I used to watch this movie as a kid and I always thought Rydell's character was odd. In the beginning of the film his movements and demeanor off as a homosexual. Although he tells Baby's sister that he loves her, it's a joke and he laughs. A little later on he says to Frankie "aren't you gonna kiss me goodbye?"
shareYep, totally thought the same thing. That aside, I thought his character was much more menacing than Frankie.
shareI thought this guy was "Harvey Fierstein" gay from the start. He reminds me of Harvey very much in this one.
shareI thought that there was a gay subtext with his character, too. Including those rather tight high-rise jeans he wore. And you never saw him really interacting in any way with the girls, except for that 'joke'.
shareYeah, I thought he was portrayed as the stereotypical gay henchmen as seen in a lot of 1950s films. An example might be Martin Landau's character in "North by Northwest", always loyal to James Mason's classy villain. Back then a lot of villains were shown with homosexual subtext.
However, I'm not sure if this was intended. Don Siegel is famous for denying that his previous film, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", had any subtext whatsoever (the people in the front office be damned). So, I highly doubt that on the set of this film, Siegel, Rydell and the writer discussed it in those terms. Maybe Rydell chose to play it that way? He did play a rather flamboyant gangster in Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (1973), who insisted that his cohorts get naked along with Philip Marlowe while he was being strip searched. Who knows?
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Seems that way. His humming was irritating
shareWhile I found no gay subtext in James Whitmore's (social worker) character, I found it odd that an adult male would enter the bedroom, and sit on the bed of a male teenager without invitation or any parent in the home.
shareI don't know if this is a movie that I remember seeing ONCE as a kid.One of the kids may have been John Cassavetes. I might have been REALLY young because I don't remember IF Sal Mineo was in the movie. The scene from this movie I do remember: One of the kids had a knife in his stomach.He was crying out for his buddy to remove it.The guy put his hand on the blade and pushed it more in the guy's stomach. Is this the same movie?
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