High School Students Get Mixed Up In Crime Double Feature:
Live Fast, Die Young (1958)
Our teenage femme fatale runs away from home, where she lives with her hardworking older sister and unemployed father. Mom ran off with a salesman some time ago. Pretty soon a couple of tough dames teach her to be a B-girl, getting guys drunk and robbing them blind. She's a straight A student, progressing to stealing a car from a drunk, then getting involved with professional crooks planning a big robbery of a shipment of diamonds at a post office.
Meanwhile, big sister leaves home as well, looking for little sister. She has her own adventures along the way, getting attacked by a lecherous guy who gives her a ride, being helped by some hoboes and an unwed mother, and running into a young woman and a couple of young guys who run a scam where the woman flirts with the target and then one of the guy beats him up, pretending to be her jealous boyfriend so she can rob the target blind in the meantime.
There's a lot of plot in this thing! It turns into a heist movie near the end. Will big sister make little sister give up her wicked ways?
Not a bad film. Notable for the contrast between little sister, who is outrageously seductive when working on her target, and big sister, who hates and fears men because of what one of her father's friends did to her when she was fifteen.
The Big Night (1960)
Teenage boy and girl witness a car chase, as the cops chase some bank robbers, shooting a couple of them dead after the crooks toss a bag full of loot over a bridge. The boy finds the cash, which seems to have the magical effect of turning him from a likely dropout to a serious student. It also changes the attitude of the mother of his upper class girlfriend from hostile to friendly, because now he has nice clothes, a job, and a car. Meanwhile, the surviving crook and a crooked ex-cop (Jesse White, stealing the picture as the superficially friendly guy following the surviving crook) are both after the cash. Will the boy escape these two, and will the girl convince him to give back the money?
Not a great film. Moves pretty slowly, pretty bland acting (except for White), and begins and ends with a really lousy title song. On the positive side, location filming in Venice, California, well past the city's prime, adds some grittiness.