CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Aubrey Hackett 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.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

lchadbou-326-26592 The underrated director Irvin Kershner is best known for the second Star Wars film but early in his career specialized in films and TV programs about troubled youth. I've seen an episode of the series Confidential File he directed on the danger posed to youngsters by comic books, and one of his best theatrical jobs, Hoodlum Priest. This was his first feature and has interesting credits: photography by Haskell Wexler (under a pseudonym)a jazz score by Richard Markowitz performed by the Hollywood Chamber Jazz Group, and as one of the three protagonists, Jim, a nice role for Haskell's younger brother Yale Wexler. Jonathan Haze, who would star two years later as Seymour in the cult success The Little Shop Of Horrors, plays one of the other boys, Ves. The story of teenagers finding abandoned drugs (at first they are so naive they think the heroin is pimple powder) suffers somewhat from obtrusive Dragnet-style narration and most of the other players are little known "B" performers. The treatment is also rather melodramatic, such as the climax in which Jim is pursued by syndicate thugs on his trail to the top of a power tower at night. But there is a long, striking sequence in which an older man, an addict named Danny, warns Jim in lurid detail about the consequences of drug addiction; as we see scenes of Danny writhing in a prison cell in withdrawal we hear his voice-over. The episode bears comparison to the more famous scenes of Ray Milland as an alcoholic having the DTs in The Lost Weekend Here and elsewhere in the picture Kershner and Wexler use high angles (e.g through the bars above the cell) for dramatic effect. The period detail of LA locations shot in 1957 such as a Redondo Beach bowling alley also includes some curious dated slang.

JohnHowardReid Stakeout on Dope Street (1958) is the first movie feature directed by Irvin Kershner whose technique is angled much more to the demands of TV than the cinema – as we might expect from someone who spent the previous five or six years filming episodes for TV's Confidential File series. Although interest is kept alive by intercutting the sluggish main action with an occasional flash as to what the police are doing, the pace is often dead slow in these sequences too. No need to list all the movie's not-so-admirable TV traits like the over-reliance on close-ups, the filling-in-time dialogue that slows down the action while we needlessly tune in to the banal philosophy that underlies the actions of the three principals as they throw their dialogue back and forth in the one cramped studio set. As if this were not enough, we are then forced to take in another dose of philosophy from the hero's girlfriend, played by Abby Dalton, an attractive girl with a pleasant face and an absence of bustiness that makes her acceptable as a girl-next-door type. Stakeout was obviously lensed on an extremely tight budget. There is very little action and even the climax is rather tame. Best feature of the movie is Haskell Wexler's glossy, low-key photography. Available on a Video Beat DVD.

Wizard-8 Long before Irvin Kershner tackled big budget movies such as "The Empire Strikes Back", he began his theatrical directorial career with this little movie. At times it's a pretty interesting debut. It tackles the subject of drugs when it was next to taboo to deal with them in movies. Kershner probably got away with it because the movie does portray drugs in a very negative light, from showing the brutal criminals that deal with them to the addicts controlled by the drugs they take. The negative portrayal is a little heavy handed at times, but one must remember the movie was made during a different time. Anyway, as entertainment the movie is certainly not boring, though the plotting is somewhat off - the bad guys after the opening sequence don't really reappear until the last part of the movie, and the youths' plan to sell the heroin seems padded out by today's standards. It also doesn't help that the "youths" are portrayed by actors who obviously left their teenage years many years in the past. In short, this is a flawed movie, but may be of interest to those who have interest in low budget youth-oriented movies from this period.

sol1218 (There are Spoilers) Very probably the first movie coming out of Hollywood that addressed the drug epidemic on the streets of America with both street level smartness and native intelligence, among dealers users and police, in just how illegal drugs, in this case heroin, is both marketed and sold to it's many hooked and desperate customers.A stakeout on Cole Street, known as Dope Street among the dealers and police, goes bad with one of the cops Sgt. Matthews, Matt Resnick, and the arrested drug pusher Jerome Lake, Charles Guasti, ending up shot and killed in the ensuing crossfire. Lake not being able to make his escape, in that he's handcuffed to the dead Sgt. Matthews, throws the briefcase loaded with the drugs, a two pound can of uncut and pure heroin, into the bushes. This happens just moments before Lake is gunned down by Sgt. Matthew's partner Officer Donahue (Slate Harlow), and the police back-up, who's also seriously wounded in the shootout.Lake's partners Mitch Swardurski & Lenny Potter, Herman Rudin & Phllip Mansour, unable to retrieve the drugs or the suitcase, with the initials J.R.L stenciled on it, flee leaving it in the nearby bushes where it's found the next day by grocery delivery boy Julian "Vas" Vaspucci, Jonathon Haze. At his fathers grocery store Vas together with his two friends Jim Bowers & Nick Raymond, Yale Wexler & Steven Mario, open the suitcase finding samples of womens cosmetics and a strange two pound can of white powder, the pure heroin.Keping the cosmetics, Jim gives them as a present to his girlfriend Kathy(Abby Dalton), the three young men throw the valuable heroin away in the garbage thinking that it's worthless powder. It's only later after selling the empty suitcase to a local pawnbroker Samuel Alber, Edward Schaaf, the trio realize, by seeing the story of the Dope or Cole Street shootout in the newspapers, that they threw away a fortune in illegal drugs!Finding the missing can in the city dump the three now would be drug dealers get in touch with a middle man, a local heroin junkie, Danny played by Allen Kramer in order to first authenticate, by him using it, the heroin and then sell it to his friends splitting the take with his three partners in crime. What goes completely over the heads of Vas Jim and Nick, as well as Danny, is that both the mob headed by gangster Mr. Fennel, Herschel Bernardi, as well as police are out looking for them and the heroin. And in their case it would be a lot better if the cops instead of Mr. Fennel's boys got to them first!Harrowing story of greed as well as stupidity on the part of the three young men with the can of pure heroin who were way over their heads and didn't realize it until it was almost too late. The naive trio think that they can get rich by not only selling death on the streets without the say so and approval of mobster Mr. Fennel, whom the heroin belongs to, but with the pursuing cops breathing down their necks who are out to avenge the murder of one of their own, Sgt. Matthews,over the missing drugs. Working almost as a team the police and Fennel Mob slowly track down the three by finding the suitcases where the heroin came from at Alber's pawnshop. It's then that the Mob tracks down Danny who not realizing he's the only heroin pusher in town because, with him having the missing heroin, he's the only one who has any smack, or heroin, to sell!Predictable, but very exciting, and by the numbers final as Vas Nick and a very reluctant Jim, whom Kathy talked out this this drug dealing insanity, end up on the wrong side of the law as well as in the gun-sights of Mr. Fennel's hit men Swardurski & Potter. The final scene in a deserted L.A power plant has you on the edge of your seat in hoping that Jim, who's the one with the can of heroin, gets away from the two Mr. Fennel hit-men before they finish him off for good. But at the same time also knowing that if Jim, as well as his friends Vas and Nick, end up alive he'll have to pay for that brief moment of insanity in thinking that dealing drugs is a swell way to get rich; rich off the sufferings and deaths of those that he sells the drugs to.