Los jóvenes renegados

Terrible writing, directing, acting, music, and plot combined to form an unintentionally funny pile of garbage!

It's worth watching for laughs, but it's also full of notable actors and actresses. Isabel Sanford, Duck Sargent, Richard Dreyfuss, Brooke Bundt, Norman Fell, et al.

Horribly out of touch film attempting to draw young people back to the movies.

Even the theme song seems like a spoof of itself!

I enjoyed the film -- a 1968 scared-straight, after-school ditty with some ridiculous elements. But it also includes some really good songs -- songs that could've come from the pen of Love's Arthur Lee. I'm writing this today because Jim Weatherly -- who wrote those songs -- done died a few days ago. His best-known song is "Midnight Train to Georgia", recorded by Gladys Knight & the Pips, but the couple that are here are memorable, too. When I first saw this film about six or seven years ago on TCM and noticed the songs, I emailed Weatherly and we talked about the tunes. That wouldn't have happened with John Williams.

This film is about three suburban teens who run away to Chicago and encounter 1960s life in the big city. It was a time capsule with psychedelic music and a lot of "what's your bag/groovy" kind of talk. It reminded me of TV show episodes from that time that provided cautionary tales about the siren call of the youthquake of that era.

Brooke Bundy is a girl recruited by prostitutes. Kevin Couglin is a boy who runs out on his pregnant girl friend. He was a former child star, had a good role in "The Defiant Ones" "Bad Seed" herself, Patty McCormack ,is here as boy crazy teen who ends up in a triangle with two rock musicians. She's all grown up but still recognizable with those scary eyes.

The film is most enjoyable for all the familiar faces in the cast. Lloyd Bochner is Bundy's ad exec dad, a pre "Bewitched" Dick Sargent is a kind hearted guy who supplies food and shelter to runaway kids, James Edwards as a cop who works with juveniles, Norman Fell and Lynn Bari are McCormack's bickering parents and best of all, Richard Dreyfuss is a car thief.

Some of the dialog was trying so hard to be hip it ended up being camp but maybe it was because I wasn't use to actors like Dick Sargent speaking hippie-speak (yea, man can you dig it!). Then there are the strangely contemporary pink hues in the hair of the alcoholic mother of the runaway son, the sets, the costumes, and the jargon-laced dialogue especially from Dreyfuss all combined to make this a "Mod Squad" experience. All that was missing was Sgt. Friday of Dragnet showing up with his eyebrows knit giving all of these wayward youth a monotone yet rapid fire lecture.

The Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio was by the late 1960s in serious decline due to a number of factors, so much so that they eventually started to experiment with product that just a decade or so earlier they never would have touched. "The Young Runaways" was one of those experiments, an attempt to tap into the growing youth market. But I'm sure that any youths back then that saw this movie probably found it somewhat unbelievable and unrelatable. The movie plays out in an extremely dated way even by 1968 standards. It doesn't understand that most youth runaways were fleeing households that were truly abusive and unlivable - the problems facing the youth runaways in this movie seem really insignificant. And the lives of youth runaways in this movie seem really cushy compared to the hellish life youth runaways typically have on the street. All this is somewhat silly, but it isn't inspired enough to make the movie true unintentional comic gold. Most of the movie feels really bland and predictable instead. By the way, if you think that you might be getting the opportunity to see some serious exploitation due to the fact that the movie got an "R" rating in 1968, be warned - by today's standards, the movie would (barely) get a "PG" rating, and could play on prime time network television without any edits at all.

Three young runaways find themselves in bohemian Chicago. Shelley Allen is tired of being sold to by her rich ad-man father Ray. She escapes from a creep driver and falls into the arms of prostitute Joanne Masters who is looking to turn her. Shelley escapes from Joanne and her Johns. She is saved by Dewey Norson who ran away for a mysterious reason. Deannie Donford is tired of her sexually repressed mother and father (Norman Fell). She moves in with musician Loch but then sleeps with his roommate Curly. A young Richard Dreyfuss has a supporting role. Meanwhile, the parents are searching for their kids.

This is a little transitional movie where the morality is mostly 50's but it's incorporating the 60's mostly as a cautionary tale. It doesn't give the parents a pass either. There is an attempt to bridge the gap. It's interesting to do the 60's in Chicago away from the cultural centers of NY and LA. It's also fun to see a young Dreyfuss doing his thing in one of his earliest film roles. The Deannie side of the story seems disconnected from the rest and could easily be cut. Mostly, this plays like a scared-straight movie.