The Girl in Lovers Lane

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.

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).

This is a film I would have thought I would be seeing as part of one of those Something Weird Video double feature disc's. Pretty much your typical 1950's "troubled youth" films. Though this one is a bit talky and light on the action, I did enjoy it somewhat. I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for these kinds of films. Basically you have this young guy who leaves home in order to come to terms with the fact that his parents have decided to get a divorce. He meets Bix, a road weary and very experienced drifter. They end up in a small town and stay longer then they expected which leads to romance, complications, confrontation, rape and murder. Brett Halsey stars as Bix and gets fine support from Joyce Meadows and a perfectly cast Jack Elam as the town letch. All in all, it's no great shakes but it is entertaining enough.

A young man, named Danny, has run away from home and meets a drifter, named Bix, who agrees to tag along with Danny and watch out for him... and his money. They end up in a small town where they meet Carrie - a shy, naive girl working in her father's diner. Bix starts seeing Carrie but he plans on leaving soon (because he's a drifter, see? He's no good! Understand?). Meanwhile, the town creep, Jesse (played by a perfectly casted Jack Elam), keeps showing up at the diner and bothering Carrie. Danny keeps inadvertently picking up whores left and right (because he's loaded with money – he has almost a hundred dollars!) whom Bix has to constantly chase away (there are a lot of ambiguously gay overtones between Danny and Bix in this flick). Eventually, Bix and Danny decide to leave town but trouble is a-brewing, due to Jesse the creep.

My review of the movie itself: a terrible, dated "Troubled Youth" flick from the '50s.

My review of the MST3K version of the movie: I've got to say that this is one of the best episodes of MST3K ever. The riffing is dead-on, all the time. Except for the somewhat downbeat ending, this movie is easy material for Joel and the Bots, especially Danny's constant screw-ups that Bix has to rescue him from. The host segments are pretty good too, especially the segment with the `Train Song.' Hopefully, Rhino releases this episode to home video one day.

I saw this film as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as chances are I would have never even known it existed without it. Not that it was all bad, it was pretty typical of a lot of films of the era. Of course, most of the ones I have seen have been episodes of Mystery Science Theater. The film was one of the ones they did that featured more of the whole struggle of youth type episode rather than science fiction or a horror which is the stuff the normally riff. These types of films usually are pretty good too though. They normally run from being youths that want to be violent or youths trying to figure things out that get caught up in some craziness. This one is more the latter, though the lead guy is rather older. He is a mentor who helps a young man who is trying to figure things about his own life, but he seems to do a lot of running.

The story has a young man named Danny being chased in a train yard from two guys who are out to get his wallet. Well poor Danny manages to ditch his wallet, but he ends up taking one hit and falls right out. Thankfully, a wise traveler named Bix puts him in the boxcar and soon he and Danny are riding the rails. Bix agrees to help Danny and be a traveling companion, while Danny provides some cash. They soon stop at a town and if you thought this was a traveling film where our new found friends were going to have different adventures in different towns and cities you are going to be disappointed. Yes, they stay in the town throughout the duration of the film, but it sure is a strange town. Depicted as very small, but at the same time it has one very large brothel in it. It also has a shady pool hall where every person in it is willing to beat up a person for their money. At the same time it is such a peaceful town that a young couple can stroll its streets at night. Well Bix falls for a girl who has an incredibly obvious stalker that also has his eyes on her! Things take a turn for the surprising and a bit depressing.

It made for a rather funny episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This one did not have a short and from the looks of it, I do not see this one being as edited down as other episodes either. I think you can get a full sense of the picture without seeing the whole thing. The film is entertaining enough to make it a good episode too. I think that some of the truly awful films that are boring make for poor riffing material. My least favorite episode of MST3K is the one featuring that German Hamlet as it was done so minimally and it was just labored. This one has lively characters that can at times make you feel a little sympathy and a less dreary episode of the show.

So in the end, it was not anything I would want to watch without the aid of the gang of the satellite of love, but it was not as bad as other things they have made fun of. The movie moves along about like other films and it is better made than say an Ed Wood film or Coleman Francis movie that were also being made at this time. Nothing really stands out except that crazy eyed dude who was so obviously insane. Oh no, he is just harmless. Yep, the type of thing people say about psychos after they kill! Along with kept to themselves.