then his estranged girlfriend Honey but not after he ended up wrecking almost everyone's, friends and strangers alike,lives in the movie!

Anthony Quinn's performances are always compelling, especially when he portrays primitives ,(as he does here),whose physical power & aggressive instincts might have made them kings in earlier times, but are merely misfits now. Everyone else does the best they can with the phoney-hipster dialog. Hollywood is well-known for tainting the language & mannerisms of every subculture it touches, but this is the textbook of absurd exaggeration. Even the script itself calls attention to "Honey" being impossible to understand, due to her "hip lingo". The implication is that Lt Mitchell, who mentions it, is too "square" to "get" her. Well then, so am I, for there are at least 3 characters who are so severely hip that they're virtually indecipherable. Perhaps if this was taken a step further into absurdity, & made an out-and-out comedy, it would be quite good. As is it's not authentic & not funny either. 5 stars for Quinn.