Your usual troubled youth of the 1950’s movie that has the distinction of being filmed at the famous Griffin Park Observatory just two months-in January 1955- before the granddaddy of all 1950’s troubled youth movies was filmed there “Rebel Without a Cause”.
In “Teenage Crime Wave” we have these two crazy mixed up kids Mike & Terry, Tommy Cook & Molly McCart, who get themselves in hot water by gunning dawn a deputy sheriff during an escape, with Terry being the one who does the escaping, attempt. Along with both Mike & Terry is Jane, Sue England, who was being transfered to a womens detention center for armed robbery. As we’ve seen earlier in the film Jane was an innocent bystander, but go tell that to the judge, when both Terry and Mike mugged Freddy Boy, George Cisan, who picked up Terry at a sleazy bar thinking that he’ll score with her.
Now on the run from the state troopers the three end up at the Grant House where both Tom & Sarah Grant, James Bell & Kay Riehi, are preparing to spend the Thanksgiving Holiday with their son handsome US Army hero Ben, Frank Griffin. Not realizing the fix that they find themselves in the two fugitives from the law not only hold the Grants, together with Jane, hostage but tip off the police in getting their not too bright friend Al, Jimmy Ogg, to drive over to the place with a carload of weapons! This has Al, when he resist arrest, get gunned down by the state troopers who then, knowing where Al was headed, surround the Grant house!
***SPOILERS*** Besides having, because of his incompetence, the place surrounded by the police Mike also has his girlfriend Terry fall for the handsome Ben who just about had it with his both bizarre and mindless behavior. The movie ends with Mike trying to elude the police by getting himself trapped like a rat, with all escape routes blocked, at the Griffin Park Observatory. Knowing that his brief, and very unsuccessful, crime career is over-with his girlfriend Terry gunned down by the police- Mike finally comes to his senses. It’s then that the cops, together with war hero Ben Grant, put the cuffs on him and haul the notorious “Cry-Baby Mike Denton” away to face ultimate justice.
