Generación de rebeldes

Clean-cut young man (in jackets and skinny ties) hangs out with the beatnik kids and plays the bongos, but really gets off on beating and sexually assaulting vulnerable housewives. Standard police thriller jazzed up with slang; it uses the beatnik milieu only as ruse, it's main aim being a marriage in crisis (the rapist targets a police detective's wife, and two months later she's pregnant but doesn't know who the father is). Low-budget potboiler from MGM was probably a second-biller, though it has gleaming black-and-white cinematography from Walter Castle and some good performances. Steve Cochran is perfectly cast as the detective with the hysterical wife, Ray Danton is way-gone-cool as the scuba-diving psychopath (his M.O. is to call on women pretending he owes their husbands money) and Mamie Van Doren is terrific as a soon-to-be divorcée who wouldn't mind being man-handled. Co-written by Richard Matheson (!) and Lewis Meltzer, the action gets too crazy, dig, near the finish, but for the most part it's a rough little jewel, dad. ** from ****

The Beat Generation exploits that post-war phenomenon of feckless and disillusioned youth as a topical gimmick – superficial parody pitched at about the level of Bob Denver's Maynard G. Krebs on `The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,' the TV series which debuted the same year as this movie. Beatniks with bongo drums spout petulant poesy couched in a made-in-Hollywood argot thick with `daddy-o's,' `real gone's' and `cool cats.' (Out of all this comes at least one good line: `I don't need a mother, man – I've BEEN born.')

All of which is too bad, because here and there The Beat Generation shows glimmers of higher aspirations, as though it had started out a more ambitious project – a better movie – than it ended up. (The co-scriptwriter, Lewis Meltzer, has some solid noir credits on his resume, including The Brothers Rico.)

Out of the coffee houses comes rapist known as the Aspirin Kid (Ray Danton) who is terrorizing the community. On the pretext of repaying a debt, he shows up at the door of married women whose husbands are away, pleads a headache, and, while water is being fetched, slips on leather gloves and overpowers his angels of mercy.

On his trail is cop Steve Cochran, whose wife becomes the Kid's next victim. This proves more than Cochran can handle, who starts treating his wife the way he treated the other victims – as tramps who asked for it. It doesn't help when she finds out she's pregnant, presumably by the rapist. (And here the movie takes some very odd turns. First, there's discussion of a possible abortion – a subject that movies at this time touched upon, if at all, only in the murkiest of terms. Then there's a mini-sermon about the sanctity of life which sounds as if it had been written in Vatican City, though it turns out to be the movie's viewpoint as well.)

The theme of the misogyny shared by Cochran and the rapist remains the most compelling element of the story; if only it had been pursued more consistently or honestly. Instead, the film flies off on its peculiar tangents. One of them concerns Mamie Van Doren, whose assault is rudely interrupted, which is a shame, because she quite explicitly WAS asking for it, and stays miffed for the rest of the movie. Another concerns Jim Mitchum (Robert's son) as the rapist's accomplice; he inherited his father's looks, down to the cleft in his chin, but little of his talent. His idea of acting is to fling out his arms with every line he utters. Charlie Chaplin's son appears as well, not that it matters much, as does a very early Vampira, reciting an ode to parental hate with a white rat perched on her shoulder like a pirate with a parrot.

The Beat Generation suffered too many compromises to be classed as true noir, though it often is. Sadly, its chief interest is in preserving its grotesque travesty of that cultural phenomenon called the Beats – a travesty that has become more or less the official line when the beats are remembered at all.

An obsessed cop tries to track down the "Aspirin Kid," a beatnik serial rapist. MGM was not a noir studio, and I don't really know if you could call this noir but if it is, it's one of the most insane noirs I've ever seen. Like crazy, man. I hardly know where to begin. Dig this groovy cast, Daddy-O... Vampira, Mamie Van Doren (who steals the show) and real-life husband Ray Anthony, Charles Chaplin Jr., James Mitchum (a dead ringer for the old man), Jackie Coogan and performances by Cathy Crosby and Louis Armstrong. I think I can safely say it's the only noir that climaxes at a beat "hootenanny" where a guy randomly tries to wrestle the hero, who later chases the bad guy underwater while dodging harpoons. Yeah, this sh*t is nuts. The portrayal of beatniks is the standard Hollywood ridicule and parody. Has there ever been a positive image of beatniks in an American film? Even FUNNY FACE is pretty condescending. Steve Cochran (looking quite Clooney-esque at this stage in his career) is practically psychotic, setting up an interesting parallel with the villain (Ray Danton, turning the sleaze up to 11) as both are portrayed as misogynistic creeps. Being a late-period noir, there's more freedom to openly address subjects like rape and abortion. Although there is no graphic imagery, the screams of the victims are harrowing enough. The film is campy and trashy and yet also has a moral center... one which backfired for me when it came to the vile anti-choice message. It's hard to make a case against hatred towards women while also telling them they need to keep their rape-spawned babies. It was a pre-Roe v. Wade world, though. The Van Doren character sends mixed messages about the film's stance as well.

This review is rambling because frankly, I don't know what to make of this movie. It's all over the place. In most respects it's pretty bad but also weirdly compelling, and sometimes even hilarious, whether intentionally or not. I can't honestly say I liked it, but I sure as hell couldn't stop watching it.

The Beat Generation (1959)

** (out of 4)

It's not often where I come across a movie and I'm not certain if I should call it a masterpiece for what it is or call it one of the worst films ever made. The story has a woman-hating detective (Steve Cochran) trying to track down a serial rapist (Ray Danton). A twist in the story is that the rapist raped the detective's wife who is now pregnant. THE BEAT GENERATION starts off fairly decent as it tackled some issues that weren't normally talked about in 1959 but then it just keeps getting weirder and weirder and in the end we're left with a complete mess of a film but at the same time it's an original mess. For the life of me I couldn't help but feel that this 95-minute movie was over three hours because of its slow pace and the fact that so much is going on. Not only do you have the investigation into the rape but you also follow the rapist and his friend (Jim Mitchum) as they try to plan more attacks, which leads to the friend falling for one of the attempted victims (Mamie Van Doren)!!! Even stranger is a subplot dealing with the raped wife who now wants to have an abortion. Throw in the detective/husband who is rather obsessive and hates women just like the rapist! Oh yeah, there's also the entire stuff dealing with the "beat generation," which includes an ending with a hootenanny. The rape scenes are handled with some class as we never really see anything but we do here the women scream in terror. The ending, which I won't spoil, is just downright crazy as none of it makes too much sense but then again, nothing that comes before it does either. The cast features a pretty good performance by Cochran and Fay Spain as his wife. Jackie Coogan appears as his partner and we get small performances from Louis Armstrong, Vampira, Max Rosenbloom, Ray Anthony and Cathy Crosby. And yes, Jim Mitchum is the son of screen legend Robert Mitchum. Believe it or not, Mamie Van Doren is actually given a real role here and she too turns in a good performance. THE BEAT GENERATION is a complete mess of a film but at the same time it's very original and somewhat daring for its time.

I watched this movie with some hesitation, because it really received awful reviews; however, because I like Ray Danton and Steve Cochran, I decided to give it a chance. Ray Danton and Steve Cochran both gave very good performances, as did Mamie Van Doren, Fay Spain, Jackie Coogan, and Jim Mitchum, and the plot, though trashy, was interesting, and as pointed out by Martin Teller, this movie was weirdly compelling, mainly due, I think, to Ray Danton's very menacing and interesting performance as a killer, and Steve Cochran's performance as a complex cop. I am, therefore, recommending this movie, but only if you like any of the actors in it, since they all gave good performances, and, I think, one can bear with the worst movie if one is a fan of an actor!