THE DELINQUENTS

The Delinquents marked Robert Altman’s first solo effort as a narrative film director and screenwriter (he’d previously co-directed The James Dean Story, a documentary).  It’s an independent film shot in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, and with the exception of the three main male leads, most of the cast is made up of Altman's friends, family, and local actors.

The movie is dated and pretty heavy-handed, but if nothing else, it’s a solid example of the “social panic” genre, right up there with Reefer Madness.

The story follows Scotty White (Tom Loughlin), a teenager in love with his girlfriend Janice (Rosemary Howard).  Unfortunately, her dad thinks she’s too young to be tied down, she’s only 16, and he insists she should be dating more than one boy.  (Side note: Rosemary Howard looks way closer to 30 than 16, which makes this all a bit stranger than it should be!) Heartbroken, Scotty goes to the drive-in alone and ends up getting pulled into the orbit of a rough crowd, led by Bill (Peter Miller) and Eddy (Richard Bakalyan).

Bill is clearly bad news, but Scotty doesn’t catch on right away. Before long, he’s dragged into a series of escalating disasters: Janice ends up in danger, Scotty gets into brawls, is pressured to drink way too much, and gets framed for robbery—and possibly murder—all in a matter of days.

The film opens and closes with some painfully melodramatic narration straight out of Dragnet. It feels totally out of step with Altman’s voice, so I looked it up and sure enough, it wasn’t his idea. United Artists, the film’s distributor, added it without his knowledge or approval.  And he wasn’t thrilled. It shifts the whole tone of the movie from a raw teenage drama to a finger-wagging morality play aimed at parents.

Here’s a sample of the cringe: “The story you are about to see is about violence and immorality. Teenage violence and immorality. Children trapped in the half-world of adolescence and maturity. Their struggle to understand their need to be understood. […] This film is a reminder to those who MUST set the example.” and it just keeps going like that. Which is especially awkward, because Scotty is actually a decent kid, exactly the kind of guy most parents would want their daughter dating. Yet somehow, the moral takeaway here ends up being: “Let your 16-year-old daughter date around or society will collapse.” Huh?

Look, The Delinquents is, at best, a middling movie. The story (written by Altman) isn’t terrible.  It’s contrived, sure, but not unbelievable.  The black-and-white lighting is actually well done, and there are flashes of the director Altman would eventually become (the house party scene is a solid example of his love of improvisation). If you enjoy old-school moral panic films, you might get a kick out of this 75-minute oddity. Otherwise, it’s really only notable as the starting point of Robert Altman’s long and much more impressive career.