The Delinquents

After almost a decade of making industrial documentaries and educational shorts, maverick filmmaker Robert Altman made his feature debut as writer, producer, and director of this low-budget 1957 film, which he shot in his hometown of Kansas City, MO, with another future maverick, Tom Laughlin (director-star of the Billy Jack movies), in the latter's first starring role. That's the most interesting aspect of this otherwise conventional juvenile delinquent drama inspired by Rebel Without a Cause. Laughlin is Scotty, a straight-arrow student from a middle-class family who becomes tangled up with a wild gang of troublemaking teenagers after he is forbidden from seeing his girlfriend. When the gang suspects Scotty of ratting them out to the cops, they force him to guzzle a bottle of booze, frame him for a gas station robbery, and then kidnap his girl. The film also features an early role for character actor Richard Bakalyan, who went on to play juvenile delinquents, colorful hoods, and wise guy gangsters for years, and he here delivers the most entertaining performance. The Delinquents is all very serious, with a narrator who preaches an anti-delinquency message along with a plea for understanding parents to save their kids from straying. It's a definite curiosity—because of the talent involved and the time capsule shots of Kansas City in 1957—but as a drama it feels like a perfunctory drive-in movie with none of the wit or intelligence that Altman would show in later films. Optional. (S. Axmaker)