With his ripe lips, flirty eyes, and pre-Calvin Klein-era androgynous appeal, the 24-year-old Warren is utterly believable as a boy who drives Natalie Wood plumb insane with sexual frustration in William Inge's overheated melodrama.

Classic of repressed teenage sexuality.

There is something awkward about the picture's mechanical rhythm. There are missing links and blind alleys within the story.

Surely among the most historically embarrassing winners of an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It's not that the melodramatic horniness is corny. It's that the screenplay treats it with the cruel regard of scientific specimens rather than human beings.