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Released by: Olive Films
Released on: March 21st, 2017.
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Peter Miller, Tom Laughlin, Dick Bakalyan, Rosemary Howard
Year: 1957
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The Movie:
Robert Altman's feature film directorial debut is this low budget 'youth gone wild' film made in and around Kansas City in 1957.
The story revolves around a young man named Scotty White (Tom Laughlin). He's a good kid, he really just wants to hang out with his girlfriend Janice Wilson (Rosemary Howard) but her parents don't approve of their young love and before you know it, their romance is dead. After this happens, Scotty goes on a bit of a downward spiral. Soon enough, he hooks up with Cholly (Peter Miller) and Eddy (Richard Bakalyan). They decide that the best way to brighten Scotty's mood is to go out and get into some trouble.
Soon enough, Scotty has basically joined their gang and is fully inducted into their lifestyle of rock 'n roll, cars and troublemaking. It's harmless enough to start, but when they get into a brawl at the local drive-in one night, things quickly get more serious. Before you know it, Scotty's being forced to drink alcohol, Janice has been kidnapped and the cops think poor Scotty is the bum that robbed the local gas station!
Thematically this isn't very far removed at all from the countless juvenile delinquent films being cranked out around this time, fast and cheap. Maybe not so surprisingly this one never reaches the admittedly lofty cinematic heights of some of Altman's better pictures but it's a pretty entertaining drive-in film in its own right. It's interesting to see a director of Altman's caliber toiling in the exploitation jungle and cutting his teeth on genre fare. To the film's credit, there's a good bit of style here, though it's all a product of its time. The dance scene that opens the film has a lot of energy to it and the big brawl at the drive-in theater is nicely staged and genuinely tense.
Performances are all right. Peter Miller, fresh off of Forbidden Planet, and Richard Bakalyan (in his debut), who would go on to a huge TV career and also star in Polanski's Chinatown, are a lot of fun here. Yeah fine, they play clichéd fifties greasers and their roles aren't exactly deep but they deliver their lines with conviction and they both look right for their respective parts. Rosemary Howard is well cast as the very pretty 'girl next door' type. She's the wholesome All-American type but she looks great and has no trouble with her role. Of course, Tom Laughlin is the real draw here, starring in his first feature film leading role after having done some television work and bit part work in the years prior. Laughlin is pretty solid in the part. He's cool and handsome and as he turns into a tough guy, we have no trouble buying him making the transition.
Maybe not an unsung classic, but The Delinquents is entertaining and also pretty interesting to see, just because of all the names attached to it.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Delinquents debuts on Blu-ray from Olive Films in a 1.66.1 widescreen transfer presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Detail here is pretty solid and while some minor print damage is present in the form of some small scratches and specks throughout the film, the source used for the transfer was evidently in really good condition. Grain is present throughout the presentation but it never gets so heavy as to distract from the generally solid detail and texture that the HD transfer offers. Black levels are really nice, quite strong, and contrast looks spot on. All in all this is a sharp and crisp image offering surprisingly good texture and contrast along with strong shadow detail. The movie looks quite good in HD, there's nothing to object to here at all. Fans should be quite pleased with the visuals on this release.
The English language DTS-HD 2.0 Mono Audio track on the disc is pretty good. The score sounds quite strong here. The hardboiled stays crisp and clear, it's never a problem understanding any of the characters. Levels are well balanced and there's as much depth as you could reasonably expect from an older low budget picture. As it is with a lot of older movies, the limitations of the source material do come through, as they should, but this is a clean track that suits the movie just fine and which doesn't suffer from any serious problems. There are no alternate language options though (yellow) English subtitles are provided.
There are no extras outside of a theatrical trailer, just a static menu and chapter selection. A shame there's no commentary here as it's been widely reported that Altman and Loughlin didn't get along - there are probably some great stories behind this one.
The Final Word:
The Delinquents is entertaining enough to be worth checking out, particularly if you have an affinity for fifties juvenile delinquent movies. It's also interesting see Altman direct for the first time and to see a few important actors strutting their stuff here at such an early age. Olive's Blu-ray release is light on extras but it does look and sound very good.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
