Oh, where do you start? "The Beatniks" -- today's youth living by their code of mutiny and rebellion. Of course, as others have pointed out, there are no beatniks! Did someone actually get "hoodlum" confused with "beatnik"? These defiant young don't look all that young and for good reason. The fellow playing "defiant young" Red was 45 years old when he made the film! Ha! Ha! Ha! Yet the film is fun. It is cheap, cheesy, illogical, and loads of fun. It is also a GOOD FILM."The Beatniks" is a kind of late 1950s fairy tale (no pun intended). Tony Travis plays small- time hood Eddy Crane in a manner that makes him endearing. Peter Breck as Mooney is an over-the-top wonder. The film is notable for the way Mooney is obviously enamored of Eddy -- and this is as obvious as possible given the time period. "Sideburns Don't Need Your Sympathy" is a wonderful novelty tune. The lyrics are deliberately off-the-wall but the singer delivers them strongly and Travis lip synchs with sincerity. The other songs are delightfully crooned.Cheap and corny, "The Beatniks" is in fact a good film. It is not just "so-bad-it's good" but GOOD. It maintains a fast pace throughout the film. It causes the viewer to care about Eddy and loose cannon Mooney. It has four fine songs. Both Karen Kadler and Joyce Terry play their parts believably (even though Terry may have hated the film). Charles Delaney is noteworthy as the avuncular Mr. Bayliss. Talent agents are usually depicted as sleazy but Bayliss is refreshingly kind-hearted and sincere. Delaney looks a bit sickly in the film -- he died before it came out -- but he still plays his part strongly and sincerely. Watch the film. It is good: well-paced, well acted, and with fine music. It deserves a far better reputation than it has.

If there's anyone out there expecting to see a film about the Fifties counterculture prototypes, skip this one by. Skip it by for that reason and on general principles.The Beatniks is about a gang of punks who bully and rob people for kicks and one of them, Tony Travis is discovered in true Hollywood tradition in a roadside dive by an agent. He's got a decent singing voice and the agent promises to make him the next Elvis.But our lug-nut of a hero instead of saying goodbye Daddy-O in true beatnik fashion, doesn't want to lose the old gang. And the old gang don't want to let him go. Especially Peter Breck, a twisted psycho with some gay leanings who's crushing out on Travis big time.Despite this film where he gives an over the top performance like Jack Palance on amphetamines, Peter Breck was the only one in this no name cast to have anything resembling a career.The Beatniks is a film without a lot going for it. This was one of those drive-in flicks which one could get down to serious business at the drive-in without missing anything of importance.

No Beatniks appear in this film, the acting by the young leads is execrable, the song lyrics are both insane and badly lip-synched, and the plot is dumb. As others have commented, radio and voice actor Paul Frees assembled quite a nice cast of fellow radio and voice actors to play the "normal" people in this tale of troubled youth, but he neglected to cast credible actors as the over-the-hill "teens" who hang around engaging in delinquent acts of senseless violence. I was quite pleased to see radio and voice actor Stanley Farrar on screen, and, like other comment writers i wonder whose rather nice voice actually sang the lame songs that the character Eddie was inexpertly mouthing along to, but all in all, this one is a loser. Having read all the reviews here, some folks will no doubt seek it out for its sheer badness. To them i say, "Come back later and tell us if it was really worth it!"

This is my largest complaint; no Beatnik culture, no snapping fingers and performance poetry, marijuana, not even the stereotypical black clothes and sunglasses -- how can you get that part wrong? Instead the "Beatniks" are mostly your typical 50s squares and range to a geek-greaser (Mooney) and the lone woman in the group, think of a "Grease" Frenchy-Rizzo mix.Since, the majority of the plot of this movie revolves around Eddie's musical ability the audience gets plenty of solo performances. The music is fine for a low budget movie like "Beatniks", nothing you will remember past the end credits. Again, even when Eddie was a "Beatnik" he wasn't singing Beatnik music, more like Mel Torme-like crooning.Other glaring mistakes in this movie is the continuity (see the GOOFS section) and the character of Moon is just ridiculous, with a catch phrase that will live on forever (I'm gonna MOON ya'!). The Eddie character is a little annoying in his inconsistency -- is he a goon with a heart of gold or just a jerk? All in all this is a very, very bad movie.