Runaway Daughters

From the mid 1950's to mid 1960's, there seemed to be a glut in the movie market for films about troubled teens, some high quality (like "Rebel Without a Cause'), most too crummy for words, but this one was pretty good quality, even with a cast of unknowns (or at least unknown to me).

It was kind of touching too, as these three rebellious teen girls wouldn't have been rebelling if two of them had had just half of the love and attention they'd needed at home, and the other less attention and more love.

One girl's a real rebel, while the other two allow themselves to be led astray, but only on the surface.

You also get to see why things got the way they did by getting to know the parents, and it's a far cry from Ozzie and Harriet. One of the girl's mothers makes the biggest impression by not being present at all, which leads her daughter down the path of no return.

There are other characters that enhance the story (like the boyfriend of one of the girls and the brother of another) and the movie manages to hold your attention.

Good acting here, and a bittersweet ending.

In the summer of 1956, American-International Pictures (AIP) had scored big with a double feature of GIRLS IN PRISON and HOT ROD GIRL, and followed it up before Thanksgiving with a couple of similar titles, RUNAWAY DAUGHTERS and SHAKE RATTLE AND ROCK. DAUGHTERS shares director Edward L. Cahn, writer Lou Rusoff and two actors, Adele Jergens and Lance Fuller, with PRISON. It also contains the same sneering attitude, to the third power.

RUNAWAY DAUGHTERS tells the story of three teenage girls with bad home situations; Audrey (Marla English) has parents who throw money instead of love at her; Dixie (Mary Ellen Kaye) was abandoned by her mother, and her father keeps her on a short leash to prevent her from becoming a tramp; and Angela (Gloria Castillo) has been abandoned by her parents and decides that life is only worth living if you're drunk and cheap. Angela's role model, unfortunately, is a brother who's a one-bit heel (he's not even good enough to be two-bit), Lance Fuller, who spends half his time planning heists with his cheesy companion, the delightful Adele Jergens (in her last screen role), and the other half getting his greasy fingerprints all over good-girl Audrey. After problems with parents, brouhahas with boys, tempests with teachers, and clashes with cops, our three vivacious vixens steal a car and head south to L.A., city of hopes, dreams, and ten-cents-a-dance sleaze joints. One unwanted pregnancy, one near rape, and one fatal auto accident later, our trio of troubled teens head for home, sadder but wiser. Well, one of 'em does, anyway.

DAUGHTERS has the usual AIP formula: angst-filled kids, condescending adults, and a mixture of young faces (besides those listed above, you'll find familiar AIP stars Frank Gorshin and Steve Terrell) and old veterans (Anna Sten, John Litel, and in cameos Kermit Maynard, Snub Pollard, and Edmund Cobb; in fact, according to Sam Arkoff, Cahn fought to have Miss Sten, a studio joke back in Sam Goldwyn's heyday, given top billing). At a running time of approximately 94 minutes, however, it's much more leisurely paced than most AIP fare of the time, which is not a bad thing. I found myself even more involved in the girls' story than I had been when watching, oh, DRAGSTRIP GIRL or BLOOD OF Dracula, two other kooky she-teen movies from AIP. Recommended.

I was amazed at how droll, urbane, and witty the kids were presented as being, It made me realize that these films really aimed to speak to the teenagers and articulate their frustrations. I much prefer this film to other AIP fare which lacks character development. Fairly ordinary cinema style. Its a time capsule film that explores the burgeoning permissiveness of the late 1950's.

The parents of one girl are verging on being bourgeois-bohemian, having parties and drinking booze all the time. Another girl has a bitter hyper-conservative catholic single dad whose domination of her is almost a bit creepy in an incestuous way. Whilst the angry uber-sarcastic and highly enjoyable girl (definately too sophisticated to be realistic) is simply left to fend for herself by some terrible mother who has gone abroad.

Other great characters such as the con-man brother, the streetwise grifter, and maternal and tough private dancer... The film seemed to be struggling with the fine art of pleasing the teen and parent viewer alike, which makes it a curio... so much so that the typical moralising end seemed beleaguered

AIP were capable, (when they wished to be) of investing this kind of pulpy hokum with enough technical and pacing panache to keep their drive-in audiences involved.

Unfortunately, they didn't bother here.

Thus, unlike "High School Hellcats" and more especially "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," both of which benefited enormously from shadowy, film noir lighting schemes, and (fairly) well dressed settings, "Runaway Daughters" looks all of $2.98 cents.

This can be OK when the lackluster visuals are counterbalanced by an arresting storyline. But alas, the story here is little more than a synopsis of something probably rejected by the "Police Gazette".

Here goes: three teenage girls from different socio-economic circumstances link up to run away from home, in this case to LA, where they quickly become "dime a dance girls" (under the tutelage of Minksy voiced Adele Jergens--"on a good night you might clear $12.00" and "watch out for cockroaches").

Apart from the fact that taxi dancers were already way out by the late 50's, the script is handicapped by more serious problems, chiefly the fact that the girls don't run away until 2/3 of the way into the picture. Thus, we sit through multiple scenes of them sulking and arguing with their respective families.

These altercations include one in which one of our anti-heroines decks a 70 year old schoolmarm onto the lawn! Stereotypically, adults are all misguided at best in this, and of course, the blame for the youngsters delinquency is laid fully at their doorstep.

And what parents!--(if you have been pining away to see 30's film stalwarts, Anna Sten and John Litel, perform a drunken Charleston, then this is your film).

As previously mentioned, production values are lamentably skimpy. For example, the fabulously wealthy Marla English character lives in what appears to be a typical 50's subdivision tract house, with cut rate Danish modern furniture, and nary a hint of a servant.

For Frank Gorshen and AIP completists only

In the 1930s, 40s, 50s and beyond, crappy little film studios churned out a continuous supply of so-called 'Youth Gone Wild' pictures. These movies announce that they are intended to warn parents and society of the hazards of terrible parenting. Inevitably, either because of extreme neglect and indifference or because of abuse and over- control, the teens* in the movies end up either getting killed, going to prison or committing hellishly brutal murders and robberies. And, in many of the films, there is a judge or cop who asks the audience what could have been done to prevent all this. These movies are almost always highly moralistic AND lurid at the same time. This is because although they claim to be doing a public service, they actually often just want to titillate and get around censorship laws!

As far as these sorts of films go, "Runaway Daughters" is pretty typical...though not as lurid as some of the films. One parent overly controls his daughter and acts as if fun and boyfriends are evil, one set of parents simply are never home and another set of parents are so busy partying and carousing themselves that they couldn't care less about their daughter's behaviors. As for the boys, many as simply perverts who are out for one thing and one thing only (and it's NOT a soda down at the malt shop). A few (the highly indulgent and indifferent mom) are horrible actors and all the stories come off as incredibly simplistic. Deep is not a word I'd use to describe this movie!

So is it worth seeing? Well, not if you want to see a good movie...it stinks. However, I happen to be a person who loves exploitation and youth gone wild movies....and for folks like me, this one is quite enjoyable...though not even close to being as entertaining or titillating as my two favorites, "Reefer Madness" and "Sex Madness", both by the same crappy filmmakers. In fact, for the genre this one has reasonably good production values...which isn't saying much. Some other similar bad movies you might want to seek out include: "Delinquent Daughters", "Where Are Your Children?", "Enlighten Thy Daughter", "Youth Run Wild" as well as "The Terrible Truth"....among others.

*In almost all these films, the 'youth' appear to be in their 20s or 30s! This one features actors that appear close to being teens but clearly many of them are NOT youth nor have been for quite some time! At 20, 22 and 26, the ffemale leads are not exactly youthful.