FeistyUpper
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Chrissie
First, a caveat: There are no actual beatniks in this film. Nary a beret or black turtleneck or bongo to be seen. As for the movie itself, to steal a line from Roger Ebert, "The Beatniks" is transcendently bad. It soars above ordinary badness as the eagle soars above the mosquito.The plot is a common one of the era: kid from the wrong side of the tracks is spotted by a talent agent, but alas, his crazy friends ruin it all for him. To call the characters two-dimensional is an insult to planar surfaces. To call the plot threadbare is an insult to rags. To call ... Oh, never mind. You get the idea.The entire production screams, "high school drama club project," though the actors playing the teens are a bit long in the tooth for the youth set, dig it? MST3000 had great fun with it, though, and thus it's worth a watch.
inspectors71
You take your chances with the Digiview flicks at the Wal-Mart Dollar DVD kiosk. Every once in a while you find a small gem. Paul Frees' The Beatniks is not one of them.This is a grade Z, bottom-of-the-drive-in-bill waste of celluloid that deservedly got a MST3000 treatment. How does stuff like this get made? You could call the distributor, but most everyone involved in The Beatniks is probably dead and Digiview just scoops up cinematic flotsam and jetsam and puts in cheap disks for your viewing amazement. The trouble is it's simply so bad, so utterly inept that no one dare get mad at it.All one can do is--if one is so inclined to sit still for 70+ minutes--watch in slack-jawed amazement at cinematic awfulness.C'mon . . . it's only a buck!
kilgore2345
This is my largest complaint; no Beatnik culture, no snapping fingers and performance poetry, marijuana, not even the stereotypical black clothes and sunglasses -- how can you get that part wrong? Instead the "Beatniks" are mostly your typical 50s squares and range to a geek-greaser (Mooney) and the lone woman in the group, think of a "Grease" Frenchy-Rizzo mix.Since, the majority of the plot of this movie revolves around Eddie's musical ability the audience gets plenty of solo performances. The music is fine for a low budget movie like "Beatniks", nothing you will remember past the end credits. Again, even when Eddie was a "Beatnik" he wasn't singing Beatnik music, more like Mel Torme-like crooning.Other glaring mistakes in this movie is the continuity (see the GOOFS section) and the character of Moon is just ridiculous, with a catch phrase that will live on forever (I'm gonna MOON ya'!). The Eddie character is a little annoying in his inconsistency -- is he a goon with a heart of gold or just a jerk? All in all this is a very, very bad movie.
darthmaulanie
Bad! Bad! Horrible! Truly rotten! Even these words cannot express how severely awful this movie was. Still, if you are into "kitsch" like I am, then you'll probably love this flick purely for the song line gems ("My sideburns don't need your love.") and hokie one-liners ("Filthy fuzz!"). A film that is worthy enough to be featured on Mystery Science Theatre (and was) but not Oscar worthy. A flick to make even the most serious human giggle but not intentionally. A cinematic masterpiece you WILL soon forget. And by the way, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with beatniks. It follows more along the lines of The Jets in 'West Side Story' or what the T-Birds would have been like after Rydell High. People don't give enough credit to Ed Wood. It is movies like 'The Beatniks' that make me believe there is a treasure trove of rotten but awesome B-movies that even surpass 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'.
