This is pretty darn good crime-drama - Peter Falk is our beatnik psycho who deals drugs and likes to kill people. He throws neat-o parties complete with bongo drummers and dancing chicks. But his favorite thing murder - murdering in creative ways (you'll want to think twice before you eat a hamburger after seeing this film... I don't think ground glass is a good seasoning).It's a pretty cool story, some neat cinematography in some scenes, swinging artsy fartsy beatniks, a bit of jazz music and some bongo music, a bit of a dark film overall... makes a pretty good prime time film I think or a late night flick! 7.5/10

Let's get one thing out of the way - I like Peter Falk. In this movie he's restrained, cold, and creepy. Shame the rest of the cast are rubbish.Nico is a fireside philosopher to all the beatniks at the local hangout, giving them their kicks via parties and monologues about life in general, but he's also making his cash from selling them gear and has the mind of a lizard. He's down on the squares and after witnessing the natural death of a newspaper salesman, he plots to up the ante by murdering someone. Thing is, that someone has a brother who won't stop until he find's the murderer.To put it simply - when Falk is on screen this film is a hoot. He's really playing a man without a soul who has to go to extremes to even feel anything (and even then there's doubt regarding whether or not that happens). He uses every single other character in the film and only looks vaguely surprised when it all backfires. However, a good half of the film is set around the victim's brother, and this makes the film slow to a crawl.However - worth a look for Pre-Colombo Falk playing the bad guy, other than that, this film is for squares, daddy-o.

Upon watching a review of this film I instantly became curious about it. A juvenile delinquency film staring Peter Falk as a murderous counter culture member? Count me in.My preconceived notion about this film was that it was going to be another cheesy 1950s scare flick, somewhat in the vein of Ed Wood's 'The Violent Years.' What I got, however was a very well acted, well put together and memorable film which even my friends who are not into '50s B-movies seem to enjoy.The film focuses on two characters, the murderous thug Nico (Peter Falk) and Cliff (Jack Betts) the brother of one of Nico's victims. Nico is an implied drug dealer and popular member of the local counter culture, who becomes obsessed with watching people die after witnessing a man have a heart attack. Eventually, he decides he wants to see another person die, so he and a friend kill a delivery boy by feeding him a laced hamburger.The police are unable to solve the murder due to the lack of evidence which is generally involved in motiveless crimes, so Cliff decides to take matters into his own hands.I commonly regard this as one of the best B-Movies the 50s has to offer for reasons other than, 'so bad it's good.' The characters are interesting and well played; I really cannot think of a single actor who played their role poorly. I find the character of Nico's friend Francis to be one of the best acted. Francis was one of the murderers and was instantly paranoid upon witnessing the death of the delivery boy. His paranoia and anxiety is well played by the actor. It almost makes this film a case study in human behavior when at risk of being caught for a crime.Nico is interesting too, as a murderer he has a calm confidence about him, right up until his end. He is sly and cunning, and seems to understand the human condition well. Peter Falk does a wonderful job demonstrating his acting ability, making Nico a character the viewer loves to hate.I highly recommend this film to essentially anyone, it's available to view freely online and I recommend that you take a look. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Highly recommended.

Poorly acted, poorly scripted, choppy edited, and poorly transfered onto DVD, this film barely gets above sedate pulse rate mode. The plot promises much, man takes investigation of murder into his own hands due to ineptitude of investigating detective, well that last line I wrote is about as good as the film gets !. It would be nice if the villain of the piece was actually villainous, but sadly Peter Falk as Nico just doesn't instill any sort of menace and worse still is that he is surrounded by cartoonish followers who act like they are in a Bugs Bunny cartoon instead of the beatnik classic some seem to think this is.There is no tension worth writing about, and the finale brings about cries of relief that it's over rather than the nod of approval I'm sure the makers were hoping for, I have no idea what the budget for the movie was, but if it was more than the price of a bacon sandwich then the makers should spend 52 weeks in the stocks whilst we throw rancid tomatoes at them.I give it a generous 2/10 for the delightful Jazz beat score and the brave attempt from Barbara Lord to act with any sort of honest dignity in amongst the swamp of pain.Pah.