Wild in the Streets (1968)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Barry Shear

Writers:

Robert Thom (screenplay)
Robert Thom (story)

Release Date:

29 May 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

If you're thirty, you're through!

Plot:

Max Flatow is a precocious, social miscreant who has a way with home-made explosives. When he tires of these...

Plot Keywords:

LSD | Political | Teen | Mother Son Relationship | Generation Gap

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Shelley Winters	...	Mrs. Daphne Flatow
Christopher Jones	...	Max Jacob Flatow Jr alias Frost
Diane Varsi	...	Sally LeRoy
Hal Holbrook	...	Sen. Johnny Fergus
Millie Perkins	...	Mary Fergus
Richard Pryor	...	Stanley X
Bert Freed	...	Max Jacob Flatow Sr.
Kevin Coughlin	...	Billy Cage
Larry Bishop	...	The Hook, Abraham
Michael Margotta	...	Jimmy Fergus
Ed Begley	...	Sen. Allbright
Salli Sachse	...	Hippie mother
Kellie Flanagan	...	Young Mary Fergus
Don Wyndham	...	Joseph Fergus
May Ishihara	...	Fuji Elly

MPAA:

Rated R for drug content. (2003 re-rating)

Runtime:

94 min | West Germany:91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-12 (cut) (1970) (re-rating) | Finland:K-16 (cut) (1969) (original rating) | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved | USA:GP (re-rating) (1971) | USA:R (re-rating) (1968) | USA:R (re-rating) (2003) | West Germany:16

Company:

American International Pictures (AIP)

Trivia:

American International Pictures originally offered the role of Max Frost to noted folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs, who was known at the time to want to branch out into film work. However, after reading the screenplay, Ochs rejected it, stating the story presented the youth counterculture of the 1960s in a badly distorted light.

Quotes:

Mrs. Daphne Flatow: [hysterically, as she is arrested for being "overage"] No, no, no, I'm young! I'm young! I'm VERY young! I'm VERY YOUNG!
The Hook, Abraham: [unimpressed, taking her into custody] Lady... you are the biggest "mother" of them all.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Sof Ha'Olam Smola (2004)

Soundtrack:

Wild In the Streets

One wild, psychedelic ride

This film is a fascinating time capsule of late sixties fashions, music, and mindsets, as essential to an understanding to the culture of the times as BLOW-UP and BEDAZZLED. Like the decade itself, the film is funny, political, satiric, irreverent, colorful and groovy. No really. The movie involves Max Flatow, an angry teen who blows up his parent's car and runs away from his push-over father and clinging mother to become a rock star and multi-millionaire. Now flanked by a group of hangers-on/band members that include a washed-up child star-turned-druggie(Diane Varsi), a one-handed horn player(Larry Bishop), a gay business manager(Kevin Coughlin), a fourteen-year old Japanese typewriter heiress, and black militant drummer(Richard Pryor!), Max Frost, as he is now known, endorses a self-serving young senatorial candidate(Hal Holbrook, in a role that now undoubtably makes him cringe)hoping to court young voters. But Max has his own agenda, using the newly-elected senator to have Varsi elected to Congress and propose legislation that the voting age be lowered to 14!Max laces the Washington water supply with LSD, then he and his cronies enlist teenagers to escort the stoned Congressmen to the voting booths. With the voting age lowered, Max gets himself elected President and outlaws anyone over 30, sentencing them to concentration camps where they're kept perpetually stoned on LSD.

The whole premise belies the generational tensions that laid just below the surface of everyday life in the late sixties. What looks like far-fetched camp now was very much a concern to the older people who felt overwhelmed by the predominant youth culture of the time. Still, it is a fun romp. The musical sequences are eye-popping precursors to MTV, with psychedelic light displays and cutting edge(for 1968)graphics, and the camera angles and editing are top-drawer(the film was nominated for an Oscar for editing). Yet the film does have a good deal of camp, primarily in Shelley Winters, out of control as Max's overbearing mother. Winters was well into the insane/conniving/perverted mother stage of her career(starting with LOLITA and ending with WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO)and she hits her stride here: she not only chomps the scenery but gobbles it down and goes for seconds! Everyone has a favorite scene: Winters commandeering the wheel of Max's Rolls and rolling the car, killing a small boy in the process; Winters in a long blonde wig and hippie get-up, extolling the virtures of LSD therapy; Winters(about five minutes after the last scene)in a pill box hat, suit, and finger waves haughtily telling a reporter about her recent appointment as U.S. Ambassador to England(?!); and my personal fave, with Winters, disheveled and whacked out on LSD, wearing a hospital gown and scaling a chain-link fence as she screams, "FEATHERS! I MUST HAVE FEATHERS!!" Whatthehell??

The movie was on video at one point, but may be out of print. AIP, that teen fare sausage factory, put this one out, and it supposedly got a bigger budget that their average flicks. It also made quite a bit of money. A true cult classic, and, did you know, the theme song, "Shapes Of Things To Come" was released as a single credited to Max Frost and the Troopers? It charted at #22 in 1968!