There's something to be said for the cheap, quick, exploitation movies. The flicks that grab a sparking wire from the popular culture - a panic piece in a mainstream publication, a shocking news story, a subtle trembling fear running through the bourgeoise foundations. And that something is:

These movies are usually short.

It's 59 minutes.

Check out this wild crazy party, with flaming youth engaged in sinful dances of lust:

Oh yes, that's him. As despicable punks go . . .

He's utterly detestable. He's everything you hate in a JD. Amoral, mocking, and not half as smart as he thinks.

After he gets out, everyone's impressed. Even Fake Christopher Walken:

Guys like this, you just want to smack 'em. Anyway. The Wild Youth learn that the obligatory Nice Guy in this picture was in a game of chicken with a truck, the nice guy chickened out. So naturally he must be taunted in the most irritating fashion possible:

This leads to a fight with bongos. I mean there are bongos while they fight.

Synopsis. (SPOILERS.)

A rebellious punk of the beat generation spends his days as an amateur dirt track driver in between partying and troublemaking. He eventually kidnaps his buddy's girlfriend, kills a few police officers and finally sees his own life end in tragedy.

And what does this say about America? Ought we not wonder what it is that drives so many youth to the pitfalls of Beatism?

What's that, you say - these aren't the right questions? You're correct. The right question is why imdb's synopsis is so wrong. He killed one police officer in a traffic incident. As for his life ending in tragedy, here's the life-ending tragedy that ends his life, tragically:

That's it. Now, his friend's life ended in tragedy because his friend was dead, killed when he got in a wreck, , and Johnny felt responsible and gave himself up but he'll probably do six months for reckless driving. If that.

Clockwork Orange it isn't. It can't be. The times required that these films be made to sate the need for Kids Today to see something like themselves on the big screen. The times also required that the coolest guys - the ones with no remorse, the ones who just - didn't - caaare, maaan - get their comeuppance, to remind everyone that they would not be allowed to have legitimately recognized sexual unions, procreate, get good jobs, and join the Rotary. So they had to pay - which probably made them even cooler to the hard cases in the audience, because either they died, which was cool, or they went to jail, where they would be cool and come out cooler, or just because they maintained the state of Not Caring right up to the end.

What I can't stand about these characters is their idiotic insolence. They have no style. They're all sneers and mock humility, a persona calculated to enrage the generation that was off in the jungles getting shot when these kids were in diapers. That famous JD line - what are you rebelling against? / I don't know, whaddya got? is useless nihilism. But I repeat myself.

But hey, they must be serious and deep. They're alienated.

We're told that alienation is a dire wraith that afflicts the dispossessed and drives them to drastic actions. If you're a Crazed Loner who shoots up a movie theater, alienation means you absorbed rabid-bat-mad theories from the internet, which fed into your mental illness and produced the desire for random retribution. (The amount of attention spent on your motivation, and what it means about the Troubling Undercurrents in America, depends on the side to which your ramblings tilt.) But if you have creative pretensions, "Alienation" is celebrated as a sign of wisdom: the brilliant soul who seems clearly cannot help be alienated from this wretched assemblage of cruelty and avarice. Some people will always side with the Alienated, because they get it. They have pierced the greasy cheesecloth and apprehended our society for what it is, and reject it. Bravo! Such perspicacious insight. Such bravery.

So. For some people there's an intellectual inclination to lean into the Alienation explanation, because it suggests a finer-tuned sensibility. The people who fit in, they're the phonies. You know, the jocks. The business majors. The sons and daughteres of immigrants who adapt, adopt, improve. But the Alienated ones, they have a lesson for us all.

It's like saying the guy who rowed his canoe out into the ocean has something to teach us about building a house.

That's the last one of those for a while. Back to school usually means Teen Flix, but now that we're into the second half of September, I'll have to . . .

Wait, what will I do? It's too soon for Monster Movies. You'll have to wait until next Monday to find out! Also, you'll forget the matter the instant you leave this page.

Matches await. We're coming to the end of this batch of restaurant updates; only two weeks left. After that, I'll have to -

Wait, what will I OH SHUT UP