Beatniks (1960)

Cast:

Tony Travis is Eddy Crane
Joyce Terry is Helen Tracy
Peter "I fought the Crawling Hand" Breck is Bob 'Moon' Mooney
Karen Kadler is Iris
Charles Delaney is Harry Bayliss

What the box says:

Eddy Crane runs with a rough crowd. His gang of street thugs delight in making trouble wherever they may be. But Eddy has one way out of his life on the road to nowhere, talent. A chance meeting with a rtecord producer earns Eddy a shot at stardom, but can he leave his life behind so easily?

Plot:

Some masked men rob a store. Later at a café, the gang crashes into some Mr. Bayliss’s car bumper. Let the wild JUVENILE DELIQUENT slang fly. Bayliss calls his office, turns out he’s an agent. Eddie, the gang leader, starts to sing to Iris, the gang moll. Bayliss is impressed enough with Eddie to offer him an audition. The gang doesn’t want Eddie to do it.

Eddie goes to LA and pays a visit to Bayliss’s office. He brings his gang with him. Iris convinces him to try. Eddie’s super swinging lounge music ensues. Everyone is impressed. Eddie has a spot on the variety show. Let the shopping montage ensue: Eddie and Helen, Bayliss’s secretary. Apparently, he’s crazy about her.

Eddie Krane’s TV debut ensues.

I've got catepillars for eyebrows.. The crowd goes wild with spontaneous dancing. The gang is going wild backstage. The station manager gets a call from a record executive about Eddie. He has a demo the next day. The gang wants to party.

At the hotel, the party is wild. The gang thinks Eddie is now uppity. Eddie wants to call it a night to get some rest…His “friends” shame him into going out to party.

At a greasy spoon diner, the gang threatens a cook into serving them. More of their JUVENILE DELIQUENCY ensues. The cook gets sick of them and calls the cop. Whiny Moon pleads the cook to hang up

Please sir, may I have some more? How's my Oliver Twist impression, daddio? and knocks him out with a bottle. As the gang is leaving, the cook rouses enough to fire and shoot Red. Moon stays behind and wipes the prints off the gun.

Back at the hospital, the gang debates what to do with Red. Some don’t want to get him a doctor. Moon reveals he killed the cook. Eddie is starting to get scared of everything. The gang starts to scorn him. Eddie does the obligatory stock footage city walk in the middle of the night.

Eddie calls Helen to tell him he’s giving up on his recording test. She professes her love for him.

Moon is waiting out of Helen’s apartment. More snotty Moon. They head back to the hotel.

Hotel manager gets sick of the gang and is about to throw them out. Eddie calls Bayliss to tell him he just got nervous and wants to do the record test. Bayliss hadn’t got around to canceling it yet and lets Eddie slide.

At the record studio, Eddie apologizes to Helen and starts the rehearsal. Bayliss tries to tell Eddie that the gang isn’t any good for him. Let the Eddie musical assault ensue. Helen convinces Bayliss to talk to the gang.

At the hotel, the gang listens to Bayliss. Moon is positive that Bayliss is going to turn them into the cops. Moon suddenly admits to killing the cook and beats and stabs Bayliss. Crazy Moon escapes down the fire escape to the street.

Eddie finishes his rehearsal. Helen gets a call about Bayliss in the hospital. They check on him when the police reveal they haven’t got Moon or Eddie yet. Bayliss and Helen don’t rat out Eddie. Bayliss wants Eddie to finish the recording. Our gang leader is starting to get a sense of responsibility. He asks Helen to call the cops for him.

Stock footage of the police car in pursuit ensues.

Moon is wandering the streets.

Recording studios, Moon finds Eddie. Claiming he did everything for Eddie. Moon changes his mind and wants to smack Eddie around. The fight is on, but Eddie finishes him off pretty quick.

The cops pull up. Crime doesn’t pay. Eddie embraces Helen before he’s taken away.

What I say:

Website	Movie Reviewed	Excerpt From the Review
B-Movie Film Vault	Rocktober Blood	"Lynn's manager Chris shows up, just in time to say "See, his body is still in there. I told you so." but Lynn is still not fully convinced. Still, the show must go on, so Lynn prepares herself for "Rocktober Blood!""
Badmovies.org	Rock N' Rule	An evil rock & roll overlord wants to rule the world.
Cinema Suicide	Black Roses	Pending
Darksider's Realm	From Justin to Kelly	"Alexa, who fulfills the daddy’s little slut role early, is really anxious to go because as Kelly points out, guys only have “one thing” on their mind. Indeed porking hot coeds is cool for most guys but I say avoiding this movie should be top priority for any man, make that human being alive."
KO Picture Show	Tough Enough	Pending
Shadow's B-Movie Graveyard	Trick or Treat	Even though he is rocking out big time, Sammi moves around just a little too gay for someone who is supposed to be a heavy metal badass. I never saw Ozzy sashaying around the stage like that, let me tell you!
SideOrderofNinjas	The Beatniks	" A gang leader has a chance to achieve success and escape his futile life by singing like Frank Sinatra. If only he could ditch his dirty beatnik gang that will only lead to futility."
Tomb of Anubis	Hard Rock Zombies and Hard Rock Nightmare	"Hard Rock Zombies: a movie so bad that it was banned in Iceland! Given that the quality has in no way improved over the last 20 years, you'll still be violently throttled by big Nordic security guys with croquet mallets at the airport if you try smuggling a copy into the country... that, or Björk will just beat you over the head with a swan."

This review is part of the truly ninjaliscious reviewers doing Rock Music movies. After doing the 1980s back-masked album of the evil gymnastic pseudo-David Lee Roth in Trick or Treat and the Arch Hall Jr. classics displaying the evils of music agents in Wild Guitar or musical murdering skills demonstrated in Eegah. I had to find something new for a review on this topic. Unfortunately, the snaggle green-toothed Lady Luck grinned at me with a copy of the Beatniks. This movie was done on MST3K. Unfortunately, I've never seen that episode. So all my feeble attempts at humor are my own.

A gang leader has a chance to achieve success and escape his futile life which will only lead to him getting to discover the dark secret of prison life by being "deliveranced." Somehow, he finds his "friends" don't want him to make anything of himself. Picture a 1950s gang leader singing like Frank Sinatra, and that is a major portion of this movie.

While, I'm not going to claim to be some expert on cultural cliques from decades before my birth. Aren't Beatniks supposed to be like the 1950s version of 1960s hippies? Maynard G Krebs from Dobie Gillis is a beatnik. Aren't they people who call everyone "Daddio" and use the word "hip" a lot? If not, I never knew that 1950s juvenile deliquents were the approxiamate equivalent of dirty beatniks...

If your idea to a wild party in Los Angeles is a grimy late night diner that's about to close for the night, you may have a problem. This is supposed to be a wild gang that can't find any sort of night club or bar in LA? The preceding sentences was brought by a card-carrying member of National Association of Party-Killers Including Nerds (NAPKIN). A group of pale people sitting around wanting coffee sounds more like a group of college students at the waffle house in the middle of the night.

Eddie's gang pretty much runs over everyone that get in there way. Soon as Eddie got his recording test, the gang wanted to party. They think Eddie has changed and considers himself better than them. They had no problem mooching off him, the entire time. Moon gets awfully huffy until he shoots the cook. To be honest, telling whether the cook was shot or not was hard to tell. It sounded more like a car backfiring. Suddenly, crazy gang guy is a big shot because the murder was front page in the newspaper. "Hey, man. Watch out, I'm dangerous...."

What does it say when one of your gang member's biggest credits is being the guy Andy Griffith managed not to foreclose on? Or if Peter Breck, the psycho-killer member, was also Nick Barkley on Big Valley, Crawling Hand or Unnameable 2? This is just part of a gang that would be beaten so easily by any gang off the Warriors. I'd love to see the Baseball Furies beat them...

Typical B-movies aren't known for excellent fight choregraphy. They normally aren't known for the stunt fights in Gunsmoke. However, the Beatniks lowered the bar to the ground. The fight between Moon and Eddie makes the fight between Captain Kirk and the Gorn on that episode of Star Trek like Bruce Lee's in Enter the Dragon or when Lee Majors fought the Abominable Snowman in an episode of the $6 Million Man is of Jet Li quality.

Quotable Dialogue
"How'd you like some nice chicken fried steaks?"
"Wanna be a big wheel?"
"Sideburns don't ned your sympathy."
"Send up some gas water."
"You say one word, I'm gonna moon you."
"Down there, filthy with the fuzz."
"You're a punk."
Morals of the Story
Old women love swing music.
Juvenile deliquents love to sound like Frank Sinatra.
Juvenile deliquents love to wear 3 piece suits.
Pistols are fired when rubbed witha rag.
Pistols don't need silencers to be quiet.