Just For the Hell Of It



Just For the Hell Of It (1968) may be one of the longest movies I've ever seen. Not by the timer you understand, which claims that the running time is a scant 85 minutes, but by the amount of my life it took away. This juvenile delinquency movie is made up of almost nothing but long takes of a teenage gang of vandals wreaking mostly annoying havoc on a city. Scenes go on so long that all interest in how they end is gone before you reach the halfway mark. There's one fight at a coffee bar that goes on so long that the cops should have had plenty of time to show up and break it up. Heck, the cops from two states over could have shown up before it was over.

The plot, such as it, doesn't kick in until the film is nearly half over. Basically, the gang is crossed by regular guy who tries to stop them from beating up some kids playing baseball. Incredibly, the cops side with the gang, but the gang still hassles the guy and his girlfriend until a couple of bloody, off-screen incidents of violence.

No motive for why the teens destroy stuff is ever put forward. One scene with cops talking about teenage violence suggests that gangs are like the weather, complaining about them will never make any difference. Every other scene where the cops are involved make it clear that cops are powerless to do anything about a gang of ruffians who assault people in broad daylight.

Most of the teen rampage scenes feature the teens destroying stuff that director Herschell Gordon Lewis found at thrift stores, mostly threadbare furniture. There is one pretty funny bit where a teen lights the paper a woman is reading on fire. It takes him so long to light it and she's holding it so far beyond comfortable reading distance you can't help but laugh. The one interesting scene in the whole film is a montage of headlines about teen vandalism, and as each headline comes up it in turn is vandalized.

Posted: Sun - October 19, 2003 at      

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