Director: Paul Helmick
Starring: Chuck Courtney, Melinda Byron, Robert Fuller
Release Date: 1957 (US)
America is a teenage nation. The nation prides itself on being the latest thing, forever upcoming, attractive, fertile and, above all, cool. Wisdom can wait until tomorrow and tomorrow is always in the future, so all those Cokes and cigarettes will never take their toll. America is the land where the best years are always the years to come – or so it likes to think.
The teenager as we know it emerged during the early 1950s, as part of the affluent postwar American society. Pressured by peers and consumerism, teens channeled disposable income towards clothes, music and automobiles (car ownership, according to Stephen Tropiano, author of 2006’s Rebels and Chicks, doubled in the US between 1945 and 1955), making their age group more visible, mobile, and audible, than ever before. This new prominence helped feed a media-generated panic over teenage delinquency, fueled by an older generation resentful at the freedoms enjoyed by contemporary youngsters. Looking back through the films of that era, it’s remarkable to see the young treated almost as a separate, frightening, species appearing from nowhere, or as one infamous title, Teenagers from Outer Space (1956) suggests, another world entirely. The teen of the 1950s occupied a unique spot in the social landscape, vilified and envied, the loner in the spotlight of America’s global stage, an exuberant and virile contradiction. And never doubt that in the perpetual short-termism of Western society, contradiction can mean success and profit.
Profiting first from the social angst of the teenager were films such as The Wild One (1954), Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Rebel Without A Cause (1956), the latter providing a blueprint for copycat juvenile delinquency movies, as Jim Morton explained in the book Incredibly Strange Films (1986): “…teenage hoodlums in an urban setting…the misunderstood good kid…the game of ‘Chicken’…The creative abilities of Hollywood scriptwriters was sorely taxed as they struggled to think of new ways to destroy the youth of the nation.” This self-destructive impulse in American cinema to kill off those noisy kids is still present in horror films featuring attractive teens being picked off in gruesome and novel ways. Back in the 1950s, the biggest threat to teens were other teens, driving souped-up versions of the great symbol of prosperous liberty, the automobile (it’s interesting the cars seen in such films are often customized cars from the 1930s, demonstrating the great American gift of reinterpretation).
Along such tire tracks follows Teenage Thunder. Producers Howco-International, who’d seen fit to release Ed Wood’s Jail Bait (1954) onto an unsuspecting world, now hoped to cash in on the teen crime craze with a drive-in flick combining hot rods, agitated, staid parents and youth gone awry. I would add rock’n’roll to that list, but the one example here, a syrupy, crooned confection entitled ‘Teenage Kisses’ played over the opening titles, would put anyone hoping to rock around the clock to bed well before midnight.
A common theme to teen exploitation pictures is actors playing characters years younger than themselves, almost as a kind of vindictive slap to the kids watching; this is only a movie, so aspire all you like, just don’t get your hopes up. It also shows the perverse discrimination Hollywood employed, in making films about teenagers yet casting older actors in the teen roles. And so, we meet our hero Johnnie Simpson, aged 18, played by then 27 year-old Chuck Courtney, who looks like James Dean if James Dean looked like Nick Adams. Johnnie is being scolded by his Dad, Frank (Tyler McVey), for sloppiness at the dinner table. As Johnnie shuffles off to his room, Dad bemoans Johnnie’s sullenness to Aunt Martha (Helene Heigh, who we saw in Plunder Road, also 1957), stand-in for the original Mrs Simpson, who died 15 years ago. If Mom hadn’t died, then doubtless Johnnie would be at church, instead of skulking at the Front Page cafe, where his girl Betty Palmer (Melinda Byron) works as a waitress. While the other teens dance to ‘Teenage Kisses’, the only track on the jukebox, Johnnie is harassed by Maurie (Robert Fuller, future star of TV’s Emergency! making his film debut). Maurie’s role is a common one in teen exploitation films, that of the genuine bully who exists to show our hero is a good guy really, it’s just his father doesn’t understand him. Maurie makes fun of Johnnie for not owning a car, denying Maurie his right to kick Johnnie’s butt down at the dragstrip.
This riles Johnnie, and when Betty allows him to drive her home, and Maurie overtakes in a fuel-injected jalopy, Johnnie puts his foot to the floor, only to be pulled over by a cop for speeding. Johnnie is denounced as “a common hoodlum” by his father, who is more concerned about what that Judge Grant will think of him when the case comes to court. Johnnie determines to buy a car himself, and gets work at a gas station assisting genial mechanic Bert Morrison (Paul Bryar), who becomes a father figure to Johnnie who, you may have noticed, already has a father. As it is, Real Dad disapproves of his son becoming “a grease monkey”, wishing instead for Johnnie to work with him as an office boy, which is unnecessary, given Frank is so uptight he can use his own butt as a pencil-sharpener.
The next day, Johnnie and Betty discuss their parents. Betty quotes her own father: “jobs aren’t cheap, people are cheap.” Johnnie isn’t cheap, and ducks Betty’s kiss. “I guess you’re still a growing boy,” gripes Betty, even though they’ve just talked through plans of college, marriage and children. Luckily, Maurie stops the film becoming too like a classroom discussion topic, and challenges Johnnie to a game of Chicken, oh but you haven’t got a car Johnnie looks like you lose (bullies have this annoying habit of setting their own rules to games you can’t play in the first place). Johnnie, amid a cheerily out of place score, convinces a car dealer (“You crazy kids…”) to let him test drive a Ford Model ‘T’ that looks really into the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Betty, becoming seriously whiny by this point, doesn’t see why Johnnie needs to grind fenders with Maurie. “You don’t understand,” he replies. “A guy needs his girl to think to think he’s OK,” and there’s no better way of proving this than smashing a ‘borrowed’ car headfirst into the town dink.
Johnnie and Maurie face off at the arranged spot. Johnnie acts tough; “he puts on a good show, don’t he?” says Maurie to his friends. I could use this as an example of authenticity and the ‘phony’ in adolescent social rituals of postwar America, only I don’t think Maurie’s that bright and if anything, he looks even older than Johnnie. The Chicken Run goes ahead, but Betty intervenes by standing in the middle of the road (oh, the irony) as the cars hurtle towards each other, causing both to swerve aside. The ever-present police promptly arrest Johnnie again.
Mr Simpson collects his son from the police station, hoping Chicken attracts the death penalty at tomorrow’s sitting of juvenile court. “Haven’t I given you everything you really needed?” he asks Johnnie, baffled that ensuring there’s enough creamed corn on the table at dinnertime isn’t enough from a father. Hey, just because this is a teen exploitation film, that doesn’t mean the adults can’t feel guilty as well. “Why can’t I get through to him?” Well, Mr Simpson, you’re just not showing your son enough love. Work longer hours to earn money to buy him a car, but also stay at home longer to show you care about your son, because expecting citizens to carry out untenable double standards is what made this country great. Judge Grant takes pity on the Simpsons, but Dad decides he’ll earn his son’s respect by making him quit his job with Bert Morrison.
Betty discusses boys with her unnamed sister (played by Mona McKinnon of the 1959 classic Plan 9 from Outer Space). “Why aren’t boys as smart as girls are?” asks Betty of Big Sis, who seems to have been around the block in a few jalopies herself. Betty, with her headscarf and jacket worn off the shoulders, looks as much ‘a girl’ as my forty-something mother did when I was a kid, but in 1957 teen films, there women (moms), good girls, and bad girls: good girls looked like Betty and complained a lot, while ‘bad girls’ were Mamie Van Doren or Jayne Mansfield in lipstick and tight sweaters, who chewed gum and had fun with boys, before dying or attending reform school to get lectured by nuns and only then they became women, i.e. got married and had girls.
Concerned by Johnnie’s plight, Bert Morrison visits Mr Simpson (the two call each other “Morrison” and “Mr Simpson”; who said America doesn’t have a class system?) at his real estate office, twisting his oil-stained cap as he pleads with him to spend time with Johnnie. After all, Morrison has a fun time together with his son, a polio victim, who will be showing up in Act Five of tonight’s presentation. “Mr Simpson, help Johnnie grow up,” concludes the humble mechanic.
Back at the garage, Johnnie again struggles to make his voice heard, only this time it’s because the sound guy is retreating into the shadows in case ‘Teenage Kisses’ strikes up. “It’s great to have a guy to talk to,” Johnnie tells Betty. “An older guy.” Talking of which, Maurie shows up again, and a fight breaks out, but Bert arrives to save Johnnie from an ass-kicking. Bert decides someone needs to teach Johnnie how to fight, because what better way to put a would-be hoodlum on the straight and narrow than telling him how to pummel a guy into unconsciousness whenever a conflict of interest arises?
Mr Simpson was a college middleweight champion back during the (first) Roosevelt administration, so teaches his son to box. Johnnie relishes the chance to bond with his Dad, only to change his mind after Frank dumps his boy on his butt a few times with his favored left hook/right cross combination. Turns out beating the crap out of your son on the front lawn isn’t so great for bonding after all. “Johnnie hates me,” says Frank to Aunt Martha.
“My old man hates me,” Johnnie tells Betty at the drive-in, explaining why he’s run away from home. After they kiss through a mouthful of sandwich, Johnnie breaks into the garage and ‘borrows’ the hot rod he and Bert have been working on. Back home, at the unholy hour of 3 am, which didn’t even exist before rock’n’roll’, Mr Simpson and Aunt Martha wait for news of Johnnie. Discussing where it all went wrong, Aunt Martha points out “love isn’t something you demand, you have to earn it,” although buying more cars also helps. Mr Simpson finally calls the police, who put out an APB for the missing man-boy.
The next morning, Johnnie phones Betty and learns Bert intended the hot rod for his son to race at the next dragster meeting. Johnnie’s pride, and anger at his father, prevents him from returning the car. Later, Bert visits Mr Simpson and tells him he knows where Johnnie can be found. “I’ll get my hat,” declares Mr Simpson, which for some reason is my favorite line of dialog in the whole film, and intend to use it more in real life.
“This is where you lost your son,” Bert tells Mr Simpson at the dragstrip, as if the racetrack itself is to blame. Surprise, surprise, Johnnie shows up with the hot rod, keen to race. “I want you to win for me,” says Mr Simpson to Johnnie, as the film threatens to descend into gee-pop-that’s-swell territory with an added dose of Forrest Gump-esque ‘cute disabled guy’ sentimentality. This isn’t helped by the track commentator announcing Johnnie as racing on behalf of poor little polio-addled Jimmy (Gregory Marshall), a cheery lad who looks like a real-life version of his South Park namesake, so it’s just as well the race pits him against Maurie. “If it was anyone else but him, I might lose for the kid,” snarls Maurie, a punk with principles.
Despite Maurie trying to swerve Johnnie off the track, our hero wins the race. Maurie gets violent, but Johnnie remembers his Dad’s boxing lesson and gives his nemesis a sound beating, because America can’t solve all of its problems with auto races, godamnit. Mr Simpson agrees to buy the hot rod from Bert, who gives Johnnie his job back, while Betty and Jimmy both declare undying love for our hero. OK, Jimmy didn’t in so many words, but there’s a definite look in his eyes. Dad drives Johnnie and Betty home, only for a cop to pull him over. “I’m only doing 60!”, but tell it to Judge Grant, old-timer.
Writing in 1993 on teen exploitation films, British broadcaster Jonathon Ross noted “film-makers responded in two ways” to the rise of the teenager. “Either they capitalized on the fear that juvenile delinquency engendered, or they made movies in which teenagers were shown not to be not just neat and cool, but nice kids as well.” Just as often however, films tried to do both, redeeming characters who’d not really done anything wrong, or having the ‘rebelling’ protagonist winning over older generation characters. As is often the way with knock-off ‘scare’ films, the pretense of teaching them kids a lesson becomes muddled with the need to entertain those kids and also make a few bucks.
Teenage Thunder gets a feel of the self-centered, belligerent confusion of adolescence, where battle-lines are drawn against peers and almost every adult is a possible agent of parochial control. Had the film based itself around Maurie seeing the error of his ways, a different and more pertinent movie might have resulted, although if Teenage Thunder were remade in 2015, one suspects Jimmy Morrison would be the hero, the film would last not 78 minutes but 178 and Tom Hanks would win an Oscar even if he wasn’t in the film. As it is, Teenage Thunder possesses well-staged auto set pieces (and some lovely vintage film of the San Fernando raceway), a few steadfast performances, and a heart in the right place; it just doesn’t really know where that place is and, like Johnnie, ends up misunderstood.
La La Film 