Inclubabu
Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Motompa
Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.
Eric Stevenson
At this time, everything just got so redundant in movies as people were just obsessed with making movies about giant leeches, gila monsters, praying mantises and everything in between. It actually was nice to see some variety in B-movies at this time with something completely real. It's still nothing but a B-movie of course. This falls into the trap of just being too boring. I hate it when I have to say that a film being short is one of its biggest pluses. I mean, I certainly didn't want this to be longer! It features a guy in High School who tries to steal a million dollars from heroin dealers or something. It again makes the mistake of having too much buildup and not much of a payoff. When it all ends, it's mostly pointless and you don't care that everyone's dying left and right. These characters just seem rather dumb in their decisions. It's a downer ending, but not to the point where you get depressed. It falls into too many clichés of a nerd trying to get with a girl who's out of his league and him being bullied. This stuff existed even back then. *1/2
johnboy1
This could have been so much better than it turned out. Tom Pittman gives a good performance and some of the older actors do well with what they have to work with, but it just doesn't work.First, the actors are much too old to play high school students, especially Howard Veit (Vince). He looks about thirty. Second, it's hard to sympathize with poor Marv, especially since Betty is not all that hot, to start with.*******Spoilers****** The ending is so strange. It looks like the director intended for Pittman's character to get shot, but there are no gunshots...he's just knocked to the cement, where he lays there until the ambulance drivers pick him up and place him on a stretcher (face down!). What were his injuries? A skinned knee? Goofy! Vince has just shot his girlfriend dead without any remorse whatsoever, yet he simply shoves Marv to the ground and rushes off, despite the fact that he makes no secret of the fact that he hates the kid. And to make matters even sillier, Marv begs the police to tell his father he's sorry. (Duh! Hey Marv. You just got knocked around. I think you will have plenty of opportunities to tell your father you're sorry...in person). And this writer didn't get an Oscar nomination? Skip it, unless you get to watch it on MST.
icehole4
This movie reminded me a lot of a song by the Dead Kennedys called "Straight A's." However, unlike this film, the hero of the DK's song turns to suicide. You'll wish this bozo had resorted to killing himself instead of doing the crime he did. The whole thing was convoluted and in the beginning, you sympathize with the hero of the film, then he quickly betrays your sympathies. The long sequences of just showing the hero's face while he delivers a monologue drag the film down quite a bit. Avoid this if possible.
Don_Mac
I saw the MST3K version of this film and it is a bad movie - but its not nearly as bad as its low IMDB rating (currently 1.8 out of 10). At least the movie has a few production values and it apparently had a competent editor (unlike the movies that truly are awful). The primary problem with this movie is that it had no appealing characters whatsoever. The main character, Marv, is so pathetically morose, that he practically asks for all the bad stuff that happens to him. And he isn't very smart either, or he would have figured out to stay away from the conniving girl Betty. And even more pathetic than Marv is his father, who is nothing but a drunken loser. The highlight of the film is the heist sequence at the end but even that is so weakly executed, any excitement it might have added to the film is completely missing. At least this movie made for a very funny MST3K episode, as Mike and the 'Bots do a great job making fun of it.
