This week we jump into the Wayback Machine to the 1950s, by way of the 1970s, for Tuesday's Overlooked Film, The Lords of Flatbush.
The Lords of Flatbush is about a group of high school gang members, The Lords, in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. The gang commit the typical hijinks you would expect from high school boys, trying to score with girls, pranking teachers, with all the trappings of the early rock'n'roll era of the late 50s. The principal actors are Perry King (Riptide), Sylvester Stallone, and Henry Winkler (who, of course, would become an icon of 50s coolness as the Fonz on Happy Days).
Some of the subject matter is done in later and better films with the same themes (Grease, The Wanderers), but if you enjoy stories told in this era, as I do, the Lords of Flatbush may be worth your time.
Here, the boys take a break to sing some doo wop--then start speaking Spanish all of a sudden. Thanks!
4 comments:
I haven't seen this one since losing interest in the tv edit ABC ran ca. 1977, more to cash in on Winkler than Stallone (at that point, I think, ROCKY hadn't quite come out). It's better than I vaguely remember?
(The tv edit part, I'm sure, didn't help one scrap.)
I just started watching it after recording it off of This TV over the weekend. THE WANDERERS covers the same ground much more deftly, but I'm a sucker for this time period, so I'm sticking with it for now.
The Wanderers is based on a very unhappy, depressing book.
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