Teenage Thunder (USA, 1957) 78 min B&W DIR: Paul Helmick. SCR: Rudy Makoul. PROD-DOP: Jacques Marquette. MUSIC: Walter Greene. (Theme song, “Teenage Kisses”, sung by David Houston.) CAST: Chuck Courtney, Melinda Byron, Robert Fuller, Tyler McVey, Paul Bryar, Mona McKinnon, Bing Russell. (Howco Productions)
It is understandable that this little gem got lost in the shuffle of more popular JD movies like High School Confidential or The Cool and the Crazy. Released from Howco (which distributed Ed Wood’s Jail Bait, for heaven’s sake), Teenage Thunder was yet another dragstrip melodrama about misguided youth (featuring 35 year-olds as teenagers), yet its closer cousin is actually Rebel Without a Cause. Even though Johnnie Simpson (Chuck Courtney) desperately wants a car and commits frivolous acts to get one, the underlying theme is actually his ill-advised ways to receive love, especially from a patriarchal figure. His architect dad (Tyler McVey) has basically given up on trying to reach his child. “Don’t I give you everything?” he laments after one episode of his son’s criminal activities.
Well, no Dad! The poor kid wants a car!
He is so emasculated that even his girlfriend Betty Palmer (played by the pretty Melinda Byron) has wheels! Johnnie is tormented so much by the snotty rich kid Maurie (Robert Fuller, later of the Emergency TV series) that one night he takes a car out for a test drive, and then fails to return it, just so he can give in to playing “Chicken”. Naturally, the stern father is notified and because Dad is well-off, no charges are laid. It is easy to see that Johnnie is not being allowed to have a car because of his irresponsibility- it is also easy to see why Johnnie is irresponsible.
Signals are missed by both parties. Johnnie “tries to talk”, yet Pop can only sniff that his bridge game was interrupted by the cops bringing his kid home. On the other hand, Dad’s attempts at being a proper father figure, are replied with hostility from Johnnie.
The plot has a “surrogate” father in the kindly Mr. Morrison (Paul Bryar), who hires Johnnie at his service station. Our misunderstood hero even gets to fiddle with the car that Morrison is building. Still, push comes to shove in his small world, as he is torn in different directions by the pompous asses who still come by to tease him, and by his dad who is resentful of Johnnie wasting his life as a grease monkey. How does Johnnie respond? He takes off with Morrison’s car! As luck would not have it, Morrison was actually intending to put the car in a fund-raising race in honour of his crippled son Jimmy, with Johnnie as the driver. (Yes, the kid’s name is Jimmy Morrison. Let that sink in a moment.)
Surprisingly, Johnnie is never truly punished for his misdeeds, at least not severely. Instead, his delinquency is usually greeted with parental figures trying to understand him. Imagine the teenagers wanting to get out of the house from their folks, and escape to the drive-in to see a picture not about misguided youth, but misguided love!
Even if you were not conceived when this picture was released, you get a feeling that you’ve been at the world in this washed out, low-budget picture. Be it the Happy Days TV series, or the thousand other teen pictures like this one that causes the deja vu, Teenage Thunder is a lexicon of that time.
Girls drove with white gloves and kerchiefs, jocks wore jackets with a single letter on the back, the roadside diners were crammed with teens, burgers, shakes and juke boxes, and people still tried to fill the long shadow left on September 30, 1955. Decked out in an archetypal James Dean jacket, styled with peroxided hair, and coupled with a “nobody understands” look, Chuck Courtney is acting under the iconography set by that rebel without a cause. This actor’s own legacy was small by comparison (his other Drive-In hallmark was the masterpiece, Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula). Courtney’s filmography is testament to the short-lived careers of the hopefuls who dotted these outdoor screens. Teenage Thunder has the drag races and the brawls indicative of its genre, yet also belies its exploitation racket and attempts to be something bigger within its marketing parameters. It is less an exploitation film about the generation gap, more a movie which attempts to bridge that gap.
Trivia notes: Plan 9′s Mona McKinnon plays Betty’s sister; Kurt’s dad Bing Russell, star of the low-budget crime film Stakeout, plays a used-car salesman.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #2, “The First Annual Summer Drive-In Issue”.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.