SnoopyStyle
Max Frost is a young rich rock star and powerful mogul. His band includes Billy Cage, Sally LeRoy, Abraham Salteen, and Stanley X (Richard Pryor). Mrs. Flatow (Shelley Winters) tries to contact Max who is actually his son Max Jacob Flatow, Jr. who has cut ties to his parents. Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook) is running for the Senate to lower the voting age. Max decides to support him but he wants to lower it even more. The kids come out to vote expanding the generational divide. Eventually, Max's ambitions overtakes Fergus and even the entire country.The premise is silly. It's a hippiexploitation film. The young people takes over and puts the old people in concentration camps. I don't think a sudden youth takeover can be easily portrayed in a believable way. It would be better to start with that as a given. None of that matters because the most compelling thing in this movie is the presence of the very young Richard Pryor. His role is small and he has few lines. It's the only thing that matters because it's very groovy.
atlasmb
"Wild in the Streets" is a film about the youth of American rising up to take political power via a reduction in the voting age. It was released in the 60s and reflects some of the issues of its time.Today, the messages of the youthful upstarts might be seen as similar to the confused political fledglings referred to now as millennials. But the film is a parody of the counterculture--those who wanted more than change, they wanted revolution. In the 60s, many objected to the fact that 18-year-olds could be drafted but could not vote. Christopher Jones plays the role of Max Frost, a megalomaniacal rock star who energizes American youth--and some older members of the establishment who want to benefit from younger voters--to push for a younger voting age--somewhere between fourteen or eighteen.The film imagines what might happen if such a movement took hold and gained power. It shows Frost as a near-dictator whose power corrupts him. He is without a conscience and he indulges his every whim. Frost also is immature (surprise!). And as a member of the counterculture, he endorses the use of hallucinatory drugs and the disbandment of all institutions of authority.Though the film offers some moments of sharp insight, it mostly feels like it was written by a writer who himself was under the influence. And in the end, it is no more relevant regarding youth culture and politics than "Bye Bye Birdie".The ending is anticlimactic and ham-handed--hoping to deliver a pithy insight that it undercuts by final scenes that are amateurish.
Jeffrey Burton
I remembered this film as being one of the best movies to capture the spirit of the 60's. It's ageism is now a little funny and seems dated. The performances are great and the social satire is still as cutting edge as ever.It's an alternate universe version of the uptight older generation's worst nightmare. Christopher Jones is so much like James Dean, I thought for years after I first saw it that it was him playing Max Frost. He's incredibly dynamic and I've always wondered why he didn't have a bigger career. Hal Holbrook is great as an ambitious and idealistic Senator who ends up getting played. Shelley Winter does another great job as the semi-hysterical shrew, mother. Ed Begley Sr. as the voice of the 'Establishment' , Richard Pryor (in his first film roll)are also on hand. Even Dick Clark has a cameo. 'Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come' was a bonafide hit, being covered by Paul Revere and the Raiders.The crime log narration that runs through it lends a campy mock documentary feel. The shear audacity of the movie is what made me love it and why I love it still. I mean a bunch of LSD being dumped in Congress' water supply would at least explain why they are constantly doing such goofy crap, wouldn't it? This is a movie that never took itself too seriously and that's why it has aged so well, which is sort of ironic in itself.
Edward Lozzi
This film is a time warp of Los Angeles and the Sunset Strip in the 1960's. At first sigthing on the FLIX Channel I thought the actor was James Dean. Uncanny resemblance.Richard Pryor as the drummer in a rock band getting high on LSD with topless white chicks must of been mind blowing for teenagers then. I missed this film totally in 1968. My parents probably made sure of it.To see Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd, and the greatest lawyer in the nation at that time, Melvin Belli, playing themselves in a film with a whacked out Shelly Winters was just amazing.The real night time Sunset Strip cruising footage of 1968 was really "far-out man".
AD
