Blackboard Jungle Reviews
Filmcritic.com
Today, Blackboard Jungle is surprisingly dated and ineffective.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Tells us as much about teaching as Einstein's Theory of Relativity tells us about football.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
It gives a blood-curdling, nightmarish picture or monstrous disorder in a public school. And it leaves one wondering wildly whether such out-of-hand horrors can be.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Time Out
Top CriticThe studied pseudo-documentary atmosphere never quite convinces.
Writer-director Richard Brooks had a flair for sensationalism, and his adaptation of Evan Hunter's novel is loads of fun as a consequence, but don't expect much analysis or insight.
Glenn Ford, Morrow and Poitier are so real in their performances under the probing direction by Brooks that the picture alternatingly has the viewer pleading, indignant and frightened before the conclusion.
Video-Reviewmaster.com
Still hard hitting teacher-in-ghetto tale.
| Original Score: 5/5
EmanuelLevy.Com
Released in the same year as Rebel Without a Cause, this seminal high-school melodrama was just as popaulr at the box-office but far more controversial; Sidney Poitier gives a star-making turn as a student.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Empire Magazine
Originating the genre of 'dedicated teacher reaches troubled kids in a ghetto school', this is still affecting although heavy-handed.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Film4
The locations and lighting are simple and sparse, and the themes of class and race are addressed head on, in an honest and brave way.
