Overrated and overhyped

From my favorite movies..

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I have watched this through Mystery Science Theater 3000. This movie starts out with a kid running away from thugs. After he is beaten up he is carried to the nearby train by a hobo by the name of Bix Dugan. Sooner or later they arrive at a small town. Bix then falls in love with a waitress. Then - afraid of him getting too attached to this place he decides to leave. Then he reconsiders, then the girl dies by the jealous-creepy-guy-with-crush-on-her cliché. Bix then gets accused of murdering her. Soon they find out the truth, Bix broods and the person at the beginning phones home and invites Bix for dinner over there.Now, this is worthy of MST3K. The acting is weak at it's very best and the writing is also flat. Although when fair is fair this is extremely easy to make fun of and Joel and the Bots do it well. If you watch it with them it will be a great old laugh for you to have.

There was a time when Jack Elam was actually a pretty good looking young actor, but by the time his late Fifties TV Western days rolled around he had that weird eye sinister look going and it's on display here in all it's glory. Man, what a creepy looking guy! And speaking of Westerns, this might be the only time outside of one where there's a lynch mob going after a suspected murderer. Considering it was set in modern times, I had some trouble reconciling that scene with my own recollection of 1960 and growing up in a small town. I guess it could have happened somewhere, but I don't recall ever hearing of one.Anyway, this story is about as off the beaten path as you'll find considering the understated yet overt subtext between the principals - Britt Halsey as Bix Dugan and Lowell Brown as Danny Winslow. Other reviewers have elaborated on the subject convincingly enough so I won't have to go into detail with my own review. I will say though, it did give me the creeps the very first time Danny put his hand on Bix's shoulder way back on the freight train ride. The other thing that kept me off balance was Bix's unusual resemblance to Michael Landon which I just couldn't get out of my mind while watching.With all that, I'm not sure why this one was called "The Girl in Lovers Lane". Maybe it was for the benefit of the unidentified couple out parking near the lake when they heard Carrie scream. Now there was a real hero, the guy who went to investigate. And Bix never even saw him.

The Girl in Lovers' Lane: 3 out of 10: Homoerotic subtext in the movies is a well known phenomenon. Plenty of dissertations have come out of film schools about the hidden subtexts in such films as Top Gun and Spartacus. The Girl in Lover’s Lane certainly fits the homoerotic trope. In fact, it is so blatant and over the top even MST3K, whom rarely notes such things in their riffing, simply cannot avoid it.The film is about two drifters. One a rich kid (Lowell Brown) running away from home with a hundred dollars and no street smarts, the other is a professional hobo (Brett Halsey). The hobo saves the kid from a gang of thugs and they end up in a small town consisting of a diner, a pool hall and a whorehouse. Our drifter scholar gets a second look from the diner’s waitress (Joyce Meadows as the titular Girl in Lovers Lane) who clearly is past the age of being choosy and whose only other prospect is creepy Jack Elam doing a Steve Buscemi impression.On the surface, this seems like a strange film for the MST3K treatment. While the cast are to old for the characters they are playing, the acting is actually pretty good with both Brett Halsey and Jack Elam giving solid performances. The story is slight, but hardly The Robot vs. Aztec Mummy material and the production values are cheap back lot, but relatively competent.It is the strange Batman and his ward homosexual undercurrents that make this film both awful and hilarious. Halsey’s over the top objections to the kids attempts to get laid in the whorehouse are hilarious, his inability to commit to the waitress (or at the least get past first base) are telling, and the dozens of glances between him and the kid; a hand on shoulder, the sleeping arrangements, blowing off dates with the girl so he and the kid can shave each other. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out this undercurrent.

Okay... for the most part, and all its cheesiness, this movie was actually pretty good for an MST3K flick... but then they decided to ruin what little goodness it had about fifteen minutes before the ending. *SPOILER ALERT* The film is very basic... a rich mama's boy named Danny meets a bum named Bix, and the two of them travel to a small town, where Bix meets a pretty girl named Carrie (who is so very.) Now, this film's basic premise seemed promising enough. All they needed to do was follow the simple chemistry of any romance movie... Carrie loves Bix... Bix loves Carrie... a creepy guy in town lusts for Carrie... Now, I know what you're thinking... Bix fights the creep and ultimately decides to settle down with Carrie, and Danny returns home, and they all live happily ever after... right? WRONG!! Because Carrie gets murdered by the town creep, because Bix is too gay to commit. (There are so many homosexual undertones between Danny and Bix.) And then, the whole town decides to lynch Bix, even though the town creep would've easily been the prime suspect. Then, the town creep confesses to killing Carrie without much hesitation... (must've felt bad, the poor dope.) Then, Danny brings Bix home with him... that's the film's "happily ever after." Sad, huh? All I can say is, thank God for Joel and the Bots. Because they turned this horse hockey into one of my favorite MST3K episodes.