The Party Crashers

This film is an effective drama with an attractive cast. It is mainly a story about frustrated teens acting out. Their parents are too busy living their own soap opera to give them proper guidance. So, as you see, society hasn't changed.

Tawdry, campy and melodramatic!

In THE PARTY CRASHERS, Twig Webster (Mark Damon) runs with a rough group of sportscar enthusiasts. For "kicks", he and his fellow "JDs" like to "crash" the swinging parties of the upper crust.

On one such foray, Twig, while loading up on fancy sandwiches and expensive booze, sets his sights on the lovely Barbara Nickerson (Connie Stevens). Violence erupts when Twig and company start a drunken brawl.

Barbara, smitten with Twig's "animal" charms, decides that he's the cure for her high society blues. Her current boyfriend is now yesterday's meatloaf.

This movie takes us along for Barbara's walk on "the wrong side of the tracks". Her thrill-seeking could be her undoing, especially when she and her new friends crash the wrong sort of party!

Ms. Stevens is quite good in her spoiled, rebellious role, as is Damon. The various parents are fun too, including Denver Pyle as the wise Mr. Bickford.

Recommended for all lovers of enjoyable, moralistic fare...

This was a movie that I had seen as a youngster, when I was around the age of twelve. The story was about a bunch of older teenagers (a lot older than me at the time) that got their kicks by "crashing" parties, in other words, upsetting others' enjoyment for their own personal satisfaction. Not to divulge, but I will say they finally crashed a party run by people old enough to be their parents, or by folks that knew how to really have a good time (for themselves). All of a sudden, the "crashers" seemed to behave like little elflings... It's a true reflection on behavior. Nothing has changed... this movie still makes a lot of social sense. Try to find it.

Former Paramount contract player Frances Farmer returned to her former home lot in 1958 to make her last feature film. Despite the comment below, Farmer was *not* lobotomized (see copious documentation throughout IMDb on the Farmer page and elsewhere), and gives the film a bit of stature it wouldn't otherwise have. Interestingly, the ending was changed somewhere along the way. The original pressbook has a plot precis which reveals a more "final" ending for Twig than the film ultimately posits. Driscoll does some great work here in a thankless role, and Connie Stevens gets to scream a lot. Evidently some of the uncredited music is by Henry Mancini, but I've never been able to positively confirm that.

I'm not sure what Frances Farmer was thinking if she thought her old studio Paramount was giving her a comeback vehicle with The Party Crashers. This film is one trashy youth exploitative flick from the late 50s. Not only was this not a comeback vehicle, but it was a last screen effort for two very tragic figures Farmer and former Disney child star Bobby Driscoll.

Denver Pyle and Farmer are Driscoll's parents and he's dating town tramp Connie Stevens when one night the brooding James Dean wannabe Mark Damon takes her from him. This starts a chain of events that leads to one death and one kid explaining things to the cops. It seems as though these are a bunch of rich bored kids who keep looking for parties every night. Nice to have money to indulge yourself like that.

The only one who has a meaty role of any kind is Doris Dowling who is Damon's mother with Onslow Stevens as his father. She's the adult version of Connie Stevens and her character has some bite to it. Dowling knows this is a turkey so she struts her stuff and gobbles.

Only Connie Stevens moved from The Party Crashers, she got a nice career with Warner Brothers very shortly.

Frances Farmer should have left with Son Of Fury being her last film.