Beatniks

Beatniks? What beatniks? Two-bit punks, a closet rock-&-roll star, and an out-of-his-mind psycho: yes. Beatniks: no. Though The Beatniks was probably a last-minute title change to replace a less exploitable moniker, it didn’t make much of a difference to the audiences of 1960. After all, to a world emerging from the Eisenhower era, bohemian artists and beat-generation poets were seen as little more than socially maladjusted misfits in the same category as junkies, Commies, and teenage hoodlums — or the petty-crime crackpots running loose in this fast, fun, and naively hilarious saga of an overage delinquent who becomes an overnight sensation.
After robbing another convenience store (while wearing skull masks), Eddy Crane (TONY TRAVIS) and pals — girlfriend Iris, and thugs Red, Chuck, and mad-as-a-hatter Mooney — stop at a local diner where Eddy sings to the jukebox. Hearing him is sad-sack talent agent Harry Bayliss, who quickly books Eddy on the Rocket to Stardom TV show. Sure enough, faster than you can say "Wild Guitar," Eddy’s an immediate hit: "No kiddin’? I can’t believe it! It’s so quick!" He also wants to go legit which upsets the gang — "You’re one of us and you’re gonna stay one of us!"—who celebrate Eddy’s success by first trashing their hotel room, then partying at a roadside bar where idiot Mooney kills the bartender. Bayliss tries to ask the group to let Eddy break free but that only irritates Mooney who not only stabs the old guy, but announces his own celebrity status from the window: "I killed that fat barkeep!!!" It finally all comes down to Eddy and Mooney deciding who’s the biggest Big Shot via a knife fight in a dingy alley....
The Beatniks was the only feature directed by PAUL FREES, an actor best known for a beautiful and distinctive voice heard in countless cartoons, English-dubbed Japanese monster movies, and emerging from the mouths of many an actor whose dialogue was flubbed, changed in post, or otherwise unusable. He can be heard here announcing Eddy on the television show and voicing the cop in the hospital room near the end. (And he can be seen as one the scientists in the original 1951 The Thing, or Space Master X-7,1958, where he’s eaten by fungus.) Frees also co-wrote the catchy teenage tunes: "Leather coat /Duck bill hair / Call me wild / I don’t care...."
But The Beatniks really belongs to PETER BRECK as the maniacal Mooney who is so completely over the top, out of control, and cartoon-like crazy that he dominates the entire film. He may not be giving a good performance — actually, he’s downright awful — but, like a good carcrash, you can’t take your eyes off him. Breck obviously enjoyed going nuts since he let himself be sent to the loony bin three years later in Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor.
Digitally remastered from a crisp 35mm theatrical print for all "you wild bunch of punks" out there. —Handsome Harry Archer