At once an exploration of the Beats and one of the last original film noir movies, The Beat Generation is about the police looking for Stan Hess (Ray Danton), a serial rapist known as the Aspirin Kid because he goes to married women’s homes, acts like he has a headache and then attacks them while their husband isn’t home. He meets a cop named Culloran (Steve Cochran) who doesn’t realize he has the man everyone is looking for in his car. The cop and his partner Baron (Jackie Coogan) think that the real rapist is beatnik Art Jester (James Mitchum). How wrong he is, learning that when Hess assaults his wife and makes her pregnant, nearly ending his marriage while Jester falls for a gangster’s wife, Georgia Altera (Mamie Van Doren).

Directed by Charles F. Haas, who also made the Van Doren movie Girls Town, The Beat Generation has plenty of beatnik moments, like Maila Nurmi — Vampira — has a white rat walking all over her ghostly skin while freestyling a poem. Louis Armstrong is also on hand and recorded the theme song.

Irish McCalla was going to be the lead, but was told there was a rape scene and she’d have to do more for the European version, but the assault would be in good taste. She decided to take a smaller part.

This was written by Richard Matheson, who based it on a true story, saying it was “about a guy who would meet salesmen and talk to them on the road, learn all about their houses, where they were during the day, what they did; then he would go and attack the wives while the salesmen were still on the road. I wrote it as a police procedure film.”

There’s also a wrestling beatnik. That’s Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom, who used to slap people in boxing matches. Despite all the silliness, this is a much darker movie than you’d think.