Giovani selvaggi

With parents at war, kids apparently had idle time on their hands during the '40s and some of them turned to crime. Yawn, yawn! This is the most obvious, the most painful depiction of juvenile delinquency ever scripted, even for a B-film.

The print shown on TCM was a poor one, making the skimpy production values look even worse than they probably were. BONITA GRANVILLE and KENT SMITH get top billing, but VANESSA BROWN is lower down in the credits and yet has a sizable role as an unhappy teen-age girl. The story makes any resemblance between these juveniles and today's troubled kids purely a coincidence.

KENT SMITH, as a level-headed wounded soldier, doesn't even make an appearance until the film is half over. It's hard to believe that this sluggish B-film was directed by Mark Robson and produced by Val Lewton. It's certainly got to represent the nadir of their respective careers.

GLEN VERNON, JEAN BROOKS, ARTHUR SHIELDS, DICKIE MOORE, and LAWRENCE TIERNEY are the slightly familiar names that fill the supporting cast--but nothing helps overcome the weak plotting, the preachy attitudes and dull and obvious storyline. Thumbs down on this one.

Youth Runs Wild (1944)

** (out of 4)

Val Lewton produced this WW2 drama about teenagers who start getting into trouble while the older folks are either working or fighting in the war. Lewton hated horror films and wanted to be taken more serious and I guess this film was his attempt to do that but the movie is really boring and bland. The strange thing is that Lewton's horror films didn't contain much horror and this juvenile film doesn't contain too much stuff dealing with the subject. There's a subplot of a tire stealing ring, another story dealing with teenage love and yet another dealing with a soldier returning home. None of them work and together they just make for a mess of a film. The film should have centered on one story and followed it but as it is the film just becomes tiresome even at 67-minutes. Bonita Granville of Warner's Nancy Drew series gets top billing but she too is rather bland, which was a disappointment since I enjoyed most of her early roles. Glenn Vernon, Kent Smith and Lawrence Tierney co-star.

... as in being behind them. I would be referring to Lawrence Tierney the actor, here as Larry, the bad guy, before Tierney would have his big chance with "Dillinger" the following year and then ultimately blow that chance with all of his bad behavior off the set. But I digress.

I could tell this was not an A or even B list film because TCM is airing a print that looks like it came from a public domain source - very fuzzy. And who knew that in 1944 VD did not just stand for Victory Day???

While the adults are off working double shifts in wartime factories the kids are getting involved in delinquency. The spotlight is on Vanessa Brown's character, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Frankie. Frankie gets into stealing tires to make extra money. Sarah's folks are hardly Ward and June Cleaver. They drink and play cards when they are not working and seems like they would be indifferent parents even if they didn't have intense work schedules. They throw Sarah out at the first sign of any trouble she might be in, and she is reduced to working as one of the hostesses in a dive, which seems like it is shorthand for something a bit more adult. Up to her fall, she is bullied and manipulated by the older world weary Hot Toddy Jones (Bonita Granville). But then, strangely, Toddy morphs into a mentor to the girl.

There are all kinds of unexplained things going on. When a couple of teens are spotted by a security guard stealing tires, he shoots at them! I knew rubber was valuable during the war, but really? One of the cars the teens are stealing tires from in the plant parking lot has a toddler locked inside. This is never explained or commented on. Did the harried factory worker forget about the kid, or is this all they can do for day care? And when a fight breaks out in the dive in which Sarah works and a young healthy person is thrown to the floor in the resulting scuffle, she winds up in the hospital in .... an oxygen tent? With a priest doing last rites? Things never got this bad during the frequent fist fights at the Long Branch saloon in Gunsmoke!

Too goofily constructed to be a stirring social drama with a message, and with too much heavy stuff going on to be an effective kitschy romp, this film fails on every level. It was based on a piece in Look Magazine. Look didn't like the finished product to the point that they refused to promote the film in the magazine, or even to allow their name to be used in the film's credits. .Val Lewton later disavowed the final version of the film and attempted to have his name removed from it. It really had no love 77 years ago when it was released and lost money at the box office, and today I can agree with that assessment.

An unusual entry from horror producer Val Lewton and his team, it is not a very good film, but at least it paints a picture of the 1940s and existing attitudes at the time reasonably well. The messages of the film are unsubtle and heavy-handed, the music choices are tiresome, and the characters are utterly simple. It is downbeat, rather predictable and quite dreary to watch. If assessing why youths turn rebellious sounds appealing, 'Rebel without a Cause' comes recommended instead. This is not quite a terrible film, with some performances that are arguably earnest, but it is not nearly a good one either, and is best recommended just to fans of Val Lewton who are interested in some of his lesser known productions.

"Back where we come from people are kind and good and strangers are welcome" ... so says sappy Sarah at the beginning of this film that seems like a feature length edition of one of the "Why We Fight" series. To see "Produced by Val Lewton and Directed by Mark Robson" is hard to believe with the above speech and the underlying moralistic tone. The film also came right in the middle of Lewton's creative period.

Mary returns home to wait for husband (Kent Smith) who has been injured and won the purple heart. She returns to a quiet home - her parents work shifts at a munitions factory and brother Frank is unsupervised and playing truant from school. His parents blame his behaviour on the new girl next door but his situation is not much different than Sarah's - both sets of parents are shift workers at munition plants.

Frank is on the "road to ruin" - he doesn't want to stay at school - he wants to work to take Sarah to movies and to buy her things. Sappy Sarah would be in 7th heaven with a walk in the park.

There was a much longer film in there I feel. A lot of deleted scenes - Dickie Moore, credited as "son who kills his father - scene deleted" his only scenes were in the back seat of a car.

Lawrence Tierney started out as his usual hard self, within 15 minutes he was "giving those kids a break". Halfway through the film he was gone - only coming back in the last scenes. When he left so did the punch and grittiness.

Kent Taylor and Elisabeth Russell were Lewton veterans. Russell, who played Sarah's mother always seemed to have so much more to give than her roles required.

Worst Actress Award is won by Tessa Brind, who plays sappy Sarah. She is not believable for a minute and when she visits Bonita Granville in hospital (which is the most ludicrous part in the film) she can be seen reflected through this plastic shield with the biggest smile on her face - maybe Tierney had just cracked a joke!!!!

Don't judge Lewton on this effort, please!!!