Test Tube Babies

Test Tube Babies is a late 1940s exploitation flick about a boring couple who are unable to conceive. In spite of their wholesomeness they have a wild party at their house with lecherous men, silly drunks, and strippers! The couple seek a doctor's advice on their options for having a child.

This movie is hilarious for its unintended humor. In one scene the couple are in the doctor's office, and after being told that her husband is sterile and cannot father a child for her, the wife misunderstands the doctor and thinks that he is offering to do the deed! The scene with the wild stag party is unforgettable, especially the cat fight featuring two women wrestling around on the floor clawing at each other's clothes. My favorite scene has to be the one where the doctor comes out to speak to the nervous husband and advises him, "Pull yourself together and have a cigarette", then asks the husband to go buy some smokes for him, too! My how times have changed.

One star for the terrible wooden acting, one star for the cat fight and one star for hilarious medical advice = 3 stars from me.

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.

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 (1948)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Silly "teach the American people" style film that's in the same league as other docudramas like Reefer Madness and The Cocaine Fiends. George and Cathy fall in love, get married and after a few years they decide to have a kid but it turns out George is sterile. After a few tears the couple decides to try "test tube babies". Again, this is a silly little exploitation film about artificial insemination that tries to teach people that it's not a bad thing to do. Unfortuantly there isn't too much camp value here as things are bad but they never get bad enough to laugh at. Timothy Farrell co-stars.

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.