Mania Grade: C+
Disc Grade: A-
Reviewed Format: DVD
Rated: Not Rated
Stars: LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS - Ken Clayton, Barbara Wilson, Richard Gilden; JACKTOWN - Miss Patty McCormack, Richard Meade, George F. Taylor
Writers: LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS - Norman Graham; JACKTOWN - William Martin
Directors: LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS - Frank Myers; JACKTOWN - William Martin
Distributor: Something Weird Video / Image Entertainment
Original Years of Release: LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS - 1957; JACKTOWN - 1962
Retail Price: $24.99
Extras: shorts; trailers; galleries; Easter egg
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LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS / JACKTOWN

Lurid poster art featuring scantily clad females leaning over bed posts, cars colliding head on, a man strangling another, and cops with their guns drawn firing on unknown assailants all this might lead the uninitiated to believe that these things occur in the films they're hyping within the course of the main storyline. Well, with the exception of the guy strangling another man, they don't. Welcome to the wonderful world of false advertising, God bless it.

Knowing this, you can rest assured that LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS will never be "the white hot story of what happens to boys and girls who come to Hollywood... seeking to claw their way to the top," as the tag line so boldly proclaims. Instead, the film is about a young actor Johnnie Dennis (the monotone, freakish looking Ken Clayton), a thinly veiled rip-off of James Dean. Johnnie Dennis is a phenomenon, so young and already on his way to becoming a great star. But Johnnie's got a dark side, a side that's obsessed with death and painting really god-awful self-portraits of himself as a dead martyr. Nothing seems to be able to calm this inner demon that claws at Johnnie's soul, until one day he almost runs over a really cute drugstore clerk. Now Johnnie's found something he can hold onto in this crazy mixed up world and that thing is a really sexy young girl. Oh, and in regards to "what happens to boys and girls who come to Hollywood... eeking to claw their way to the top," well, they get big movie roles, fall madly in love with one another, and/or fight with guys who get big movie roles.

Filmed in Tuscaloosa, Alabama LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS is obviously a movie capitalizing on James Dean's life, but with a happy ending. Yes folks, this hotheaded young man who was too bold to live and too young to die comes to a crossroads in his life where he... he... he gives up on his death fixation and goes back to the arms of his really cute girlfriend. Lots of boos from Dean enthusiasts. However, there will be plenty of smirks from us bad movie enthusiasts when we here some of Johnnie Dennis' (as performed by the hysterically wooden Clayton) patented never-ending comebacks "Like I say Walt, one of these days somebody's going to stick a pin in you and you're going to melt down into nothing but a stain... just a stain... YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!" Or his poignant reflections on the realities of life "little towns can be lonely too" - and his where-the-hell-is-he-coming-from letter writing - "I was never much for letter writing but what I have to say I could never put into words, maybe I can put something on paper." Best of all is the final ten minutes of the film which constantly cuts to scenes of Dennis racing furiously down the road while his atrocity of Art 101 crapsterpiece self portrait rides shotgun. That poor portrait's well deserved fate is the film's biggest laugh.

JACKTOWN boasts the tagline "Behind the walls of the world's largest prison" and that may be the case, at least for twenty minutes of the film's scant 60-minute running time. This is the story of Frankie Stossel (Richard Meade), a young punk with a lot of malice and little regard for the law. Frankie is 21 years old, lives at home and doesn't have a job. When Frankie's caught giving a 15 year old girl a full body cavity search you can bet it's statutory rape time and he'll be sent to Jacktown in Jackson, Michigan. Here Frankie immediately makes some pretty nasty enemies and looks ripe for becoming the salad tossing poster boy of the month when the warden decides that Frankie is just a good kid given a bum hand. The warden immediately assigns Frankie a job working at his house tending his garden and soon love blossoms. Yes, Frankie falls in love with the warden's daughter (Miss Patty McCormack), whom the warden has no problem with hanging around the house while guys who committed statutory rape work on the lawn. The warden, discovering the development of a love connection between the two, immediately has Frankie transferred to a driver position quit your smirking, he drives a car - and before you can say felony Frankie escapes from prison.

JACKTOWN is a rather well done film, at least in regards to the scenes that actually take place at the prison. The other prisoners' taunting of Frankie is genuinely creepy and one wishes the focus of the story would have stayed there rather than developing into a silly love story. For the most part the film is pretty solid, but come the final reel when Frankie decides to reject McCormack's offer of sex and decides instead to return to prison (insert your own joke here), things just get a little too "Christian clean" to seem plausible.

Both LOST, LONELY AND VICIOUS and JACKTOWN look great. Something Weird Video's Mike Vraney has really uncovered some high quality prints for this release. Sure, there is some debris and wear and tear, but not much. The sound is good with the expected mild tape hiss from a product of this age.

As usual with a SWV release, short subjects abound. Since "we're slow to realize the degree to which sin infiltrates, impregnates, and pollutes every avenue of our society," it's a good thing we have films like "Crisis in Morality" to set us straight. Ultimately it becomes clear that the makers of this film should have seen the film "Crisis of Ethics" as "Crisis in Morality" eventually proves itself as nothing more then a recruiting film for bible colleges. However, the unintentional lesson on how to make a Zip Gun might prove quite useful. "Hell is a Place Called Hollywood" may purport to show the sordid reality of the millions of failures who flock to that town each year, but its real purpose is to show some naked flesh and bondage footage. A choice moment in this picture is when our heroine, after watching her first Hollywood film - it's a nudist film - realizes that her career is over. Apparently this never occurred to her when she consented to appear in it. "Little Miss Delinquent" features an actress who deserves the title Little Miss Drama Queen for her performance as the good girl gone bad. Exactly how she's gone bad we're not really told, however we are informed that her mother's leniency toward her wild ways and inability to enforce punishment are the root cause of all her woes. So parents, unless you want your kids in J.H., best start smacking them around today.

No shortage of trailers on this disc. You get the trailers for both features plus the German import TEENAGE WOLFPACK that features a girl who looks a lot like Tracey Lords in CRY BABY. It's punk kids attacking a suburban homeowner in JOY RIDE. New kids are so unpredictable, especially when they've got a switchblade - see punks battle it out in THE COOL AND THE CRAZY. Think Jack Nicholson has always had it made? Think again as he performs as the lead in CRY BABY KILLER. "Somebody teach me how to cry," pleads the highly unappealing lady-killer who knocks up our star in EIGHTEEN AND ANXIOUS. This has to be the funniest trailer I've seen in quite some time, worth the price of the disc alone.

Wrapping up the disc is a "Gallery of Trash-O-Rama Exploitation Art with Radio-Spot Rarities" and an Easter egg clip telling teenage theatergoers their wacky antics will not be tolerated.