After nearly a decade directing industrial documentaries and educational short films, Robert Altman made his feature-length directorial debut with what is essentially a classy public service announcement, a Blood on the Asphalt-style clarion call against youth culture. 1957’s The Delinquents follows Scotty, played by a young Tom Laughlin – future star and director of the Billy Jack movies – in his first lead performance. He’s your run-of-the-mill All-American teen, mostly preoccupied with seeing his girlfriend Janice, played by Rosemary Howard. Tragically, the pair find themselves a mid-century Romeo and Juliet when Janice’s father forbids the star-crossed lovers from seeing one another. Dejected, lovelorn, Scotty takes himself to the drive-in, where he falls in with a pack of feral 30-year-old-teenagers or, as Joe Pesci would have it, “some Yutes.”
Scotty uses his newfound pals to accomplish his true goal, reuniting with his true love Janice, luring her to a drinking party at an abandoned house. Outraged and frightened, Janice flees while Scotty follows. Meanwhile, the cops raid the house party, arresting everybody they find.
Cholly, the lead nogoodnik, in a truly twisted performance from Peter Miller (coming off of a performance in Forbidden Planet and two years away from an uncredited appearance in Rebel Without A Cause) decides Scotty must’ve ratted them out. The gang of toughs make Scotty drink a bottle of booze and then rob a gas station while he’s passed out in the car. They ditch his prostate, drunken form in a panic and then kidnap Janice as insurance. Scotty staggers back to town and rushes in to save the day, following a climactic and harrowing fistfight. A professorial voice intones a cautionary tale about the perils of ignoring wayward adolescents and forsaking traditional values. Roll credits…
There is nothing subtle about The Delinquents. It was funded by a local Kansas City businessman as fodder for his own theater in a blatant cash grab, cashing in on Rebel Without A Cause mania. The performances are over-the-top, somewhere between vaudeville, ’50s cartoon hoodlums and “aw shucks!” Leave It To Beaver Americana. There’s a lot of talent on-screen, though, even if they wouldn’t fully come into their own until years later. Both Laughlin and Miller have real presence, already somewhat iconic and larger-than-life.
The chance to see 1957 Kansas City, Missouri is The Delinquents other main draw. Altman’s documentarian background and Charles Paddock’s crisp black-and-white cinematography give the movie a neorealist slice-of-life time capsule quality, offering a rare glimpse of flyover country in the middle of last century. It’s worth it to see the big, blocky Cadillac convertibles and Dalek-like gas pumps, the drugstores and cardigan sweaters and stiff Brylcreemed hair in living motion instead of still and lifeless in some old photograph. It’s an interesting if flawed, work of proto-indie melodrama that predicts filmmakers like John Cassavetes or Jim Jarmusch.
The Delinquents is clearly the work of an amateur cast and crew, but the potential is already there. For his feature debut, Altman didn’t resign himself to chugging out Z-Grade drive-in sleaze; he made Z-Grade drive-in sleaze with pathos, with backstory and believable motivations, captured in a style that was tasteful and artistic but not flashy. It’s worth seeing, and not just for Altman completists.
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