High School Caesar (1960)

The bad guys look like Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps and the good guys look like The Beach Boys in this entertaining low-budget juvenile delinquent flick.

Future Frankie & Annette cohort John Ashley plays Matt Stevens, the king of Wilson High School. He’s a rich kid whose parents ignore him in favor of galvanating all over the world, and he lashes out by bossing around the servants left to care for him and by ruling his school as the leader of a leather jacket gang. He has a protection racket going, as well as a thriving business selling copies of school tests, AND he fixes the election for student body president so that HE wins.high-school-caesar-1960

In other words, it’s a gangster story, but in a high school. And with a gang leader who privately cries in his bed because he wishes his neglectful parents would notice him. As in all gangster movies, the empire must crumble. Here things begin to unravel after a dragstrip race that goes wrong.