The Old Man found the combination to the lock on the Memory Vault the other day. It has been missing for a while. The addition of a new (to us) TV channel called ME-TV to our local line-up has rekindled a few memory embers that I thought were long extinguished. Living in the land of Combat, 12-O'clock High, Gunsmoke, and The Honeymooners has shaken awake my snoozing data bank. I started thinking about some of the cinematic extravaganzas of my youth.
The upscalers and media wonks called them "B-Movies". The Park Street Battalion simply called them, "fun". Blackboard Jungle led the charge. It was the first to feature our music. In the darkened theater, a booming back-beat followed by Bill Haley trumpeting, "One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock ROCK" as the opening credits rolled, set the stage for Hollywood's impression of teenagers. I don't think Bedford's kids got the memo. I never knew anyone who could totally identify with a sneering Vic Morrow as the street punk who made "Teach's" life miserable. I've watched that film a number of times since then. It was actually a pretty good movie with Glenn Ford and a young Sidney Poitier bringing a boxcar load of class to the whole thing. It came to our theater during the summer before I started eighth grade, and made me wonder what I was in for.
As is often the case with the movie business, it went downhill from there. What followed was a chain of "teen flicks" whose sole mission was to exploit the blossoming rock-and-roll culture. Oh, there were some standouts; Michael Landon in his first feature film role, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and Steve McQueen in a silly bit of fluff called, The Blob in which a huge pile of jello ate people. But by and large, we kids were happy to see our music heroes in such offerings as, Rock, Rock, Rock, Don't Knock the Rock, and Rock Around the Clock. These usually followed a similar format; young kid has talent, falls under the spell of a fast-talking agent who ends up making the kid a star as well as falling in love with and marrying the kid's sister. Along the way, the popular singers of the day would be on stage at some point lip-syncing their present hit. In those pre-video days, it was about the only predictable way we could see those folks who were making the records we were buying.
Always in these films was the ubiquitous strife between the teen protagonist and his parents. Invariably, the parents and other authority figures were portrayed as little more than out-of-touch bumblers who "saw the light" by the end of the movie and managed to snap their fingers, clap their hands, or tap their feet in a reasonable facsimile of sublime hipness.
Throw in some "hot-rod" movies and you've got a 14 year old by the brain stem. Hot Rod Girl, Delinquent Daughters, and Thunder Alley got red blood juiced up. It's been over 50 years and I still get a rush when I see a "T-bucket" or a "Deuce Coupe".
And let's not forget those cinematic masterpieces of horror. Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (wrap your mind around THAT one), Attack of the Crab Monsters, Bucket of Blood, The Day of the Triffids, and Tarantula played to the fears that all this messing around with "that atomic stuff" would result in hybrid creatures who were really pissed at being so rudely awakened. It was a known fact in the Battalion that when you heard the music get creepy and a Geiger counter got all hyper, you'd get lucky and your date would wiggle a little closer.
Like all of us, movies have changed through the years. My grandson and I spend some very happy times analyzing and discussing special effects and other fine points of today's offerings. But there's a difference...one that's not easy to quantify.
Suffice to say, I still check out the TV guide channel religiously, because from time to time, one of these old movies will show up. And when they do, I turn the lights down, kick back, and brace myself for Bill Haley and The Comets......I just know they'll be there.
Busy Getting Ready
8 years ago
