Do you get invited to a party like this or do you get committed?
Two years after they made Best Picture-winner Marty, writer Paddy Chayefsky and director Delbert Mann reconvened to bring another one of their teleplays to the big screen. Released in 1957, The Bachelor Party is centered on Charlie (Don Murray), a bookkeeper for a big New York firm who's talked into skipping night school (he's studying to become an accountant) and joining the titular celebration, leaving his pregnant wife Helen (Patricia Smith) at home to worry when her sister-in-law (Nancy Marchand, who played the girl in the TV version of Marty) drops in and puts some ideas into her head about the sorts of things that go on at such gatherings. For his part, Charlie is wary about going along because he knows they "get kind of wild sometimes" and is disgusted by the "barbaric custom" of getting the groom-to-be laid, but with a baby on the way he knows he doesn't have that many nights on the town in his future, either.
In addition to the nervous guest of honor (Philip Abbott), who confesses to Charlie that he doesn't know why he's getting married, the party includes his best man, committed bachelor Eddie (Jack Warden), who tries to keep it going as long as possible, and two other married men: the fatalistic Walter (E.G. Marshall, who kills it), and Kenny (Larry Blyden), who's the first one to cut out (and the only one who does so at a reasonable hour). As the night wears on, they get progressively more drunk and introspective, hopping from bar to nightclub to bar, with pit stops at Eddie's place to watch some stag films and a Greenwich Village party so Charlie can chat up a girl (Carolyn Jones, credited as "The Existentialist") who insists on him saying "I love you" before she'll let him go any further. "You'll like me," she purrs. "I'm supposed to be very amusing." More than anything, though, their interactions convince him that he's better off with the life -- and the wife -- he already knows.