Running Wild (1955)

If not exactly the "stark brutal truth about today's lost generation," which its advertisements claimed, Running Wild remains a piece of time-capsule entertainment worth watching for its typical cast. Still under contract to Universal (or Universal-International as it was called at the time), Mamie van Doren would of course go on to personify the era of coffee houses, beatnicks, and hot rods, or at least Hollywood's version of it. Van Doren is actually quite good here and so are leading men William Campbell, now forgotten but then considered "hot property" due to his starring role as death row inmate Caryl Chessman in Cell 2455, Death Row, Jan Merlin of television Tom Corbett, Space Cadet fame, and, almost needless to say, the veteran Keenan Wynn, as slimy as ever as the villain of the piece. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide