The Savage Seven Wild in the Streets

Some pictures are put-ons that seem to plead for a tacit agreement with their audience: what is to be viewed is beneath contempt, therefore it is beyond criticism. Disarmed, audiences are presumably free to enjoy the movie in the same way they appreciate the sheer ghastliness of Mrs. Miller's wobbly warbling or the fruity falsetto of Tiny Tim. Two current examples come from

American International, the studio that perfected the beachboy epic.

The Savage Seven begins with a bare-chested Indian looming in the foreground, knife in hand. Another brave leaps forward and they begin to grapple to the death. Then comes an offscreen voice, "Will you guys quit screwing around?" The time is the present, and the Indians are a bunch of tribesmen trapped in a California poverty pocket. From out of the hills comes the Enemy, on wheels--and suddenly the ignoble savages find themselves in a stereotypical motorcycle picture.

There are occasional flickers of intentional humor, as when a cyclist looks inside a shack and wonders, "Who did your decorating, Sargent Shriver?" The best laughs are caused by the scenes of violence, when the Indians decide they would rather be Redskins than dead-skins and beat the living Hell's Angels out of the motorcycle gang. It all ends as it began, in chaos, proving itself ideal kapok to fill out the lower end of double bills in drive-ins.

The top half of the bill might well be Wild in the Streets. The thesis of the movie is that the U.S. is ripe for a teen-age entertainer-turned-politico, a theme explored recently in the English film Privilege. The central character is a delinquent (Christopher Jones) who caterwauls his way into the hearts of young America. An opportunistic Senator (Hal Holbrook) gets a law passed that enfranchises 15-year-olds. They elect Jones President, and suddenly, he-and-shedonism is for everyone under 35. Oldsters who have passed that milestone are packed into concentration camps and mind-blown with a steady diet of LSD.

Even though the antihero has no morals, drive-in flicks always do. Ultimately, Jones finds himself surrounded by hostile children, who bring the joke full circle by insisting: "Everybody over ten ought to be put out of business." Everybody would include the operators of American International. That could be the greatest put-on of them all.

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