Test Tube Babies

TEST TUBE BABIES is a low-rent B-movie designed as an educational film to educate the couples about the new-fangled process of artificial insemination. Clocking in at barely an hour long, this is on the outset similar to one of those 'public information' films that were so popular in the middle of the 20th century, but at heart it's an exploitation picture.

Otherwise, how can you explain the film's attempts to titillate? A scene where a woman strips down in a doctor's office ready for her gynaecological examination is gratuitous enough, but things really get out of hand with a random cat-fight thrown into the mix where one woman is stripped topless. The nudity is brief indeed, but it still must have been strong stuff for the 1940s.

As is the usual with these productions, the acting is extraordinarily wooden and stilted, the dialogue unintentionally hilarious (and scenes of the doctor smoking in his office are definitely a product of their era) and the message extremely heavy-handed. It makes for an amusing viewing experience for the modern viewer, that's for sure.

Oh man what a terrible film! But it can be funny as all get outs! This is the type of film they passed as education on adult topics like this one about being sterile and artificial insemination. I found the part with the doctor being blunt with the man really funny... especially after he was being blunt then told the man (husband) "let me be blunt... dead" -- I fell out laughing!! He was already about as blunt as he could get by actually saying the word "sperm" and then suddenly wanted to be blunt about the sperm being "dead". That was too funny!! If you haven't seen this film, then you'd have to see it to understand why it was so funny... and if you have seen the film then you know what I mean already!! Haha! OH It took about 30 minutes before the husband to find out the he was sterile... before that it was all about a swingers party and it even had a stripper insulting the "nice ladies". One of the "nice ladies" and the stripper ended up in a cat-fight and get got a chance to see a the top nude half of the blonde stripper - just for a few seconds! LOL.

Really the film was NOT very educational about sterility and artificial insemination - it was an exploitation film of some kind and you really can't tell what - maybe just swinging adults?!! OH and the camera man wanted a peek at a couple of women's breasts so they made sure we, the viewers, got a quick glimpse of them too. ONE MORE THING: This movie really has zero to do with test tube babies, really it doesn't.

It's a 1/10 film -- but I got some giggles out of this one so it gets an extra point for making me laugh!!

2/10

This very entertaining melodrama is one of those old exploitation flicks that pretended that it was a message movie to get itself passed the censor. Any film that addressed issues of sex in the 1940's was deemed very racy. This movie is basically an excuse to show scenes of very brief nudity, women cat-fighting and a drunken swinger's party; it tags on material that promotes the then new science of artificial insemination. What makes it so enjoyable is the combination of the appalling acting, the over-ripe melodrama and the completely unsubtle message combined with ludicrous wicked behaviour.

The film features the legendary non-actor Timothy Farrell as the chain-smoking doctor who at one point asks the husband of the woman in labour if he could pop out and buy him some cigarettes! At another time he is part of a quite uproariously funny misunderstanding between doctor and patient, when after informing the unlucky couple that they cannot have children because the husband is sterile, he tells them there is something he can do, to which hilariously, and completely without irony, the wife seems to think that he means he is willing to bang her! So very, very funny. The wife is played by an actress called Dorothy Duke, and unsurprisingly I have never seen her in any other production, as her acting is quite exceptionally atrocious. However, I enjoyed her earnest performance enormously. But in fairness, every actor and actress in this movie cannot act.

I have to admit that I lapped up this old exploitation flick very much indeed. The melodrama is so ridiculous and the swinger's party is very funny – wait for the cat-fight. And it's rounded off with the ludicrous scenes in the clinic. By all conventional standards I guess this is a bad film but by entertainment standards this is a very enjoyable one. I certainly recommend it. Oh and the title is utterly meaningless.

1st watched 2/10/2007 - 2 out of 10(Technical director-Dr. A. Maneck): Silly medical infomercial disguised as a movie. In this movie, we learn about the ins and outs of artificial insemination(which I don't consider to be a Test Tube Baby, as the title is named). We learn about this after a married couple, who are doing OK until the wife wants a baby and all their friends seem to be going that direction, but they can't conceive. After a doctor appointment, we find out the husband is sterile and they decide to try artificial insemination. Along the way, we get to view crazy baby showers attended by the wife where the attendees get drunk with a nude cat fight between a couple of strippers thrown in(not like any baby shower I've attended!!). Why we have to see these scenes, I'm not really sure but they are thrown in and probably didn't make this film viewable at a normal theatre back in 1948. But all In all, the doctor does his thing and the woman has her baby and they live happily ever-after and we wonder at the marvels of modern medicine!(Well, not really, but that's what we're supposed to do, I guess). To be honest, it would have been a less painful experience to read a medical journal instead of having to view this putrid movie.

TEST TUBE BABIES is a sleazy and horrid little film that is actually much worse than Ed Wood's "masterpiece", PLAN 9! In every conceivable way (like the pun?), it's worse--the acting, the writing, the directing, the sets and the stripping (yes, I did say "stripping").

This film purports to be an educational film that is for adults who want to learn about the new miracle of artificial insemination (not, actually, "test tube babies" as the title would seem to indicate). However, apart from a very boring and poorly written last 1/3 of the movie (punctuated with a gratuitous nude scene), there is nothing educational about this mess. In fact, it's a soft-core porn movie by today's standards and an X-rated film for 1948! There is nothing educational about showing the young bride parading around the house in a see-through nightgown, a "wild" party where one of the females strips for her friends (where she and the female "friends" look like they really were either strippers or prostitutes), and when the young wife takes off her clothes in the doctor's office and you get a quick glimpse of her totally naked body! For 1948, this is VERY hot stuff, though audiences today might find it all pretty tame and it would have received an R rating.

But what hasn't changed over the years is the pathetic nature of the film from a technical standpoint--in 1948 as in now, it's a terrible film. The acting is very amateurish most of the time--with a blonde at the party and the young wife often speaking as if they're dyslexic and reading from cue cards, the husband mispronouncing the word "gynacologist", a doctor with the charisma of a tomato and the use of strippers/prostitutes for the female roles. And, when mistakes were made, they simply stayed in the film because the filmmakers seemed unwilling to edit anything! If PLAN 9 deserved to receive a score of 1 from so many viewers, shouldn't it be possible to give TEST TUBE BABIES some score even lower?!

My wife watched this film with me and is now angry that she lost an hour of her life that she can never get back. I guess I owe her some flowers or a back rub!