The Delinquents (1957 film)
| The Delinquents | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Robert Altman |
| Produced by | Elmer Rhoden Jr. Robert Altman |
| Written by | Robert Altman |
| Starring |
Tom Laughlin Peter Miller Richard Bakalyan |
| Music by | Gene Garf Louis Palange |
| Cinematography | Charles Paddock |
| Edited by | Helene Turner |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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Running time
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72 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $63,000 |
| Box office | $1,000,000 |
The Delinquents is a 1957 American drama film written, produced, and directed by Robert Altman in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri during the summer of 1956 on a $63,000 budget. It's not only the first film Altman directed, but also the first to star Tom Laughlin.
In suburban Kansas City, 18-year-old Scotty White and 16-year-old Janice Wilson are very much in love, but her parents stand between them because Janice is “too young to go steady” and Scotty “hangs out with the wrong crowd”. At the drive-in alone one night, Scotty gets wrongly targeted by a gang who are looking for the person who slashed one of their tires. Cholly, a hot-rod greaser who heads a gang of carousing delinquents, comes to Scotty's rescue. Cholly cooks up the idea of posing as Janice's new boyfriend and bringing her to meet Scotty the next night. The plan works well, and the teen crowd all meet at an abandoned mansion on the edge of town. However, the party gets out of hand with wild drinking and dancing, and Scotty and Janice leave to be alone.
Soon after, the police mysteriously appear and break up the drunken free-for-all. Cholly and his right-hand-delinquent Eddy suspect Scotty of tipping off the police, and the whole gang kidnaps Scotty the next day and force him to gulp down an entire bottle of Scotch when he won't admit to being the informant. In panic after Scotty passes out from drinking, the gang begins to drive him out to the country with the intention of abandoning him on the side of the road but on the way they pull into a service station to get some gas. Eddy decides to hold up the station, but Scotty unknowingly bungles it when he wakes up. Cholly hits the station attendant on the head with a gas pump, and the gang speeds off, leaving Scotty behind with the cash and the attendant. Scotty staggers home, finds the gang has kidnapped Janice, has several fights, and then has a switchblade fight with Cholly in a home kitchen. Scotty then goes to the police.
Elmer Rhoden Jr. was a Kansas City motion picture theater exhibitor, president of the prominent Commonwealth Theaters chain in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Rhoden wanted to get into producing films. He had the distributing apparatus at hand and the necessary capital to invest. Although television was drawing viewers out of the theaters, teenagers still frequented theaters, and, soon, film producers realized that there was a large “teen market” they could tap into. During the mid-to-late 1950s, following the success of movies by American International Pictures aimed at the teenage market such as Shake, Rattle & Rock! and Hot Rod Girl, a huge wave of films, often referred to as exploitation films, were later produced by the major Hollywood studios and independents alike. Common subjects of 1950s teen films included juvenile delinquency, rock and roll, horror, science fiction, and hot rods. Rhoden Jr. was one of the first independent exhibitors to note these shifts in the film industry and was determined to make it work for his business.
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