The Cry Baby Killer

You'd know why you'd want to find this film, as it's the ultra-low budget, barely-a-drive-in quickie that features the great Jack Nicholson in his feature debut at the tender age of 21 (he was a mailman at MGM in his previous years in Hollywood). He plays a youth out of control, though also under duress. He's taken a woman and kid hostage, and outside the crowd builds in anticipation as the cops struggle to find a compromise to get everyone safely out. The film is complete with a theme song that just repeats 'cry-cry-cry, cry-baby killer', and in a style that is as polished as a junkyard dog. The story itself, by the way, is told in a way that is so simplistic and with over-acting (or maybe too trying-to-be-realistic acting) that is typical of this kind of un-pretentiously kind of fare. ''

But the reason in the end to reach into the recesses of ebay or elsewhere to find it is to see Nicholson in his early larval stage of a career, and somehow he does make the work fascinating to watch. Obviously not his best by a long-shot, and his first big break in the B-world would come later in Little Shop of Horrors and even later in Easy Rider. However I did like how he was keeping his scenes pretty well grounded, keeping to the situation at hand with all of the confusion and shattered rebellion that's in a youth of his real age. It's almost like checking out the Beatles when they were still the Quarry Men or something- it's not necessarily 'good', but you might be surprised at how it's not really bad either.

This is a movie that you can watch despite its non existent scenario and dialogs, because it is well paced and producer Roger Corman, in an early effort, makes every dollar count in production value.

But of course one checks it out because it is Jack Nicholson's debut movie. And yes, one already didn't have Jack Nicholson's voice, and yes, one already didn't have Jack Nicholson's face, but, yes, one could have easily acted as badly as Jack Nicholson then. Knowing what was to come next, this makes it worth an idle glance.

So after watching this movie, another curiosity was sated: I got to see Jack Nicholson's first film and find out if it was any good. Well, it's not too bad and since it's only an hour, not too much time was wasted watching it. Nicholson certainly does well when he becomes desperate enough to hold up a woman with a baby and a middle-aged black man hostage after shooting at a couple of punks who beat him up at the beginning of the movie. Roger Corman was the executive producer only here so there's not much of his creative hand in the finished product though it was interesting seeing his cameo when he briefly talks to the TV reporter before he was going on the air to broadcast the standoff. So on that note, The Cry Baby Killer is worth a look for any Nicholson completists.

I actually had and read a vintage copy of the movie tie-in novelization (it wasn't a pre-existing novel), and faintly remember it being not-bad--at least it suggested the movie might be a nice little j.d. Thriller. Yet the film turned out to be surprisingly hard to see, so I didn't until just now. And it was a disappointment.

Yes, there's the curiosity value of seeing Nicholson in his debut role, and he's OK. But a decent story premise is poorly handled by the director (who did a whole lot of TV episodes, but this remained his sole theatrical feature), with little control over pacing, tone, the intended social critique, tension, a consistent level of acting, etc. Roger Corman apparently was disappointed too, because the film was a commercial failure (he'd never had one before), and he felt while he was busy with other things some of the more immediate participants made changes that weakened its potential.

It's a low-budget stab at something like "Ace in the Hole" or "Dog Day Afternoon," an indictment of police, press and public response to a crisis that could have been quietly defused rather than recklessly blown into a circus. But the moralizing point is confused, and the movie settles for halfhearted stereotypes and an air of watered-down sensationalism. It doesn't even have the vigor or vulgarity to be good drive-in trash. The music is often inappropriate (we get cocktail-lounge sounds when we're supposed to be wracked with suspense), and the title song is awful.

Nicholson tries to give a real performance, and some of the actors are OK as well, but the film undermines them by not seeming to trust its material--it seems to vaguely disdain this story, without having the wit to make fun of it, or the tangible smarts to suggest the makers are actually "better than this." Actually, they're worse--"Cry Baby Killer" could have been a neat little intersection of "Rebel Without a Cause" and "The Sadist," but instead it's just a poorly made programmer with curiosity value because a future legend is in it.

I wanted to see THE CRY BABY KILLER since very long (probably 2020) because it's Jack Nicholson's debut and in that period of time he used to look a lot like me. Last October I finally saw it and while I didn't loved it I found it just ok.

Jimmy Wallace (Nicholson) comes in contact with Manny Cole (Brett Halsey) and his gang when he is in a diner and tries to defend his girlfriend. After Manny and his thugs beat him and take his girl, Jimmy goes in the usual hideout of Manny's gang and after stealing a gun Jimmy shoots to Manny's cohorts. Since he's afraid of having shot them he flees in a grocery store that was about to close and takes hostage the clerk, his wife and kid. Police arrives and a large crowd waits outside the store with the police trying to make Jimmy go out, and they'll eventually succedd but it's best if you see the movie for yourselves.

The plot is typical for an exploitation movie of that time but what makes this one unique is not only Nicholson's debut but his performance in that it looks like he was phagocytizing some of his next characters (especially ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and SHINING) and as usual he didn't disappoint. And just for this I'd recommend this.