‘Real gone’ chick about to be scolded to “cool it”

THE BEAT GENERATION sleazed into 1959 as a mix of a tawdry crime story with a noir edge, relationship drama and campy ‘expose’ of ‘gone’ beatniks. Produced for $439,000 by schlockmeister Albert Zugsmith, it was (mis)directed by Charles F. Haas, who in the same year also had his mitts on The Big Operator (daffy nastiness), Girls Town (classic camp idiocy) and episodes of a half dozen TV series. The screenplay by the more than competent Richard Matheson and Lewis Meltzer is hard to excuse other than paycheck duty. The cast is a collection of talented actors (slumming), untalented actors (amusing), untalented relatives of famous actors (embarrassing), assorted musicians (job’s a job) and stray pop culture personalities— whynotamus? Matheson said he based it on a true case story: ” I wrote it as a police procedure film. It ended up . . . well, you know how. I remember a copy of the script, many drafts in, where Zugsmith had meticulously crossed off police everywhere and had written in fuzz. It turned into absolute nonsense.” One of the ad tag lines pre-grooved the scene: “The wild, weird, world of the Beatniks! …Sullen rebels, defiant chicks…searching for a life of their own! The pads…the jazz…the dives… those frantic “way-out” parties… beyond belief!”

Hardcase L.A. detective ‘Dave Culloran’ (Steve Cochran) is on the case of ‘The Aspirin Kid’, a rapist who leaves tins of the medicine as a taunt of his crimes. We’re cued in early that the perv is ‘Stan Hess’ (Ray Danton, in typical creep mode–deep creep this time) who hangs out with the beatnik crowd. When Hess attacks Culloran’s wife (after the unsuspecting cop gave him a lift—when Hess was leaving a recent crime scene, yet) the hunt becomes personal.

MEG: “I wish I didn’t have to make the scene with that plane tonight. I wish I never had to go back East. I wish I wish...”  STAN: “Hey hey play it cool chick, like play it like cool. You got to go, everybody’s got to move. I mean we can’t stand still and wait for the next mushroom cloud now you dig.”   MEG: “Crazy, but as soon as I cut out you’ll forget me.”   STAN: “Oh Meg you’re the most, but there’s no tomorrow not while the sky grooves radiation gumdrops, man you got to live for kicks, right here and know that’s all there is.”  MEG: “You know in all the months I’ve know you you never even held my hand.”   STAN: “The love and marriage bit I put that down. That’s for the Rat Race and the squares, Schopenhauer says and I agree with him, lovers are traitors who seek to perpetuate the whole want and druggery of life… That cat Schopenhauer also says that this world which is so real with all it’s sunsets and milky ways is nothing.”  MEG: “It’s the only world we got.”   STAN: “Crazy.”

The weird and clumsy (i.e. sensationalist) hybrid of something dark (a sadistic serial rapist), and fractured marital dynamics (Culloran and his victimized wife) interspersed with the jaw-dropping dopiness of the beatnik ‘scene’ is bad enough, and then there’s a subplot with slutty ‘Georgia Altera’ (Mamie Van Doren), targeted by Hess thru his punk acolyte ‘Art Jester’ (Jim Mitchum) and then used by the cops to snare the perps. The finale features an asinine dance-brawl at the niks club followed by pursuit to the beach and an underwater fight, complete with speargun).

Jackie Coogan plays Cochran’s partner—he also served as ‘dialogue director’; nothing to be proud of in this instance. Cochran delivers pro work, as does Fay Spain as his wife and Maggie Hayes as one of the assault victims: the violence is offscreen but still disturbing. Danton overacts like mad, his worst performance. Other than suggesting she’s ready for the sheets, shower or sofa Van Doren simply can’t act at all. Bob’s boy Mitchum, 17, is as bad as he was in Thunder Road (he eventually improved enough to be ‘fair’, ala Patrick Wayne). Beatdorks include Vampira (also ennobling The Big Operator, Plan 9 From Outer Space and Sex Kittens Go To College ), reciting a heavy poem while holding a white rat and the wacked out ‘dancing’ of Norm Grabowski.

Wrap party—thanking God it’s over and “Let’s make sure we get paid.”

$1,100,000 in tickets placed 141st at the box office. With Louis Armstrong (as himself), Ray Anthony (bandleader, married to Mamie at the time), Cathy Crosby (Bing’s niece, a sultry-eyed nightclub singer), Irish McCalla (stacking the dreck—she was TVs Sheena Queen Of The Jungle), Maxie Rosenbloom (boxer turned goofball), William Schallert (as a priest), Dick Contino (accordionist & singer), Billy Daniels (singer), Charles Chaplin Jr., Sid Melton, Guy Stockwell and Regina Carrol. 95 minutes.

Like, Clicksville to enlarge for clarity, daddy-o