The movie poster screamed: "NOTHING LIKE HIM HAS HIT THE SCREEN SINCE JAMES DEAN" ( you have to supply your o exclamation point.) Naturally they are talking about Henry Bookholt. Wait. Who? Actually they mean Horst Bucholz, who name was changed for the American release of this film because the distributors didn't want it to be too German-y. Likewise they changed the name of actress Karin Baal to Karen Baal. This didn't happen to others in the German cast -- Christian Doermer, Jo Herbst, Viktoria von Ballasko, Stanislav Ledinek, Mario Ahrens, Manfred Hoffmann, Hans-Joachim Ketzlin, Friedrich Joloff, and others -- most likely because their names were far down on the credits.
For the record, the original title for this juvenile delinquent flick was Die Halbstarken.
Also for the record, this is not a great film, although it is watchable, mainly because of the presence of Henry Bookholt Horst Bucholz. who would soon go on to major roles in Tiger Bay, The Magnificent Seven, Fanny, and One, Two, Three. Teenage Wolfpack was one of Germany's attempts to cash in on the popularity of movies like The Wild One, The Blackboard Jungle, and Rebel Without a Cause.
The tagline tells it all. "THINK OF A LAW...They've broken it! THINK OF A CRIME...they've committed it!"
Freddy (Bookholt Bucholtz) is a young criminal and a nasty piece of work who tries top bring his girlfriend Sissy (Baal, who was barely sixteen when this was filmed) and his brother Jan into the very unpleasant world of crime and violence. Things do not go well.
JD films were the rage in the 50s, and Teenage Wolfpack is a good (although certainly not a shining) example of that ilk.
Give it a try.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Jp5WYhrgk
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