Of the several directors and producers of American International Pictures, Roger Corman was clearly the most brilliant. Corman, who produced for AIP, 1954's The Fast And The Furious, a road-racing rigmarole chock-filled of heptalking high-schoolers and hipness, though ironically Corman's most essential youth movie of the period was made for Allied Artists. The title was aptly, Teenage Doll (1957), a moody picture with a well-paced plot and pathos for understandable teenage angst. On a rain-slicked street one fateful night, a girl gang called 'The Black Widows' are cornered by the coppers, while most of them manage to escape, a few are left walking rebelliously into the sobering glare of the squad cars' headlights. The mood of the scene quintessentially matches the moody spirit of the Shangri-Las' popular hit record Leader of the Pack.'
Equally aggressive in tone were AIP's Dragstrip Girl and Motorcycle Gang, which were respectively released in 1957, both featuring teen and parent conflicts. heroines torn between their boyfriends from the wrong sides of the tracks and the innocuous ones their parents approve of, plenty of hep vernacular and high-speed motorbiking.
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| So let me ask you this - You wanna be cool or you wanna be crazy, ya can't be both Johnny. |
Katzman would not rule the teenage market on his lonesome; with High School Confidential (1958), exploitation maestro, Albert Zugsmith coined some jive talk especially for the occasion and added plenty of scenes with hot-rod automobiles just for good measure. Before long, 'reefer madness' became a hot commodity theme for movies. In 1958's The Cool and the Crazy, a kid who has served time in an institution, brainlessly sells the gateway drug of choice to his classmates and eventually commits murder before himself dying in a flaming car wreck in the middle of all places - the desert.
Tragedies were very call of the day when it came to teenage movies. AIP's Dragstrip Riot culminated in a free-for-all between two warring gangs of precarious-living youths. There would be of course, a lighter side. In Summer Love (1958), starring Rod McKuen and Jill St. John, boppers Jimmy Daley And The Ding-a-Lings make a guest appearance at a summer camp with their hit tune To Know You Is To Love You This precise formula also lingered on in similar blends of rock and romance, as seen in Juvenile Jungle and Let's Rock (both 1958)
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| Some wild gorillas in 1958's Juvenile Jungle |
Eventually television supplied the movies with hot-off-the-press teenage idols. Ed Kookie Byrnes appeared in Sam Katzman's abysmal Life Begins at 17 (1958). Cliff Richard was a british beatnik in 1959's Expresso Bongo and the music business continued to provide performers for films like Go Johnny Go (1959) starring Richie Valens, Eddie Cochran, The Flamingos, Chuck Berry and The Cadillacs. In 1959, a new teen queen was coronated - Sandra Dee, immortalized as the silver screens's sweetheart surfer Gidget.