This late ‘sixties ‘youth culture’ provocation could have been a social/political time capsule of a volatile era, but AIP shlockmeisters Samuel Z. Arkoff & James H. Nicholson knew concept alone would sell the thing and hired t.v. hacks on the cheap to write & direct. Too bad, the concept is a pip: Kids get The Vote & elect Twenty-somethings to take over the government. Yikes! . . . or Yippee! It’s Revenge of the Frosted Flakes Crowd. Alas, jokey subversion as far as we get: forced retirement at 30; buses to Camp Concentration @ 35; tabs of LSD to sedate. A level of pandering unimagined even by Alice Cooper in 1972's ‘School’s Out For EVER!’ (The songs in here going nowhere with the exception of ‘Shape of Things to Come,’ not a bad anthem.) A surprisingly decent cast of adults chew up the scenery (Shelley Winters, like fingernails on a chalkboard as Mom; Hal Holbrook’s means-to-an-end Senator; old-school conservative Ed Begley), but can’t touch the dry comic edge Paul (ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE) Frees gets out of the overblown narration. And the ‘youngsters?’ Mostly looking ready for that 35 & up Concentration Camp Bus. Especially Richard Pryor (how’d he get in here?) and decidedly unfresh Christopher Jones, a tintype James Dean who’d soon self-destruct in David Lean’s RYAN’S DAUGHTER/’70, never to be heard of again.
SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: You only have to imagine ‘60s Jean-Luc Godard taking this on to see the possibilities. Try his lesser known LA CHINOISE/’67. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/la-chinoise-1967.html On the other hand, Michelangelo Antonioni did try something along these lines, ZABRISKIE POINT/’70. A famous disaster with another male lead never heard from again.
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