Date Bait (1960)

date-bait-1960Young love. Sometimes it means taking a punch from your girl’s heroin-addict ex-boyfriend before getting stomped half to death by his drug-dealer brothers, and then being yelled at by her father because you’re from a poor background and aren’t good enough.

This low-budget teen angst flick, about a high school couple whom everyone keeps trying to drive apart so they retaliate by getting married, gives you a little bit of everything from the 1960 juvenile delinquent genre handbook. It’s got switchblades, a car chase, a junkie-jonesing-for-a-fix scene, hateful parents, scenes where everybody dances, sex, bawdy jazz on the soundtrack, a rockabilly theme song, and some horrible acting. I liked it.