Background
Wild in the Streets was first released to theaters in 1968. Its storyline was a reductio ad absurdum projection of contemporary issues of the time, taken to extremes, and played poignantly during 1968 — an election year with many controversies (the Vietnam War, the Draft, Civil Rights, the population explosion, rioting and assassinations, and the baby boomer generation coming of age). The original magazine short story, titled "The Day it All Happened, Baby!" was expanded by its author to book length, and was published as a paperback novel by Pyramid Books.
The movie features cameos from several media personalities, including Melvin Belli, Dick Clark, Pamela Mason, Army Archerd, and Walter Winchell. Millie Perkins and Ed Begley have supporting roles, and Bobby Sherman interviews Max as President. In a pre-Brady Bunch role, Barry Williams plays the teenaged Max Frost at the beginning of the movie.
A soundtrack album was also successful, and the song "Shape of Things to Come" (written by songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil) and performed by the (fictional) band Max Frost and the Troopers, featured in the movie, became a #22 hit on the US Billboard charts.
"Wild in the Streets" was released on VHS home video in the late 1980s, and in 2005 appeared on DVD, on a twofer disc with another AIP movie, 1971's Gas-s-s-s.
According to filmmaker Kenneth Bowser, the part eventually played by Christopher Jones was first offered folk singer Phil Ochs.
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