This Rebel Breed (March 19, 1960)

On the outside this is just another movie about a high school guy who commits murder, the wrong high school boy getting accused, and the sister that will do just about anything to prove his innocence. There are also two young new undercover police officers who join the troubled high school class that is ready to explode in racial violence, but it may be more than even they are ready for. That is the gist of the big story, but on the inside there are amazing undercurrents of evolving 1960 America presented right in front of us, if we can recognize them. British movies are famous for adding incredible dialogue that on the surface seems just to be part of the conversation, but if you are trained to listen for their witty word-play, you can discover word pictures that have more to do with the flavor of the times than the plot of the story. So it is in this movie from the dawn of the generation that exploded onto the world and changed us all forever.

After WWII ended in 1945, with victory and returning soldiers and rising economies, the western world produced a 'boom' of children that were becoming high school teens in 1960. This generation of 'Baby Boomers' would challenge everything that they saw, and in many cases reject the wisdom of their parents. While the older generation tried mightily to instill their values into their children, in many cases it was a losing battle. You can see evidence of that battle if you listen to the dialogue carefully. You can also experience the beginning of a new kind of America . . . a 'rumble' was not part of a car, but a gang fight with fists and switch blade knives. And it isn't 'dirty coppers' who fight the violence, it is 'the fuzz.'

This motion picture from 1960 gives us the rare opportunity to experience greatness on several levels. We get to watch beautiful Hispanic Rita Moreno, an acting legend, play the leading role as a troubled high school student a year before she skyrocketed to fame in the legendary movie "West Side Story," and we can also watch a young and talented Dyan Cannon as a troubled high school student with a dark secret. The characters of both Rita Moreno and Dyan Cannon have different but terrible secrets that will bring both class warfare and racial bigotry to the ragged surface of a Los Angeles high school. And we not only a great story plot, but we get to experience something in this movie that is not often possible. It is not uncommon for movies to be re-edited and re-issued, but usually it is to correct misleading or confusing plot points to make the movie better. In this case the movie was (in my humble opinion) totally ruined by the extra minutes that were added. Both edits of this movie are offered here, so you can decide for yourself and not just take my word for it. Five years after its initial release, one of the authors of the book that the movie was based on did a re-edit of the film, adding a bit over 5 minutes to its length and changing the name of the movie to "The Black Rebels." What did he add? More dialogue to sharpen the message of the movie? No. In ten spots he added a few seconds of gratuitous girls in skimpy bras and bikinis and such. Sometimes the segway is so abrupt and unexpected that it startled me. And instead of the complimentary jazzy background music that accompanied the rest of the movie, this person put loud guitar rock music behind the grinding girls and boys, jarring me out of the mood being set. Don't get me wrong . . . there aren't many men who appreciate beautiful scantily clad girls more than me . . . but this isn't the time or the place for that . . . the story is too important, and the acting is too well done to insert gratuitous, lame, sexy scenes. I edited the extra scenes out of the 1965 movie to bring back the original story as it was presented in 1960. So, even though the title screen still displays the title as "The Black Rebels" - the movie you will see is the original one, "This Rebel Breed."

Al Freeman Jr.	Byron Morrow
Don Eitner	Don Eitner and Richard Rust
Don Eitner and Rita Moreno	Don Eitner in 1960
	Douglas Hume
Mark Damon asks Dyan Cannon where the gang is having their party	Richard Rust promises Dyan Cannon that she will be drinking champagne if she sticks with him.
Dyan Cannon at the local soda shop	Dyan Cannon, crying, decides to try to kill her boyfriend Richard Rust, who just dumped her.
Dyan Cannon cries alone after her secret has been exposed to her boyfriend and he dumped her.	Dyan Cannon feels the wrath of her peers after they discover her secret and shun her.
Dyan Cannon, after attempting to stab her boyfriend Richard Rust, as he is wooing Rita Moreno	Dyan Cannon starts to dance after putting a coin in the juke box to start a dance song.
Eugene Mazzola	Gerald Mohr in 1960
Gerald Mohr
Jay Novello and Eugene Mazzola	Jay Novello and Richard Laurier
Jay Novello	Ken Miller
Ken Miller talks to the gal playing his mom as they are about to leave town	Leonard Bremen as the malt shop owner
Mark Damon and Douglas Hume, as undercover cops pretending to be high school students	Mark Damon and Rita Moreno
Mark Damon	Richard Laurier
Richard Rust asks about getting more 'grass' from the drug dealer, played by Charles Franc	Richard Rust pays for another batch of 'grass' from Charles Franc
Richard Rust and Tom Gilson	Richard Rust in 1960
Rita Moreno and Jay Novello	Rita Moreno and Richard Rust
Rita Moreno is followed by Mark Damon down a Los Angeles street	Rita Moreno prays in a church - notice the way director Richard Bare focused a light on the opposite wall to give Rita Moreno a 'halo' background
Rita Moreno as a high school student	Shirley Falls
Tom Gilson, Dyan Cannon and Richard Rust	Tom Gilson and Dyan Cannon at the malt shop