THE YOUNG CAPTIVES (1959)

One night at a California oil rig, a young employee named Jamie is found passed out drunk next to a blaring transistor radio. His boss kicks the radio apart and fires him so the angry Jamie impulsively beats the man to death, to the rhythm of the piston oil pump above. Cops Dave and Norm and reporter Tony find the body the next day and investigate. Meanwhile horny teenagers Benji and Ann let their hormones get the best of them while swimming in a river, and the next day they decide to head to Tijuana to get married against her parents' wishes. Figuring Ann's folks have called the police, the two avoid main roads. When they run out of gas, they meet Jamie whose motorcycle has broken down nearby. Jamie, tough-guy handsome, sweet talks the two into helping him—he'll get some gas from a nearby station if they will take him to a small town to connect with an old buddy to get the bike fixed. Jamie can cover up his psychopathic tendencies for a while—Benji and Ann are actually amused by his weird little antics—but soon at a gas station, he kills a sexy blonde who pisses him off and stuffs her body in the trunk of her car. (It's not totally clear if he was more interested in the woman or her car.) Benji gets fed up with Jamie's increasingly bizarre behavior and orders him out of the car, but Jamie pulls out a knife and threatens to cut Ann's throat. They wind up in Mexico with the cops in hot pursuit, and when Jamie suggests that he might want to marry Ann, we know we're in for a meltdown of some sort.

Essentially this is a B-movie cross between a juvenile delinquent film and a psycho killer film. It's suggested that Jamie isn't that much older than the two kids, and a fair chunk of cop conversation is devoted to the issue of the possible cause of Jamie's behavior and the promise of using rehab rather than prison to help wayward youth. The writing isn't as strong as it might be, but in other ways, this stands a notch or two taller than the average American International teen crime flick of the era. Things start a little shakily and I admit that at first, I stuck with it because the male leads were attractive. Stephen Marlo, as Jamie, wears a snug black t-shirt, has a convincing urban thug look and does a nice job of flipping back and forth between being boyishly goofy and scarily dangerous. Tom Selden (Benji) did not continue with screen acting, but he's good at being an innocent foil to Marlo's scary energy; the character seems like someone who might be in a bubblegum pop group, and he strikes a good balance between passivity and heroism. Luana Patten is wholesomely sexy and strong minded as Ann. Both of the male leads are near 30 and Patten is 20, but they're all believable as being in the same age cohort. Imagine Archie and Betty running into a psycho Reggie. The cops wind up with not much to do, but Ed Nelson and Dan Sheridan are fine, and Bonanza's Dan Blocker has a one-line role. Except for the scenes set in a police station, almost all of the movie was shot on exteriors (back roads, deserts, gas stations) that are just right. The climax is violent and effective as Jamie, wielding a knife, and Benji, with a broken bottle, get into it. Jamie looks truly crazed as he whips Benji with a car antenna, but he doesn't keep the upper hand for long. This may not be a gem, but as a second-feature teen crime film, it’s near the top of its class. Pictured are Marlo, Patten and Selden. [YouTube]