Max Frost and his band want to run the country and with the help of their friends and some pharmacology, they take over the political structure of the USA. It's a reasonably well made cautionary tale of the late 60's. It briefly became a cult favorite and was said to have prompted then-mayor of Chicago, Richard Daily, to put guards around the city's water supply just prior to, and during the 1968 Democratic National Convention to prevent anarchists from "dosing" the water with psychedelics.
The storyline is fairly slick for the time; how do a bunch of don't-trust-anyone-over-30 kids take over the country? There's a little romance, a little angst, a little rock music, and a lot of scenery-chewing and overacting by the "Major Stars" including Shelly Winters and Ed Begley. Hal Holbrook was able to keep it toned down.
This was also one of the first major films the late Richard Prior appeared in. The other being Sid Cesar's "The Busy Body", released the same year.
The psychedelic aspects of "Wild in the Streets" make it a great film to pair with Peter Fonda's "The Trip" for a 60's double feature flashback fest. Enjoy and never trust anyone under 30. heh.
Wild in the Streets
1968
Action / Comedy / Drama / Music
Wild in the Streets
1968
Action / Comedy / Drama / Music
Plot summary
Musician Max Frost lends his backing to a Senate candidate who wants to give 18-year-olds the right to vote, but he takes things a step further than expected. Inspired by their hero's words, Max's fans pressure their leaders into extending the vote to citizens as young as 15. Max and his followers capitalize on their might by bringing new issues to the fore, but, drunk on power, they soon take generational warfare to terrible extremes.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
June 16, 2022 at 11:41 PM
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Not great, but a slice of the 60's-as-we-wish-they-were
Satire or Prophecy? WHO CAN TELL???
The plot of this movie is absurd, Disney-on-acid: a rock star (who sounds a lot more like a 1965 Mitch Ryder wannabe than a 1968 Cream wannabe, i.e. this film was dated from the start) connives his way to the presidency. And certain elements of the flick are just as goofy as the plot: the early scenes of Max Frost's childhood, including Shelley Winters interrupting two necking preteens by screaming "DIRTY DIRTY BOY AND A DIRTY DIRTY GIRL!!" certainly seem satirical in intent, and I don't think we're supposed it take in seriously when Max Frost belts (Ryder-style again instead of adopting the fey, faux-British accent more popular in '68): "come on and vote for Sally LeRoy! She's old enough for the Congress, boy!!" But if you watch closely, there's some nasty stuff here: massacres, suicide and forced internment, none of it presented with a light touch. So are we supposed to identify with rebel Christopher Jones (jinkies, why did he disappear so quickly after this masterpiece?), or learn the bitter lessons of appeasement from the harsh fates of poor Shelley Winters (her last scene really is horrifying) and Hal Holbrook (a Kennedyesque [!] Senator betrayed by his more liberal allies [!!] - was this movie written before or after Bobby was shot?)? I think the movie is trying to have it both ways -- pandering to the youth market by supposedly extolling revolution while pandering to the "straights" by scaring the bejesus out of them with a bunch of ruthless, power-hungry hippies. Like a lot of trash, this movie makes for better sociology than art. But it's entertaining in an idiotic way (or maybe it's idiotic in an entertaining way) and there are tons of guilty pleasures here: beautiful Diane Varsi, captured halfway down her slide from "Peyton Place" stardom to oblivion; Richard Pryor, captured halfway up his climb from Bill Cosby-style polite token to foul-mouthed, confrontational genius; Congress on acid; and "Fourteen or Fight," the only protest song in history that sounds like it was inspired by the Mitch Miller show. Not a serious film, but somehow an important one.
This Film is A Time Warp Back to the 1960's.
This film is a time warp of Los Angeles and the Sunset Strip in the 1960's. At first sigthing on the FLIX Channel I thought the actor was James Dean. Uncanny resemblance.
Richard Pryor as the drummer in a rock band getting high on LSD with topless white chicks must of been mind blowing for teenagers then. I missed this film totally in 1968. My parents probably made sure of it.
To see Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd, and the greatest lawyer in the nation at that time, Melvin Belli, playing themselves in a film with a whacked out Shelly Winters was just amazing.
The real night time Sunset Strip cruising footage of 1968 was really "far-out man".