A Noite dos Malditos

With no apologies to Jack Kerouac, this is an odd mix, to say the least. The title and the backdrop is a surreal, but stereotypical set-up with some Real Gone Cats looking drugged-out and oblivious to all except contemplating time and space. What goes on here is an Ed Wood like combination of some very odd bedfellows.

The Beats are interesting with crazy mixed up stuff like Poetry Readings with white rats on the shoulder, sleazy, soft spasms of youthful Ecstasy, listening, on record, to what might now be called Industrial Music Samples, and an out of place Louis Armstrong on stage.

There are some very strange, and for the time daring, sub-themes like Rape, Abortion, Serial Killers, and two Women Haters as the Leads. There is bizarre, incomprehensible stuff like a Wrestling Match (out of the blue), and an ending that takes place underwater with scuba gear (huh!).

There is enough quirk here to fill three Movies and it is all fascinating to behold. An undeniable underground Classic that is marvelously mishandled and has more angles than a Picasso. It is all so gut-wrenchingly charming that it cannot be overlooked and is a great example of Hollywood with its most unflinching, insoluble, insights and misrepresentations that makes the jaw drop and the Brain boggle.

Like a few others have already stated in these user comments, it's kind of surprising that the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio of 1959 would get involved in a movie with a number of trashy elements. The movie has a number of flaws as well. The musical numbers seem out of place for a serious story, and there is also comedy relief that seems out of place. The movie is stretched out to the breaking point when a more compact telling was obviously needed. And the character of the rapist isn't really explored that well.

Still, there are some interesting things to be found here. The movie explores some topics like rape and abortion with effectiveness that even more than 50 years later still seems a little daring. Also, Ray Danton, despite a weakly written character, acts in a really slimy way that makes him an effective villain. While this material isn't enough to make the movie worth searching for, if it happens to come on your TV, people interested in 50s movie exploitation that was done while still hampered by a production code may find the movie of some interest.

Stereotyped and clichéd exploitation film about a serial rapist known as the Aspirin Kid (Ray Danton), who hangs out with a group of beatniks while continuing to victimize attractive suburban housewives. Set in beatnik bars and on the beaches of LA, with some humorous dialog and a misogynistic cop played by Steve Cochran who tracks down the Kid after his own wife becomes a victim, the film has a refreshing originality, though generally it is laughably ridiculous, with its goateed beatniks staring off into space while listening to recorded car crashes, jazz, and the worst Beat poetry ever recited. With Mamie Van Doren, and a cast of several familiar faces that would crop up in Beach Party films, its nearly done in by what is now referred as camp, though there is enough of a story there to keep it moving along.

Clean-cut young man (in jackets and skinny ties) hangs out with the beatnik kids and plays the bongos, but really gets off on beating and sexually assaulting vulnerable housewives. Standard police thriller jazzed up with slang; it uses the beatnik milieu only as ruse, it's main aim being a marriage in crisis (the rapist targets a police detective's wife, and two months later she's pregnant but doesn't know who the father is). Low-budget potboiler from MGM was probably a second-biller, though it has gleaming black-and-white cinematography from Walter Castle and some good performances. Steve Cochran is perfectly cast as the detective with the hysterical wife, Ray Danton is way-gone-cool as the scuba-diving psychopath (his M.O. is to call on women pretending he owes their husbands money) and Mamie Van Doren is terrific as a soon-to-be divorcée who wouldn't mind being man-handled. Co-written by Richard Matheson (!) and Lewis Meltzer, the action gets too crazy, dig, near the finish, but for the most part it's a rough little jewel, dad. ** from ****

I watched this movie with some hesitation, because it really received awful reviews; however, because I like Ray Danton and Steve Cochran, I decided to give it a chance. Ray Danton and Steve Cochran both gave very good performances, as did Mamie Van Doren, Fay Spain, Jackie Coogan, and Jim Mitchum, and the plot, though trashy, was interesting, and as pointed out by Martin Teller, this movie was weirdly compelling, mainly due, I think, to Ray Danton's very menacing and interesting performance as a killer, and Steve Cochran's performance as a complex cop. I am, therefore, recommending this movie, but only if you like any of the actors in it, since they all gave good performances, and, I think, one can bear with the worst movie if one is a fan of an actor!