Wild in the Streets
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| Wild in the Streets | |
|---|---|
 Movie Poster |
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| Directed by | Barry Shear |
| Produced by | Samuel Z. Arkoff James H. Nicholson |
| Written by | Robert Thom |
| Starring | Christopher Jones Shelley Winters Richard Pryor Diane Varsi Hal Holbrook |
| Music by | Les Baxter |
| Distributed by | MGM Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 29, 1968 |
| Running time | 94 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,000,000 (estimated) |
| IMDb profile | |
Wild in the Streets was a popular 1968 movie, produced and released by American International Pictures, and based on a short story by writer Robert Thom. The movie has become a cult classic, since its initial release.
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[edit] Plot summary
Christopher Jones stars, as aspiring singer (and underground rebel) Max Frost, whose band The Troopers (all living together with him, their women, and hangers-on) include his 15-year-old genius attorney Billy Cage (Kevin Coughlin) on lead guitar, ex-child actor/girlfriend Sally LeRoy (Diane Varsi) on keyboards, hook-handed Abraham Salteen (Larry Bishop) on bass guitar and trumpet, and anthropologist Stanley X (Richard Pryor) on drums.
When Max is asked to sing at a televised political rally by Senate candidate Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook), who's running on a platform to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen (a genuine issue, not passed until 1971 as the Twenty-sixth Amendment), he and the Troopers appear—but Max stuns everyone by calling instead for the voting age to become fourteen, then finishes the show with an improvised song, "Fourteen Or Fight!", and a call for a demonstration.
Max's fans (and other young people, by the thousands) stir to action, and within twenty-four hours fourteen-or-fight protests have begun in cities around the United States. Fergus's advisors want him to denounce Max, but instead he agrees to support the demonstrations, and change his campaign—if Max and his group will compromise, accept a voting age of fifteen instead, abide by the law, and appeal to the demonstrators to go home peaceably. Max agrees, and the two appear together on television, and in person the next day.
Most states agree to lower the voting age within days, in the wake of the demonstrations, and Max Frost and the Troopers campaign for Johnny Fergus until the election, which he wins by a landslide. Taking his place in the US Senate, Fergus wishes Frost and his people would now just go away, but instead they get involved with Washington politics. When a Congressman from Sally LeRoy's home district dies suddenly, the band enters her in the special election that follows, and she's voted into Congress by the new teen bloc.
The first bill Sally introduces is a Constitutional amendment to lower the age requirements for national political office—to fourteen, and "Fourteen Or Fight!" enters a new phase. A joint session of Congress is called, and the Troopers (by now joined by Fergus's son Jimmy, played by Michael Margotta) swing the vote their way by spiking the Washington water supply with LSD (a considered threat, actually attempted in the late 1960s), and providing all the Senators and Representatives with teenaged escorts.
As teens either take over or threaten the reins of government, the Old Guard (those over thirty) turn to Max to run for President, and assert his (their) control over the changing tide. Max again agrees, running as a Republican to his chagrin, but once in office, he turns the tide on his older supporters. Thirty becomes a mandatory retirement age, while those over thirty-five are rounded up, sent to "re-education camps", and permanently dosed on LSD. Fergus unsuccessfully attempts to dissuade Max by contacting his estranged parents (wheelchair-bound Barry Freed and overbearing Shelley Winters), then tries to assassinate him. Failing at this, he flees Washington with his remaining family. (Each are soon rounded up.)
With youth now in control of America, politically as well as economically, and similar revolutions breaking out in all the world's major countries, Max withdraws the military from around the world (turning them instead into de facto age police), puts computers and prodigies in charge of the Gross National Product, ships surplus grain for free to third world nations, disbands the FBI and Secret Service, and becomes the leader of "the most truly hedonistic society the world has ever known". All seems well... but youth proves to be restless, as Max (and the audience) discovers at the conclusion.
[edit] Trivia
- The movie features cameos from several media personalities, including Melvin Belli, Dick Clark, Army Archerd, and Walter Winchell. Millie Perkins and Ed Begley have supporting roles, and Bobby Sherman interviews Max as President. In a pre-Brady Bunch role, Barry Williams plays a teenage Max Frost at the beginning of the movie.
- The storyline was a reductio ad absurdum projection of contemporary issues of the time, taken to extremes, and played poignantly during 1968—an election year with many controversies (the Vietnam War, the Draft, Civil Rights, the population explosion, rioting and assassinations, and the baby boomer generation coming of age).
- The original magazine short story, titled "The Day it All Happened, Baby!" was expanded by its author to book length, and was published as a paperback novel by Pyramid Books.
- A soundtrack album was also successful, and the song "The Shape Of Things To Come" (written by songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil) and performed by Max Frost and the Troopers, featured in the movie, became a #22 hit on the US Billboard charts.
- According to Max Julien on the DVD commentary for The Mack, in which Richard Pryor co-starred, Pryor urinated on Shelley Winters's head while filming a scene. Pryor did not star in another film until Lady Sings the Blues in 1972.
- The movie was released on VHS home video in the late 1980s, and has recently (2005) appeared on DVD, on a twofer disc with another AIP movie, 1971's Gas-s-s-s.
- Garland Jeffreys wrote an unrelated song called "Wild in the Streets", which both he and Chris Spedding recorded in the 1970s. It became the title song of a 1982 album by The Circle Jerks.
- Bon Jovi also released an unrelated song titled "Wild in the Streets".
