Wild in the Streets (1968)
Directed by Barry Shear
Musician Max Frost lends his backing to a Senate candidate who wants to give 18-year-olds the right to vote, but he takes things a step further than expected. Inspired by their hero's words, Max's fans pressure their leaders into extending the vote to citizens as young as 15. Max and his followers capitalize on their might by bringing new issues to the fore, but, drunk on power, they soon take generational warfare to terrible extremes.
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What critics compared Wild in the Streets to
Mixing conspiracy themes not dissimilar to those found in The Manchurian Candidate, Soylent Green, and even the obscure Wild in the Streets (a ludicrous 1968 drama in which anyone over thirty-five is sent to retirement camps and fed a stream of hallucinogens), Derek Zoolander, with an assist from "humorless" Time Magazine journalist Matilda Jeffries (Christine "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" Taylor, a.k.a.
Aimed at a hip young audience but inspired by generational paranoia, "Battle Royale" represents something of a reversal of 1968's "Wild in the Streets," about a future America in which the voting age is dropped to 14 and people over 35 are placed in concentration camps.
The movie’s unabashed effrontery connects it to American cinema’s great B-picture and exploitation past, including films like Barry Shear’s Wild in the Streets (1968), the major counterculture hit about a rock star who rises to the presidency and sends everyone over age 35 to “re-education camps.”