Where's Eric Cartman, a giant mechanized drilling machine, and a Slayer CD when you really need them?
"Wild in the Streets" is a laughably dated curiosity piece from the late 60's that really has to be seen to be believed.
The plot: We're introduced to the life of one "Max Jacob Flatow, Jr." aka "Max Frost" (Christopher Jones) from his unwanted conception to his dysfunctional childhood due to his mother (Shelley Winters) being a frigid harpy to his running away from home as a teen. We later meet Max as a 22 yr old lead singer of a successful pop group. Although he's an acid-dropping, dope-smoking layabout with several illegitimate children and is surrounded by ne'er-do-well hippies (yes, a redundancy), Max has become one of the richest men in the country. (Hippies have money?) With his wealth and massive youth following, Max's support is sought by politicians.
Enter ambitious "Johnny Fergus" (Hal Holbrook), a 37 yr old family man, who wants to be a senator. He's a supporter of lowering the voting age to 18, and believes that Max can further help him wrap-up the youth vote. However, Max knowing that the young outnumber the "Old Tigers" (anyone over 30) demands that Fergus help him lower the voting age to 15 in exchange for his support. Fergus agrees and wins his coveted senate seat. Yet, Max isn't through. With voting age lowered, he's able to get his acid-head girlfriend (Diane Varsi) elected to congress from which she pushes for an amendment to lower the age restrictions to 14 for all political offices including the presidency. The amendments pass with the assistance of spiking the water supply with LSD.
Max then becomes president and disbands the military, FBI, CIA, and secret service; ends all foreign entanglements; feeds all the hungry nations; and imprisons anyone over 35 in concentration camps where they're force-fed LSD including his nutty mother and Senator Fergus who woke-up too late to the monster he helped create.
This is one seriously whacked-out film. It goes to show how desperate Hollywood was in the late 60's to reach the youth audience, and it really thought this LSD-inspired mess would do the trick. It's supposed to be a satire, but it panders to many of the nuttiest excesses of the late 60's counterculture. Yet, at the same time, it also portrays the hippies as power-mad fascists. It's so ham-handed that it comes across as a bad acid trip. Overall, it's just so ridiculously stupid that it can't be viewed as either satire, parody, or broad comedy. There is absolutely nothing clever or witty about this film.
As for the cast, no one comes-off well here. Ed Begley and Shelley Winters ham it up to an extreme extent. Christopher Jones was briefly a hot commodity, but quickly disappeared from the film scene. Richard Pryor has a small role as "Token Black" who plays drums rather than bass in Max's cheesy band. The only other "notable" is Barry Williams (aka "Greg Brady") in a brief scene as adolescent Max.
Like the now unintentionally funny Billy Jack films, "Zabriskie Point, "The Strawberry Statement," and other awful counter-culture films of the late 60's and early 70's, "Wild in the Streets" is an absurd time capsule that really makes one wonder how did the CIA or the Commies manage to spike America's water supply?
"Wild in the Streets" is a laughably dated curiosity piece from the late 60's that really has to be seen to be believed.
The plot: We're introduced to the life of one "Max Jacob Flatow, Jr." aka "Max Frost" (Christopher Jones) from his unwanted conception to his dysfunctional childhood due to his mother (Shelley Winters) being a frigid harpy to his running away from home as a teen. We later meet Max as a 22 yr old lead singer of a successful pop group. Although he's an acid-dropping, dope-smoking layabout with several illegitimate children and is surrounded by ne'er-do-well hippies (yes, a redundancy), Max has become one of the richest men in the country. (Hippies have money?) With his wealth and massive youth following, Max's support is sought by politicians.
Enter ambitious "Johnny Fergus" (Hal Holbrook), a 37 yr old family man, who wants to be a senator. He's a supporter of lowering the voting age to 18, and believes that Max can further help him wrap-up the youth vote. However, Max knowing that the young outnumber the "Old Tigers" (anyone over 30) demands that Fergus help him lower the voting age to 15 in exchange for his support. Fergus agrees and wins his coveted senate seat. Yet, Max isn't through. With voting age lowered, he's able to get his acid-head girlfriend (Diane Varsi) elected to congress from which she pushes for an amendment to lower the age restrictions to 14 for all political offices including the presidency. The amendments pass with the assistance of spiking the water supply with LSD.
Max then becomes president and disbands the military, FBI, CIA, and secret service; ends all foreign entanglements; feeds all the hungry nations; and imprisons anyone over 35 in concentration camps where they're force-fed LSD including his nutty mother and Senator Fergus who woke-up too late to the monster he helped create.
This is one seriously whacked-out film. It goes to show how desperate Hollywood was in the late 60's to reach the youth audience, and it really thought this LSD-inspired mess would do the trick. It's supposed to be a satire, but it panders to many of the nuttiest excesses of the late 60's counterculture. Yet, at the same time, it also portrays the hippies as power-mad fascists. It's so ham-handed that it comes across as a bad acid trip. Overall, it's just so ridiculously stupid that it can't be viewed as either satire, parody, or broad comedy. There is absolutely nothing clever or witty about this film.
As for the cast, no one comes-off well here. Ed Begley and Shelley Winters ham it up to an extreme extent. Christopher Jones was briefly a hot commodity, but quickly disappeared from the film scene. Richard Pryor has a small role as "Token Black" who plays drums rather than bass in Max's cheesy band. The only other "notable" is Barry Williams (aka "Greg Brady") in a brief scene as adolescent Max.
Like the now unintentionally funny Billy Jack films, "Zabriskie Point, "The Strawberry Statement," and other awful counter-culture films of the late 60's and early 70's, "Wild in the Streets" is an absurd time capsule that really makes one wonder how did the CIA or the Commies manage to spike America's water supply?