The Beatniks

- 75:03

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synopsis

Beatniks? What beatniks? Two-bit punks, a closet rock-&-roll star, and an out-of-his-mind psycho: yes. Beatniks: no. Though The Beatniks was probably a last-minute title change to replace a less exploitable moniker, it didn’t make much of a difference to the audiences of 1960. After all, to a world emerging from the Eisenhower era, bohemian artists and beat-generation poets were seen as little more than socially maladjusted misfits in the same category as junkies, Commies, and teenage hoodlums — or the petty-crime crackpots running loose in this fast, fun, and naively hilarious saga of an overage delinquent who becomes an overnight sensation.

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