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Michael Dare
Wild in the Streets
Diane Varsi and Christopher Jones in “Wild in the Streets” (1968), directed by Barry Shear.Credit...Olive Films
By J. Hoberman
Sept. 30, 2016
A scurrilous political satire, “Wild in the Streets” opened in the spring of 1968 and played more or less continuously in drive-ins and grindhouse theaters throughout that convulsive election year.
Opposition to the Vietnam War was reaching its height and, in the wake of the catastrophic Democratic convention in Chicago, Fortune magazine estimated that a million young Americans identified with Students for a Democratic Society and other manifestations of the “New Left.”
“Wild in the Streets,” directed by Barry Shear from a script by Robert Thom (elaborating on his Esquire article “The Day It All Happened, Baby”) reflected, even as it satirized, a fearful fascination with the Kids. The movie industry calculated that more than half of its audience was under 25; in its own way, “Wild in the Streets” parodies Hollywood’s bemused efforts to reach younger viewers.
Max Frost, a 22-year-old rock musician (Christopher Jones, star of the short-lived TV series “The Legend of Jesse James”), dupes a pandering, 37-year-old senator (Hal Holbrook, hair combed over his forehead in the style of Robert Kennedy’s) into supporting an amendment that would lower the voting age to 14. Benefiting from this newly enfranchised electorate, as well as a bit of LSD in the drinking water, Max himself takes power, putting everyone over 35 in New Age re-education camps.
The perpetually smirking Mr. Jones offers an amusing impersonation of James Dean doing Hitler. But the movie’s high point is a scene where Diane Varsi, playing the most zonked member of Max’s entourage (which includes a young Richard Pryor), addresses Congress as if from the stage of the Fillmore. Wearing a bicorn hat and lazily shaking her tambourine, she giggles that “America’s greatest contribution has been to teach the world that getting old is such a drag.”
Although the movie’s pop-star-run-amok premise is similar to that of the British filmmaker Peter Watkins’s more sober “Privilege,” released in the United States during the summer of 1967, Mr. Thom might well have been inspired by the Doors singer Jim Morrison, who for several years had been performing “When the Music’s Over” with its cri de coeur ending: “We want the world and we want it… Nah-ow-OW!!!”
“Wild in the Streets” would surely have been better scored by the Doors, but the film’s songs, mainly written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and performed by a studio band complete with a sound like Strawberry Alarm Clock, are not bad. (“The Shape of Things to Come” by the fake band Max Frost and the Troopers actually went to No. 22 in September 1968.) The reviews were also surprisingly good. Renata Adler, in The Times, called the movie “by far the best American film of the year so far,” and compared it, not altogether humorously, to “The Battle of Algiers.”
In its cartoonish way, “Wild in the Streets” prophesied Yippie threats, student uprisings, China’s Red Guards and the Kent State massacre. Amid one crisis, Max’s devoted, smothering mother (Shelley Winters) declares her faith that her son must have “a very good reason for paralyzing the country,” anticipating the moment when the mother of the student leader Mark Rudd, a prominent figure in the occupation of Columbia University, fondly described him to Time magazine as “my son, the revolutionary.”
“Wild in the Streets” may be an artifact of 1968, but its image of generational megalomania provides an ominous footnote to the current presidential election, which could be the last to be waged by two baby boomers.
WILD IN THE STREETS
WILD IN THE STREETS (1968)
Cast
Shelley Winters as Mrs. Flatow
Christopher Jones as Max Frost
Diane Varsi as Salley Leroy
Hal Holbrook as Sen. Fergus
Ed Begley as Sen. Allbright
Richard Pryor as Stanley X.
Directed by
Barry Shear
From a screenplay by
Robert Thorn
Comedy
94 minutes
The perpetually smirking Mr. Jones offers an amusing impersonation of James Dean doing Hitler. But the movie’s high point is a scene where Diane Varsi, playing the most zonked member of Max’s entourage (which includes a young Richard Pryor), addresses Congress as if from the stage of the Fillmore. Wearing a bicorn hat and lazily shaking her tambourine, she giggles that “America’s greatest contribution has been to teach the world that getting old is such a drag.”
Although the movie’s pop-star-run-amok premise is similar to that of the British filmmaker Peter Watkins’s more sober “Privilege,” released in the United States during the summer of 1967, Mr. Thom might well have been inspired by the Doors singer Jim Morrison, who for several years had been performing “When the Music’s Over” with its cri de coeur ending: “We want the world and we want it… Nah-ow-OW!!!”
“Wild in the Streets” would surely have been better scored by the Doors, but the film’s songs, mainly written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and performed by a studio band complete with a sound like Strawberry Alarm Clock, are not bad. (“The Shape of Things to Come” by the fake band Max Frost and the Troopers actually went to No. 22 in September 1968.) The reviews were also surprisingly good. Renata Adler, in The Times, called the movie “by far the best American film of the year so far,” and compared it, not altogether humorously, to “The Battle of Algiers.”
In its cartoonish way, “Wild in the Streets” prophesied Yippie threats, student uprisings, China’s Red Guards and the Kent State massacre. Amid one crisis, Max’s devoted, smothering mother (Shelley Winters) declares her faith that her son must have “a very good reason for paralyzing the country,” anticipating the moment when the mother of the student leader Mark Rudd, a prominent figure in the occupation of Columbia University, fondly described him to Time magazine as “my son, the revolutionary.”
“Wild in the Streets” may be an artifact of 1968, but its image of generational megalomania provides an ominous footnote to the current presidential election, which could be the last to be waged by two baby boomers.
WILD IN THE STREETS
WILD IN THE STREETS (1968)
Cast
Shelley Winters as Mrs. Flatow
Christopher Jones as Max Frost
Diane Varsi as Salley Leroy
Hal Holbrook as Sen. Fergus
Ed Begley as Sen. Allbright
Richard Pryor as Stanley X.
Directed by
Barry Shear
From a screenplay by
Robert Thorn
Comedy
94 minutes
Roger Ebert May 20, 1968
Once you've experienced a concert by a group like the Beatles or the Doors, the fascist potential of pop music becomes inescapable. There is a primitive force in these mass demonstrations that breaks down individualism and creates a joyous mob.
I keep thinking of the scene in "A Hard Day's Night" when the little blond girl, her voice lost in the screams of the crowds, shouts "Paul, Paul!" while tears stream down her face. The performer's role is to be the focus of this emotion. His values instantly become the values of his admirers (as when Jim Morrison of the Doors beckons his crowds to storm the platform).
The connection between politics and the worship of pop idols is fascinating. When Paul Newman was stumping for Sen. Eugene McCarthy in Wisconsin, it was hard to say whether his audiences cared about politics at all. They were drawn by the Newman mystique. But can the appeal work the other way?
Two recent movies have explored this idea. One was a good film, Peter Watkins' "Privilege." One is pretty bad, Barry Shear's "Wild in the Streets." Of the two, I'm afraid "Wild in the Streets" is more effective because it has a greater understanding of its audience.
Watkins was making a self-conscious message film for serious audiences. His pop idol was manipulated by political pros, who understood the mass media and created their hero with classic fascist techniques. Because it was an "art film," it probably reached the wrong audience.
"Wild in the Streets," on the other hand, is aimed squarely at the younger teenage audience that buys records and listens to the Top 40 stations. This audience can believe, if only temporarily, in the greatness of a performer. They can sense what John Lennon was getting at (although he phrased it unfortunately) when he said the Beatles were more famous than Christ.
For this audience, "Wild in the Streets" needs no serious political comment and no real understanding of how pop music and the mass media work together. It's a silly film, but it does communicate in the simplest, most direct terms.
Its hero is a singer named Max Frost (Christopher Jones, who looks as if he possibly could be a pop idol). It treats the press and Congress in broad, stereotyped terms (the elder statesman is Ed Begley, typecast once again). Instead of being realistic, as "Privilege" was, it goes whole hog. The under 30 generation takes over, and those over 30 are herded into concentration camps to bemoan their mistake: growing up.
Wild in the Streets
An often chilling political science fiction drama, with comedy, the production considers the takeover of American government by the preponderant younger population. Good writing and direction enhance the impact of a diversified cast headed by Shelley Winters.
An often chilling political science fiction drama, with comedy, the production considers the takeover of American government by the preponderant younger population. Good writing and direction enhance the impact of a diversified cast headed by Shelley Winters.
Christopher Jones plays a rock ‘n’ roll hero who, as a result of a request from would-be US Senator Hal Holbrook, exceeds the bounds of electioneering help by mobilizing teenagers into legalized voters.
Winters plays his sleazy, selfish mother, whose purported emasculation of dad Bert Freed years before cued Jones’ running away from home.
Holbrook projects perfectly the bright young politico who exploits the young crowd, only to be turned on by those whose help he seeks.
Actual footage from real-life demonstrations was shot for pic, some of it matched quite well with internal drama. What comes off as a partial documentary flavor makes for a good artistic complement to the not-so-fictional hypothesis, the logical result of an over-accent on youth.
1968: Nomination: Best Editing
Following the Yippie protests of 1967, *Wild in the Streets* took Jerry Rubin's slogan "don't trust anyone over thirty" to an absurdist, dystopian extreme.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063808/
Based on a short story by Christian-redemption author Robert Thom, the plot points of this exploitation film read like a checklist of 60s political panic buttons.
Max Frost, the spoiled child of upper-middle class parents, defies his erratic mother by becoming a psychedelics chemist and mad bomber. Years after trashing the family home and dynamiting the car, Max mysteriously resurfaces as a millionaire businessman & hippie rock star.
With his band of free-loving (and implicitly homosexual/pedophillic) prodigies, he successfully scams congress into lowering majority age to 14.
To pull this off he spikes the Capitol's water supply with LSD. Constitutional age restrictions now a thing of the past, Max uses his charisma and Beatles-scale fame to win the presidency.
This montage of clips represents the apotheosis of President Max's political dream. At his direction the militant youth of the nation take revenge on the elderly generation that once oppressed them.
Max's own mother is hauled away as he looks on. Political allies and foes alike are swept up in the mass arrests and turned into grinning, tripped-out zombies.
Hawaiians, who dared defy the groovy dictator, suffer the worst fate of all...
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