Wild in the Streets

Director: Barry Shear Barry Shear

Overview

A rock star decides he'd rather rule the free world than just sell records in this ambitious fusion of political satire and teen exploitation. Teenage rebel Max Flatow (Christopher Jones) has grown tired of life in suburbia with his domineering mother (Shelley Winters) and weak-willed father (Bert Freed), and, having saved up 800 dollars he earned by selling home-brewed LSD to his schoolmates, he blows up the family car with a makeshift bomb and strikes out on his own. A few years later, Max has adopted the name Max Frost, and is one of the world's biggest rock stars, selling millions of records and earning a fortune from concert appearances and music publishing. Max has learned firsthand about the buying power of America's youth, and when Sen. John Fergis (Hal Holbrook) asks Max to appear at a "youth rally" to mobilize younger voters, he realizes the kids could also sway an election if they wanted. At Fergis' rally, Max debuts a new song, "Fourteen or Fight," which demands the voting age be reduced to 14; the youth respond by rising up in support of Max's demands, reducing many American cities to a standstill. As political leaders bow to public pressure, the age of suffrage is reduced to 15, but rather than choosing candidates to support, Max decides it's time he and his inner circle took control. After Max doses Washington, D.C.'s water supply with LSD, congress votes to make any registered voter eligible to hold federal office, and before long Max Frost has become president of the United States. Once in office, Max unveils a bold plan to once and for all do something about people over 30 -- including his parents. Wild in the Streets features an early screen appearance from Richard Pryor as drummer and political activist Stanley X, while media personalities Dick Clark, Walter Winchell, Army Archerd, and Melvin Belli portray themselves. Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote the songs for fictional rockers "Max Frost and the Troopers," including the hit single "The Shape of Things to Come."

Product Details

Release Date:	08/16/2016
UPC:	0887090125413
Original Release:	1968
Rating:	R
Source:	Olive
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Language:	English
Time:	1:37:00
Sales rank:	16,025

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Christopher Jones	Max Jacob 'Frost' Flatow Jr.
Shelley Winters	Mrs. Daphne Flatow
Hal Holbrook	Senator Fergus
Ed Begley	Senator Allbright
Diane Varsi	Sally LeRoy
Richard Pryor	Stanley X
Millie Perkins	Mary
Bert Freed	Max Jacob Flatow Sr.
Kevin Coughlin	Billy
Michael Margotta	Jimmy
Walter Winchell	Himself
Melvin Belli	Himself
Dick Clark	Himself
Larry Bishop	Abraham
May Ishihara	Fuji Ellie
Paul Frees	Narrator,Narrator
Don Wyndham	Joseph Fergus
Kellie Flanagan	Young Mary Fergus
Salli Sachse	Hippie Mother
Kenneth Banghart	Himself
Louis Lomax	Himself
Jack Latham	Himself
Allan J. Moll	Himself
Army Archerd	Himself
Gene Shacove	Himself
Barry Williams	Young Max
Pamela Kellino	Herself

Technical Credits

Barry Shear	Director
Samuel Z. Arkoff	Producer
James H. Nicholson	Producer

Editorial Reviews

This potent, if ridiculous, slice of 1960s-era generation-gap paranoia was a big hit at the time of its release, not surprising given the way that it played both sides of the fence. Youthful viewers were no doubt empowered and excited by the film's depiction of teenage rebellion, while older members of the audience had all of their fears confirmed. Seeing Wild in the Streets out of context, it's clear where the filmmakers' sympathies lie; it's a delirious vision of youth power gone wrong, as well as a vicious attack on an emerging cult of youth that America still worships at the expense of experience and wisdom. The members of Max Frost's group are depicted as obsessed by their immediate chronological states. They must "stop the clock or go mad" and their insistence on a voting age of 14 is remarkably wrongheaded and shortsighted. Unlike the majority of their generation, each member of the band is an overachiever. Few teenagers possess genius IQs or have published best-selling books (like Richard Pryor's drummer character Stanley X, author of the "Aborigine Cookbook"), so using themselves as illustrations for the voting rights of children would, in a serious world, be easily argued away. They liken their social inequity to the plights suffered by minorities and females in quest of voting rights, despite the fact that their condition is temporary, and Frost's speeches are peppered with arrogant wisecracks that wouldn't hold water even with legislators terrified by the prospects of mass teenage revolt. All of this doesn't prevent Wild in the Streets from being extraordinarily entertaining, more so in retrospect. The movie pulses with violent energy and a perfect narrative foil by veteran voice artist Paul H. Frees, who describes the proceedings with a sublime mixture of dramatic authority and sarcastic humor. True to production company American International's exploitation history, the film (though one of the studio's biggest-budgeted pictures at the time) contains a variety of technical gaffes beyond its obvious logical shortcomings, mainly in the many musical sequences. These actors are clearly not musicians, as is evident in their clumsy handling of the instruments (the band's bass player is able to perform on guitar and trumpet simultaneously, despite having a hook for his left hand!), and this again betrays the origins of the film as a propaganda tool of the older generation. Shelley Winters is at her histrionic best as the shrewish, incestuous mother who laughs away her son's basement laboratory filled with LSD and dynamite, eventually passing through a number of phases, from acid-addled hippie to delusional White House hostess. Fans of The Brady Bunch will be amused (or horrified) to view Barry Williams as a young version of Max Frost, inaugurating his film career with the immortal line, "Screw! All the kids think it's freaky!" Wild in the Streets ends with Frost being faced by the fact that what constitutes "youth" is entirely relative, but only after turning America into the vast playground that our baby boomer forefathers naïvely envisioned at the time. This time capsule of a picture provides modern viewers with a derisive view of the weird panic into which the love generation threw the country, along with some great (and some horrible) tunes in the service of clumsy social satire, which turns on itself as well as its target.