Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

sol- Discovering that a disenfranchised local youth is planning a revenge murder, an altruistic social worker desperately tries to prevent the crime without police intervention in this juvenile delinquency drama directed by Don Siegel. The film is not particularly subtle with its agenda as lead actor James Whitmore bluntly states such truisms as "you can't tell a kid to be good" and as all parents find themselves exasperated by their kids in the most melodramatic manner possible. Will Kuluva is especially over-the-top as Sal Mineo's father who tries to get through to the boy by telling him that he wants to kiss him (!) while on the side telling Whitmore that he "has to hit" Mineo since it is all that the boy understands. The film features a phenomenal early turn by John Cassavetes though as the youth planning the murder with lots of subtle nuances whenever he listens to Whitmore lecture and as he plays on the fears of his friends. The real star of the show though is Siegel's directing work. Fresh from 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', Siegel shoots the film with a myriad of intense close-ups as his young cast emote. The film also opens with a deathly intense pre-credits scene as good as anything Siegel ever directed. This is an odd movie: one hand, it is distractingly didactic; on the other hand, it looks so great and Cassavetes is so solid that is nevertheless involving.

blanche-2 We've always had juvenile delinquents, but post-war, teenagers in and making trouble became great fodder for Hollywood. There were a rash of films about angry, mean teens: Rebel without a Cause, Blackboard Jungle, So Young, So Bad, High School Confidential, Blue Denim, etc., etc. Was it because kids' fathers didn't return from the war and their mothers had to work? Poverty? I'm not a sociologist, so I can't say. But JD became a big topic.This film, "Crime in the Streets," from 1956, is a low-budget, black and white movie about a bunch of mean kids in a bad neighborhood. The film's titular star was James Whitmore as a social worker running a community center. But "Crime in the Streets" "introduced" a mainly TV actor, John Cassavetes. He had had bit parts in a couple of films; this was his first main role. Don't ask me how he did it, but from 1956 until a Columbo episode in 1974, he didn't change a bit. The film also features Sal Mineo, future director Mark Rydell, Virginia Gregg, and Denise Alexander, who has appeared on General Hospital on and off for the past 38 years. Here's she's a teenager.The story focuses in on one family, the Danes, which includes Frankie (Cassavetes), his little brother Richie, and their mom (Gregg). Frankie is out of control, hanging out in the neighborhood with his buddies until all hours, refusing to get a job, and totally alienated from his mother. He's incredibly angry and at one point, he plans to kill a neighbor he hates and tries to get his friends to come along with him.This is pretty dreary stuff that looks like an old TV show, done on a sound stage. The acting is good, but neither Whitmore nor Cassavetes has that much to do to display their talent.Very ordinary, and not inspired. Directed by Don Siegel, who was capable of more.

AaronCapenBanner Don Siegel directed this socially aware drama that stars James Whitmore as a local social worker doing his best to educate and dissuade the youth to not turn to a life of crime, and join a gang. There are two gangs to contend with, the Dukes & the Hornets, but it is the Hornets that concern him most since their leader(played by John Cassavetes) is bent on punishing the neighbor who identified one of his gang to the police for carrying a gun. Sal Mineo and Mark Rydell play followers of his, who get entangled in the revenge plot that Whitmore desperately tries to prevent, before lives are lost or futures ruined. Good direction and cast, but film is too preachy and obvious to succeed.

jimddddd I don't want to elaborate too much on what's already been said, but 1956's "Crime in the Streets" becomes claustrophobic very quickly because of the shabby, back-lot "New York street" that screams artificial 1930s Hollywood set a la "Dead End" and "Scarface." Since this is an Allied Artists film, I'm guessing it was shot at the old Monogram Studios on Sunset Boulevard in East Hollywood, which was shabby even in the 1930s. Perhaps Don Siegel was looking for claustrophobia and delapidation to enhance the atmosphere, but more likely they were simply a product of a low budget. (After all, Siegel had already used the real-life streets of Hollywood and the nearby town of Sierra Madre to great effect a year earlier in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers.") Though no source material is given for "Crime in the Streets" except for the original teleplay, it owes quite a lot to Hal Ellson and other social workers-turned-writers who cranked out top-selling novels in the late '40s and early '50s, such as "Duke" and "The Golden Spike," that explored the tribulations of growing up in poor, urban, ethnic American neighborhoods. Also unacknowledged is Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters' rhythm and blues hit, "Such a Night," which provided Mark Rydell's character (clearly the movie's most interesting) with the "ba-dooby-dobby-doo" riff that became a jazz motif when the boys were awaiting their big crime in the alley.