User reviews

This is a surprisingly strong AIP feature, a first for Irvin Kershner as writer and director. Although stylistically it seems, at first sight, little more than an expanded DRAGNET episode in which you get to see the criminals' viewpoints, this largely no-name cast gives a bunch of decent performances with some well-written characters.

The feature is about a group of rather clueless teenagers -- who appear to use all their off-screen time body building -- who discover a cannister of heroin. Neither hard core criminals nor saints, they want all the things that society says they should want, and are not choosy about how they go about getting it.

The writing and direction are stronger than the acting, but the overall effect is quite striking. Definitely worth your time.

Two cops arrest a criminal with a suitcase full of drugs. Bullets start flying. The criminal throws out the suitcase and is killed. The criminals can't find the bag in the dark and run away. Later, three teens happen upon the bag but it all looks like ladies makeup to them. They throw out the drugs thinking it is worthless pimple powder. After pawning the bag, they read about the shootout in the newspaper. They go retrieve the powder from the garbage dump.

This starts with an interesting premise but this Roger Corman production has its limitations. The acting is limited. The production is limited. It's a B-crime movie. I do start losing interest after the kids find the drugs. The drugs are better off as a MacGuffin because the search for it would be a more compelling story. Cops and criminal searching the pawn shops could find the bag and go down the road of looking for the boys. Actually finding the drugs is the movie's downfall. The teens look silly trying to be thugs selling drugs. It's unreal and uncompelling. This is director Irvin Kershner's first theatrical release and his work is functional.

A jazz score accompanies the soundtrack of this gritty story about three teens who get involved with drugs (heroin supply) and then try to make a deal with a druggie who can turn over some cash for whatever amount they come up with. Meanwhile, some drug dealers are also after the drugs and will stop at nothing to find out where the teens have stashed the goods.

The no name cast is headed by YALE WEXLER as the more sensitive one who decides the drug heist should be handed over to the cops--but by the time he makes this decision it's too late and the dealers have already trapped his friends and beat them up. He manages to elude them when they pursue him on a climactic chase that forms the climax of the story.

Interesting, gritty and worthwhile if you're a film noir buff, but nothing extraordinary. The only reason I watched it was because I had seen the screen test of YALE WEXLER for the role of "Ben-Hur" in 1959 and wondered if he ever pursued an acting career after losing that role. Evidently, he did. He gives a convincing performance here and so does the rest of the cast.

Three aimless young men find a briefcase containing a load of valuable heroin. So what are they going to do with it. Desperate, they end up trying to sell it through an ex-junkie. The trouble is the mob wants their heroin back and are on the trail of the kids. And so are the cops.

Given the potentially explosive material, the 90-minutes comes across as peculiarly lacking in drama. The motions are there, but not the felt impact. Much, I think, has to do with the quality of the performances. Of the three boys, Marlo manages some grit as Nick. However, Wexler and Haze (yes, that Haze) appear to flounder in stand-around bland fashion. Plus, poor Abby Dalton looks completely lost. Thus, the movie's core is compromised at the outset. Then too, the cops are a particularly colorless bunch, adding nothing to the impact. Kramer, at least, looks the part of a washed-up ex- junkie, getting the big dramatic turn of painful drug withdrawal, where he writhes in expressive fashion. It's a scary public warning.

Then again, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the movie's high point. Namely, where the boys thrash through a real city dump looking for the heroin as a dozer keeps piling the trash higher. Talk about needles in a haystack, or climbing a mountain that keeps getting higher. One thing for sure, I've seen nothing like it before or since. Anyway, the direction (Kershner) is pretty spotty. There are some nice touches like the crashing bowling ball and bouncing pinball punctuating the two beatings, plus the cascade of heroin down the tank's side. Clearly, however, Kershner is more adept at staging than either coaching actors or building suspense. Even the imaginatively staged showdown doesn't generate the suspense it should. One big positive is the staging throughout. Real locations are used, lending a good glimpse of LA, circa 1958. Too bad the movie as a whole never quite gels, despite the promising premise.

"Stakeout on Dope Street" is a decent film when it comes to the plot idea, but nothing, I mean NOTHING, makes the film particularly compelling. It should have been a lot more interesting than it was.

The film begins with a very gritty shootout--one where two cops are shot as well as one of the criminals. However, in the process, a briefcase full of pure, uncut heroin is lost. And, shortly afterwords, three young men discover the drugs and decide to get rich selling it. Two of the guys have no problem with this--but the third gets cold feet because he's worried about creating addicts just like the guy they hired to sell the stuff. However, once the guys start selling, it's inevitable that the guys who lost it will come looking.... If you want to find out what's next, see the film.

While the plot idea sounds interesting, this low-budget film never excited me--and several times I found myself nodding off during the movie. It's not a terrible film--just not a very interesting one. See it if you'd like, but you could do better.

Irvin Kershner has directed some excellent, some famous, movies. This one was his first. It certainly isn't famous but it is indeed excellent.

It's about three young men who find a briefcase that contains, hidden among cosmetics, a can of heroin. The guys reminded me of characters from "West Side Story," though they are more middle-class. They kind of hang out, kind of have jobs. One kind of has a girlfriend. (She is played by Abby Dalton, the only name in the cast list I'd ever heard, and I'm not sure where I heard it.) That girlfriend notwithstanding, one of them has also drawn a head and unclothed torso of one of the others. This drawing is shown throughout the film.

Though it's a sensationalistic film, it is not pro-drug. I am going to risk some brickbats but I never liked "Easy Rider." And I'm a baby boomer. Yes, I liked Jack Nicholson but the whole stoned thing: No, not for me.

This little film has a jazz score. It plays out for us like a poem. It reminds me of Allen Ginsburg. It's smart, it's hip. It's everything a movie ought to be. And, I'd guess, it accomplishes this on a pretty low budget.

The movie has a Police Gazette type title. And it may have played at drive-ins. But make no mistake: This is real art.

Since they cast 27 to 31 year old actors to play the main "kids", you'd think they could have found good actors!

All three of the leads are awful, and the dialogue makes their poor acting seem even worse. The love interest (Dalton) is horrible as well, so that doesn't help.

Interesting story, forgettable movie.

Long before Irvin Kershner tackled big budget movies such as "The Empire Strikes Back", he began his theatrical directorial career with this little movie. At times it's a pretty interesting debut. It tackles the subject of drugs when it was next to taboo to deal with them in movies. Kershner probably got away with it because the movie does portray drugs in a very negative light, from showing the brutal criminals that deal with them to the addicts controlled by the drugs they take. The negative portrayal is a little heavy handed at times, but one must remember the movie was made during a different time. Anyway, as entertainment the movie is certainly not boring, though the plotting is somewhat off - the bad guys after the opening sequence don't really reappear until the last part of the movie, and the youths' plan to sell the heroin seems padded out by today's standards. It also doesn't help that the "youths" are portrayed by actors who obviously left their teenage years many years in the past. In short, this is a flawed movie, but may be of interest to those who have interest in low budget youth-oriented movies from this period.

This film reminded me about a film called, "The Man with the Golden Arm" starring Frank Sinatra and Kim Novack and this film clearly shows the horrors of withdrawal from the drug of heroin. Three young men get involved with a suitcase that holds a very large supply of uncut heroin and wind up throwing it away, thinking it was a cleansing powder and it winds up in a garbage dump which they manage to rescue. The young men decided to sell this drug and are able to make plenty of money by filtering it out through and old time heroin user. There are some girl friends in this film who try to stop these guys and tell them to turn the drugs into the police, but they do not face the consequences of turning themselves in. This is a great 1958 classic film filmed in Los Angeles, California and there is also some pretty way out music through out the film that makes this a very exciting black and white film.

Three teenagers find a briefcase with a beat-up old can in it. They throw away the can and pawn the suitcase. When they read in the papers that the can was full of uncut heroin and belonged to a drug dealer who killed two narcotics agents in a shootout, they go back to look for the can, find it, and decide to go into the heroin selling business.

This is not one of those great crime films you hear about, but it should be. It not only has a great story of cops and crooks, with teenagers caught in the middle, but it is refreshingly honest. I don't know that films about heroin were really around until the indie boom of the 1970s, but this film is very direct and does not try to sugar coat the issues.

I suppose one could say it has some seems that are bit melodramatic, and the junkie's long story of going through withdrawal has almost a "Reefer Madness" quality to it. But as a whole, this is a solid film.