Little remembered now (despite being directed by Robert Altman) but highly controversial in its day, this remains a striking and well-made look at a teenage psychotic, played very well by Fabian in perhaps his best ever performance. He plays a drifter who rocks into the small town that provided the backdrop for plots on the series Bus Stop and soon makes waves: hitting on the middle aged drunken lady who gives him a lift, robbing and killing a grocer, singing without permission at a tavern, starting a brawl and pulling out a switchblade.
He's hauled into prison and is arrested but remains cocky, keeps singing to himself a lot and actually gets off the trial... whereupon he propositions a blonde groupie, kills his lawyer, then is killed in a murder-suicide by the drunken lady.
It's quite intense, which is presumably why it got poor Jack Gould of the New York Time whipped up in such a frenzy - not to mention the sponsors who refused to support it, the stations who wouldn't run it, the politicians who condemned it.
Part of the problem apparently was Fabian's presence - he's handsome, young, sings a few songs, is shown to be attractive, speaks a lot of groovy early 60s slang, and gets away with it (for the most part). This was very confronting, and came out at the wrong time, when Washington was going through one of its periodic bouts of concern about the influence of TV violence on kids.
To be fair, this is intense stuff, not really suitable for young kids, but it is worthy adult drama. Apparently Fox wanted to turn it into a feature but Fabian refused to shoot the necessary extra scenes - it's a shame, because then this would be better known, and his fine work more widely seen. Good acting from others in the cast too, especially Dianne Foster in the showy part of the drunken woman. Altman's direction is top rate.
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