The Girl in Lovers Lane

****SPOILERS**** Late 1950's youth movie about two young drifters Bix & Danny, Brett Halsey & Lowell Brown, drifting in on a fright train into the peaceful little town of Sherman. A town where the police chief says that nothing bad ever happened there in 20 years.

It didn't take long for something bad to happen in peaceful Sherman where on just the first night there the two outsiders are attacked by a gang of local thugs because one of them had a $50.00 bill that he changed at the towns pool hall to play a game. $50.00 seems to be a very small price to corrupt the local boys from their 20 years of peaceful endeavors.

The people of Sherman weren't that bright either by beating to a pulp ,and almost lynching, Bix for raping and murdering his girlfriend Carrie, Joyce Meadows, after her body was found in the woods. The locals didn't have enough sense to know that Carries killer may well have been the local town weirdo Jesse ,Jack Elam, who was alway after Carrie. Jesse even tried to rape her the day before but was stopped by none other then Bix himself who belted Jesse and left him in dreamland.

Bix was saved from being lynched by the mob led by Carrie's emotionally upset father Cal,Emile Meyer, by his friend Danny who came to his rescue, just when he was about to leave town, by telling them that it may very well have been Jesse who killed Carrie. Jesse who just happened to be at the scene to watch the lynching then broke down and confessed to the crime and was taken away into custody by the police. The cops were released from the towns jail in which they were locked up in when the townspeople stormed the police station to get and then try to lynch Bix. The townspeople, including Carrioe's dad Cal, were more kinder to Carrie's actual killer then Carrie's boyfriend by not trying to apprehend or kill him like that tried to kill Bix who they should have known was innocent.

It was also interesting to see that Danny who was in town for just a few days could put two and two together and come to the conclusion that it was Jesse who killed Carrie when the local townspeople, who lived in the town all their lives, who knew about Jesse's dangerous obsession for Carrie didn't have the brains to figure that out by themselves? Danny who ran away from home when his parents divorced gets the good news at the end of the movie, I guess that his parents are back together, and happily invites his friend Bix to come home and live with him and his parent which Bix readily agrees to do, just what was meant by that? Isn't two grown up young men living together a bit odd especially in movies made back then in the 1950's? The movie "The Girl in Lover's Lane" seems to have more under the covers then over them, when it comes to Bix & Danny, and may have been made for other reasons other than what those watching it back then really thought.

The Girl in Lovers' Lane: 3 out of 10: Homoerotic subtext in the movies is a well known phenomenon. Plenty of dissertations have come out of film schools about the hidden subtexts in such films as Top Gun and Spartacus. The Girl in Lover’s Lane certainly fits the homoerotic trope. In fact, it is so blatant and over the top even MST3K, whom rarely notes such things in their riffing, simply cannot avoid it.

The film is about two drifters. One a rich kid (Lowell Brown) running away from home with a hundred dollars and no street smarts, the other is a professional hobo (Brett Halsey). The hobo saves the kid from a gang of thugs and they end up in a small town consisting of a diner, a pool hall and a whorehouse. Our drifter scholar gets a second look from the diner’s waitress (Joyce Meadows as the titular Girl in Lovers Lane) who clearly is past the age of being choosy and whose only other prospect is creepy Jack Elam doing a Steve Buscemi impression.

On the surface, this seems like a strange film for the MST3K treatment. While the cast are to old for the characters they are playing, the acting is actually pretty good with both Brett Halsey and Jack Elam giving solid performances. The story is slight, but hardly The Robot vs. Aztec Mummy material and the production values are cheap back lot, but relatively competent.

It is the strange Batman and his ward homosexual undercurrents that make this film both awful and hilarious. Halsey’s over the top objections to the kids attempts to get laid in the whorehouse are hilarious, his inability to commit to the waitress (or at the least get past first base) are telling, and the dozens of glances between him and the kid; a hand on shoulder, the sleeping arrangements, blowing off dates with the girl so he and the kid can shave each other. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out this undercurrent.

In reading the other reviews and/or remarks, I have to disagree with any references with regard to both male characters or one male character referenced as being gay. That is so ridiculous. The more accurate relationship between the two males, rather should be seen as older big brother and younger naive brother. Bix, like any older brother looks out and protects a younger less worldly brother. In addition, I think that Bix is afraid of making a commitment to Carrie, because he's never allowed himself to be close to a woman in a relationship, and now because he's starting to feel something for Carrie, he's fearful and ready to run. Now, with regard to the story's resolution (Act III), Carrie just suddenly screaming just made no real sense.

This one is one of those classic B movie following the exploits of 2 hobos. It's done really cheesily and Big Stupid running off one-liners like a cardboard cassanova. But Jack Elam steals every scene he's in as the creepazoid Jesse (now Jerome!). My favorite scene is the lynch mob and the dad's voice going up 10 octaves ("You loved her?"). Danny, Big Stupid's protege, is surprisingly stupider, but not as loathsome as our lead star. There's also a quaint scene of a guy pimping at the diner. Joyce Meadows is the sweet, naive nice gal and probably the least annoying. And those yellow ruffles (RAWR!). Oh, and booze is evil according to Mr. Stupid.

This movie's a hoot. Watch the MST cover of this and Crow's terrific Elam homage!

For years, when MST3K fans have been polled about which riffed films were "not completely terrible," this movie has come up (along with the Godzilla and Gamera movies). It's easy to see why - unlike complete train wrecks like Space Mutiny and Manos the Hands Of Fate, you can tell that this could have been a halfway decent film if it had a little more of a budget - better sets, better costumes, a competent script editor to fix the problematic ending. The acting isn't terrible, some of the characters are actually likable, and Jack Elam's villain is genuinely creepy. It made for a very underrated MST3K episode - one of the funniest of the later Joel era. (The show's writers reported being genuinely traumatized by the film's ending - and you just KNOW that it was a rare film that could get that crew to genuinely care about the characters).