Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Where's Eric Cartman, a giant mechanized drilling machine, and a Slayer CD when you really need them?"Wild in the Streets" is a laughably dated curiosity piece from the late 60's that really has to be seen to be believed.The plot: We're introduced to the life of one "Max Jacob Flatow, Jr." aka "Max Frost" (Christopher Jones) from his unwanted conception to his dysfunctional childhood due to his mother (Shelley Winters) being a frigid harpy to his running away from home as a teen. We later meet Max as a 22 yr old lead singer of a successful pop group. Although he's an acid-dropping, dope-smoking layabout with several illegitimate children and is surrounded by ne'er-do-well hippies (yes, a redundancy), Max has become one of the richest men in the country. (Hippies have money?) With his wealth and massive youth following, Max's support is sought by politicians.Enter ambitious "Johnny Fergus" (Hal Holbrook), a 37 yr old family man, who wants to be a senator. He's a supporter of lowering the voting age to 18, and believes that Max can further help him wrap-up the youth vote. However, Max knowing that the young outnumber the "Old Tigers" (anyone over 30) demands that Fergus help him lower the voting age to 15 in exchange for his support. Fergus agrees and wins his coveted senate seat. Yet, Max isn't through. With voting age lowered, he's able to get his acid-head girlfriend (Diane Varsi) elected to congress from which she pushes for an amendment to lower the age restrictions to 14 for all political offices including the presidency. The amendments pass with the assistance of spiking the water supply with LSD.Max then becomes president and disbands the military, FBI, CIA, and secret service; ends all foreign entanglements; feeds all the hungry nations; and imprisons anyone over 35 in concentration camps where they're force-fed LSD including his nutty mother and Senator Fergus who woke-up too late to the monster he helped create.This is one seriously whacked-out film. It goes to show how desperate Hollywood was in the late 60's to reach the youth audience, and it really thought this LSD-inspired mess would do the trick. It's supposed to be a satire, but it panders to many of the nuttiest excesses of the late 60's counterculture. Yet, at the same time, it also portrays the hippies as power-mad fascists. It's so ham-handed that it comes across as a bad acid trip. Overall, it's just so ridiculously stupid that it can't be viewed as either satire, parody, or broad comedy. There is absolutely nothing clever or witty about this film.As for the cast, no one comes-off well here. Ed Begley and Shelley Winters ham it up to an extreme extent. Christopher Jones was briefly a hot commodity, but quickly disappeared from the film scene. Richard Pryor has a small role as "Token Black" who plays drums rather than bass in Max's cheesy band. The only other "notable" is Barry Williams (aka "Greg Brady") in a brief scene as adolescent Max.Like the now unintentionally funny Billy Jack films, "Zabriskie Point, "The Strawberry Statement," and other awful counter-culture films of the late 60's and early 70's, "Wild in the Streets" is an absurd time capsule that really makes one wonder how did the CIA or the Commies manage to spike America's water supply?

Max Frost is a young rich rock star and powerful mogul. His band includes Billy Cage, Sally LeRoy, Abraham Salteen, and Stanley X (Richard Pryor). Mrs. Flatow (Shelley Winters) tries to contact Max who is actually his son Max Jacob Flatow, Jr. who has cut ties to his parents. Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook) is running for the Senate to lower the voting age. Max decides to support him but he wants to lower it even more. The kids come out to vote expanding the generational divide. Eventually, Max's ambitions overtakes Fergus and even the entire country.The premise is silly. It's a hippiexploitation film. The young people takes over and puts the old people in concentration camps. I don't think a sudden youth takeover can be easily portrayed in a believable way. It would be better to start with that as a given. None of that matters because the most compelling thing in this movie is the presence of the very young Richard Pryor. His role is small and he has few lines. It's the only thing that matters because it's very groovy.

A great cult film of the late Sixties, Wild In The Streets was a projection in fantasy of what the shape of the world would be if youth actually took over. Needless to say this was not the shape of things to come. For one thing the vote at age 18 was actually passed a couple of years after this film came and Congress did it without tripping on LSD. We responded in turn by re-electing Richard Nixon and in 1980 the youth vote went as a demographic majority for the oldest elected president we've ever had with Ronald Reagan. Proving that we really do separate our politics from our entertainment. Not here however as charismatic Jim Morrison like rockstar Christopher Jones rallies the youth of America to assert their status and demand that the voting age be lowered to 14. A very ambitious Congressman played by Hal Holbrook who wants to be California's next Senator tries to ride this particular tiger and gets consumed in the process. Shelley Winters and Bert Freed play Jones's parents and Winters looks like she's having a ball in a part that calls for her bravura style of overacting. Ed Begley also in one his last films first playing one of pillars of Congress as the senior Senator from California and later on as a caricature of an old Testament prophet which is what mandatory LSD has turned him into.Young people today can't quite grasp what Wild In The Streets was all about back then which is why it's an anachronism today. We had the draft back in those days so when older people over 30 in the government sent you to the Army and to some war you didn't quite understand what the issues were there, a slogan like 'Don't Trust Anyone Over 30' had real meaning and it wasn't just a matter of tastes. That's the mentality that Jones in his character of Max Frost is playing into. He calls his followers 'troops' and in a real sense they are.But today in America young folks played a major role in re-electing Barack Obama. If Max Frost was a candidate for president today we might be electing a Jonas Brother. And I only exclude Justin Bieber because he's Canadian.Still this film is quite a view of the Sixties be it a jaundiced view.

When this came out in 1968 I was 17. It made a huge impression on me then. What a wild and strange movie. I was not really ready for this movie but I liked it just the same. When Max said 14 or fight, I believed him. Of course at 17 I couldn't vote but I was facing 18 and at that time the Vietnam draft. Scary times indeed. Just the other night it was on TMC and I recorded it. I don't think I've seen it anywhere since. It was fun to watch it again, Shelly Winters looked really young, Ed Begley was perfect as the stoned out old Senator and Christopher Jones, going from rock star to politician to President and then to "old guy" played the part to a tee. The only thing about this movie I didn't care for was that it type casted Jones and he really didn't do much after this movie.