The Beatnicks
I am so fascinated by this movie. It's so boring, but in such an interesting way. It's about guy who's part of a gang of petty thieves but he wants to go clean and become a famous singer. If it were made today it could be a really interesting story about the music industry and how while it seems like a shiny path to go down it can actually be way more evil than a sweet little gang of fun-loving criminals. Instead it's a very hays-code friendly morality play about a guy trying to go clean.
Like, part of his journey is that he leaves his cool gangster girlfriend (who of course is a brunette) to date a "good girl" (who of course is blonde) with all the personality of a sack of flour. But he romances this girl right in front of his girlfriend, and she keeps asking him if he still loves her and it's really sad but the movie seems to think he's doing the right thing? And then a member of the gang gets seriously hurt and that could be a really interesting test of his values but that plot line just disappears without a trace.
Theres also this character named Mooney who's just the best. He's a live wire, and he has great physical comedy and he's subtly queer coded, so of course he's the most dangerous and morally bankrupt of them all, but he's high camp and way easier to root for than our boring jerk protagonist.
And the happy ending of the movie is our main character leaving his found family of crooks to die and go into the music industry. Really.
Also there is not a single beatnik in this movie, I have no idea why they called it that. I don't even think they say the word "beatnik"
So yeah, in conclusion, I would love to see this thing remade.