Stakeout on Dope Street (1958)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Better Late Then Never

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Three teenagers find a briefcase with a beat-up old can in it. They throw away the can and pawn the suitcase. When they read in the papers that the can was full of uncut heroin and belonged to a drug dealer who killed two narcotics agents in a shootout, they go back to look for the can, find it, and decide to go into the heroin selling business.This is not one of those great crime films you hear about, but it should be. It not only has a great story of cops and crooks, with teenagers caught in the middle, but it is refreshingly honest. I don't know that films about heroin were really around until the indie boom of the 1970s, but this film is very direct and does not try to sugar coat the issues.I suppose one could say it has some seems that are bit melodramatic, and the junkie's long story of going through withdrawal has almost a "Reefer Madness" quality to it. But as a whole, this is a solid film.

A drug bust goes wrong, and in the deadly aftermath a briefcase containing a can holding 2 pounds of uncut heroin gets lost. Teenagers Yale Wexler, Jonathan Haze and Steven Marlo find the briefcase but are unaware that among its contents is the heroin. They pawn the briefcase and use the money for a night at the bowling club. The next morning they read about the drug bust and the lost briefcase and put 2 and 2 together. They manage to find the can of 'facial powder' with the heroin and turn to local junkie Allen Kramer to find a buyer. But of course both the police and the mobsters are looking for the briefcase and the heroin. It's not long before the police find the briefcase and the mobsters find Kramer...This movie was made on a shoestring budget, and it shows. The movie feels quite raw at times, even amateurish, esp the acting is pretty wooden at times. But on the other hand, the script is full of great lines, and the movie flows rather well. There is an authoritarian voice-over narration that gives the movie a documentary-style feel, which works well here. And while many scenes look rushed, some key scenes are executed rather well with nice set-up's and room to breathe, including a scene where the guys look for the can of heroin on a garbage site, a harrowing account of a junkie going through withdrawal and the climax at an industrial complex.I don't think I'd ever heard of any of the actors in this movie before watching it. And aside from Kramer, who is quite convincing as a junkie, most of them are adequate at best... None of the actors seemed to have moved beyond these cheap B-features and/or moved on to TV, which is maybe for the best. Actors from that time with similar 'looks' as the main characters like Vince Edwards or John Cassavettes would've really lifted this movie up a notch or two.The real talent in this movie tho was behind the camera. Director Irvin Kerschner in his first movie would later direct 'Star Wars V - The Empire Strikes Back', it doesn't get much bigger than that! And DoP Haskell Wexler (brother of one of the 3 kids, Yale Wexler), also lensing his first feature-length movie here, would go on to win 2 Oscars for his cinematography in his long career, for 'Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf' and 'Bound For Glory'. Their work here is really great, considering the shoestring budget. All in all, this movie exceeded my expectations, but I was let down by the mediocre acting. Still a pretty confident recommendation. 7+/10

"Stakeout on Dope Street" is a decent film when it comes to the plot idea, but nothing, I mean NOTHING, makes the film particularly compelling. It should have been a lot more interesting than it was.The film begins with a very gritty shootout--one where two cops are shot as well as one of the criminals. However, in the process, a briefcase full of pure, uncut heroin is lost. And, shortly afterwords, three young men discover the drugs and decide to get rich selling it. Two of the guys have no problem with this--but the third gets cold feet because he's worried about creating addicts just like the guy they hired to sell the stuff. However, once the guys start selling, it's inevitable that the guys who lost it will come looking.... If you want to find out what's next, see the film.While the plot idea sounds interesting, this low-budget film never excited me--and several times I found myself nodding off during the movie. It's not a terrible film--just not a very interesting one. See it if you'd like, but you could do better.

This film reminded me about a film called, "The Man with the Golden Arm" starring Frank Sinatra and Kim Novack and this film clearly shows the horrors of withdrawal from the drug of heroin. Three young men get involved with a suitcase that holds a very large supply of uncut heroin and wind up throwing it away, thinking it was a cleansing powder and it winds up in a garbage dump which they manage to rescue. The young men decided to sell this drug and are able to make plenty of money by filtering it out through and old time heroin user. There are some girl friends in this film who try to stop these guys and tell them to turn the drugs into the police, but they do not face the consequences of turning themselves in. This is a great 1958 classic film filmed in Los Angeles, California and there is also some pretty way out music through out the film that makes this a very exciting black and white film.