sol- Discovering that a disenfranchised local youth is planning a revenge murder, an altruistic social worker desperately tries to prevent the crime without police intervention in this juvenile delinquency drama directed by Don Siegel. The film is not particularly subtle with its agenda as lead actor James Whitmore bluntly states such truisms as "you can't tell a kid to be good" and as all parents find themselves exasperated by their kids in the most melodramatic manner possible. Will Kuluva is especially over-the-top as Sal Mineo's father who tries to get through to the boy by telling him that he wants to kiss him (!) while on the side telling Whitmore that he "has to hit" Mineo since it is all that the boy understands. The film features a phenomenal early turn by John Cassavetes though as the youth planning the murder with lots of subtle nuances whenever he listens to Whitmore lecture and as he plays on the fears of his friends. The real star of the show though is Siegel's directing work. Fresh from 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', Siegel shoots the film with a myriad of intense close-ups as his young cast emote. The film also opens with a deathly intense pre-credits scene as good as anything Siegel ever directed. This is an odd movie: one hand, it is distractingly didactic; on the other hand, it looks so great and Cassavetes is so solid that is nevertheless involving.

blanche-2 We've always had juvenile delinquents, but post-war, teenagers in and making trouble became great fodder for Hollywood. There were a rash of films about angry, mean teens: Rebel without a Cause, Blackboard Jungle, So Young, So Bad, High School Confidential, Blue Denim, etc., etc. Was it because kids' fathers didn't return from the war and their mothers had to work? Poverty? I'm not a sociologist, so I can't say. But JD became a big topic.This film, "Crime in the Streets," from 1956, is a low-budget, black and white movie about a bunch of mean kids in a bad neighborhood. The film's titular star was James Whitmore as a social worker running a community center. But "Crime in the Streets" "introduced" a mainly TV actor, John Cassavetes. He had had bit parts in a couple of films; this was his first main role. Don't ask me how he did it, but from 1956 until a Columbo episode in 1974, he didn't change a bit. The film also features Sal Mineo, future director Mark Rydell, Virginia Gregg, and Denise Alexander, who has appeared on General Hospital on and off for the past 38 years. Here's she's a teenager.The story focuses in on one family, the Danes, which includes Frankie (Cassavetes), his little brother Richie, and their mom (Gregg). Frankie is out of control, hanging out in the neighborhood with his buddies until all hours, refusing to get a job, and totally alienated from his mother. He's incredibly angry and at one point, he plans to kill a neighbor he hates and tries to get his friends to come along with him.This is pretty dreary stuff that looks like an old TV show, done on a sound stage. The acting is good, but neither Whitmore nor Cassavetes has that much to do to display their talent.Very ordinary, and not inspired. Directed by Don Siegel, who was capable of more.

LeonLouisRicci This is best viewed as a filmed Stage Play because that is basically what it is. There is very little Movie pretensions and is delivered as an Actor's vehicle. It is a talky treatise on Juvenile Delinquency that starts out with a Rumble but then (un)settles in for a peek behind the cement curtain of dingy apartments and dirty streets, one Parent Families and smelly surroundings. A strong cast and Direction with an ambiance that is stifling and unsanitary (in the Kitchen, the 10 year old little Brother says..."I caught a roach, you want to see"). That is basically what we are witnessing. Human roaches scurrying around in this filth trying to survive. Sometimes it is so gritty that audiences may feel uncomfortable watching. The dialog has verisimilitude and the Film feels authentic beneath the facade, but as Movie Entertainment it could have opened up a bit, but the limited budget and Studio bound sets were not accommodating. Overall it is worth seeing as an artifact of the time, an era that was starting to pay some attention, if not enough, to the plight of underprivileged Youth in underdeveloped neighborhoods, and understaffed and overworked broken "homes".

bkoganbing Working on a painfully thin budget from Allied Artists, Don Siegel managed to fashion an urban tale of violence and juvenile delinquency in Crime In The Streets. The urban sets remind me a lot of Otto Preminger's The Man With A Golden Arm which came out a year before. And the delinquents aren't romanticized as they are in West Side Story.James Whitmore stars as a local social worker working out of a settlement house who keeps his ear to the ground for any rumblings of a rumble on the mean streets of his urban neighborhood. With two gangs, the Hornets and the Dukes, he's got his hands full. It's the Hornets here that concern the viewer of Crime In The Streets. They have a charismatic leader in young John Cassavetes who at 27 is way too old to be playing an 18 year old, but so did most of the kids look way too old in Glenn Ford's class in The Blackboard Jungle. Cassavetes is repeating his role from this same story made as television drama two years earlier. Also repeating are Mark Rydell as one of Cassavetes lieutenants who really isn't wrapped too tight and Will Kulava as Sal Mineo's father.When local citizen Malcolm Atterbury reports one of their peers for having a zip gun, Cassavetes sets in motion a plan to kill him. Mineo and Rydell are in on it. Whitmore gets wind of it and does what he can to stop it.Don Siegel gets good performances out of his ensemble cast. One player I failed to mention is Virginia Gregg who may have gotten her career role as the mother of Cassavetes and Peter Votrian. Cassavetes she feels is a lost cause, she's concerned about Votrian who idolizes his brother and might get into the gang culture. Gregg is great example of one who was probably a battered wife when she had a husband living in the place and one who is too shell shocked to deal with her rebellious son.Though it's dated Crime In The Streets is still entertaining and it's a good sociological treatise on juvenile delinquency.