Youth Aflame

No 70s rock concert of teensploitation movie is complete without a drum solo.

If teenage sisters--a good sister and a bad sister--a teenage gangster's moll, lingerie, stilted, preachy dialogue, outdated sexism, plenty of "swell" and girls with guns isn't enough to grab your attention, how about a drum solo?

A girl wakes up in the hospital and launches us into flashbacks explaining how she got there. Bad sister is dating an adult man who just happens to be a gangster. His hoodlum buddy wants to have a foursome with the younger, good sister involved, but that may have had a different meaning in the 40s. What is clear he has the hots for the younger girl. Bad sister seems to think corrupting her innocent sis is A-okay. Her virginity is saved in the nick of time, but the two girls end up in a pajama catfight.

All in all, this is a lame teensploitation film, but if you like cheesy camp, it is slightly fun.

Ed Cassidy has been raising his two girls since their mother died. Joy Reese is turning out well: good grades in school, and a boyfriend who's serious-minded. But Kay Morley thinks that old people don't know anything, despite her sister talking about what they owe their father. Social worker Mary Arden is trying to set up a club where the kids can jitterbug and drink milk, but Miss Morley prefers the nightclub with her older boyfriend. They have acts out of a late-1930s Educational Pictures variety short!

It's pretty tame for a roadshow exploitation movie; Miss Morley thinks the boy is going to marry her. Go over to Youtube and check out "Sprinkle Sprinkle" and you'll find modern gold diggers that would make a pre-code flapper blush. Was this intended as a switch-and-bait, in which people would pay, thinking they're going to see something shocking? Directors Elmer Clifton and Lewis Collins either can't or don't bother to get decent line readings from half their cast.

Maybe so, but it isn't called that in this film. This one opens with Katy White (Joy Reese), at death's door in an emergency hospital but hanging on long enough to tell her story...Youth secretly struggling to solve its problems. So, in flashback, Katy tells of her widowed father (Ed Cassidy as Edward Cassidy), a bank guard trying to raise two teen-age daughters...Katy the nice girl and her sister, Laura (Kay Morley)the not-quite-nice girl. Pa Smith ain't much help but Katy tries to guide her sister away from bad company, meaning Al Simpson (Michael Owen)who is bad news in uppercase letters. But he has Laura believing he is in love with her and Laura pays no heed to her sister at all, and when Al asks her to steal her poppa's bank-guarding gun she does so as she thinks this will make Al marry her (and Laura is as dippy as she is pretty,) but Al is interested only in her poppa's gun.

Meanwhile, under the guidance of Helen Clark (Mary Arden), a kindly policewoman, the better-supervised kids open up a JIVE Club in order to keep off of the Mean Streets and not drift into juvenile delinquency. There, they sip punch and watch Johnny Duncan and Sheila Roberts jitterbug the night away--- when Lindsay, Laverne & Betty aren't juggling away on "One Good Turn Deserves Another" while drummer Karl Kiffe-Master of the Drums- displays his mastery of the drums. Joy and Laura join the club but Laura only in order to keep late hours with Al the Cad. But Joy is keeping a watchful eye on Laura and this irks Al to the extent that he and Laura spike the punch bowl, and then Al calls the cops to tell them about the spiked-punch bowl at the goody-goody JIVE CLUB, and the local gendarmes take a dim view of any club serving hard liquor to kids and they up-and-shutter the JIVE Club. Good-guy Frank Monahan (Warren Burr), in love with Joy, has his suspicions about who-spiked-the-punch but Al has already departed the premises and is no longer available for questioning. And Laura has left to go to Al's place and deliver her poppa's gun to him, and Joy has left to follow Laura.

Joy doesn't get too far before she runs into Harry Katchel (Edwin Brian), Al's tough-guy pal and it is about this point that the film totally falls apart as Edwin Brian is nobody's idea of a tough guy. He tells Joy he will take her to Al's place but when they get there, only Laura's purse (containing her poppa's gun) is present, as Al and Laura have hied themselves over to a club, ran by Tom (Duke Johnson), where real-jivey teen-agers can get a real drink not diluted by JIVE Club punch. Naturally, Harry makes a move on Joy but Joy is not the kind that is going to let any character played by Edwin Brian make any moves on her without her protesting, which she wastes no time doing. The odds are high that Joy Reese could whup up on Edwin Brian to a fare-thee-well but then Frank wouldn't be needed, for plot purposes, to show up in the nick-of-time and sock Harry on the jaw and render Harry unconscious. Al and Katy show up, refreshed from elbow-bending at Tom's Place, but Frank informs Al that he intends to escort Joy and Laura home and Al, viewing the damage that Frank has done to his tough-guy pal does not choose to debate the issue.

He gets the girls home and, first rattle out of the box, Pa Smith has already heard about the spiked punch at the JIVE Club and has good-guy Frank tagged as the villain who has led his daughters astray, and tells good-guy Frank to get out and stay out. But he has also heard about Laura hanging around with Al Simpson and rakes her over the coals about it, but Joy intervenes and lies on behalf of her sister. Then, since this is a J.D. Kendis production and there has to be a cat-fight in it, the sisters get into a fight and this further moves the plot along as Laura ups and packs her belongings and leaves home for good. She also packs her purse with another one of her father's guns but Pa Smith hasn't even missed the first missing-gun yet. She heads over to the bad club and meets Al and tells him why she left home and throws herself upon his mercy to marry her. Al the Merciless declines. Laura, broken-hearted, takes her poppa's pistol from her purse and is discussing a pistol-wedding with Al. This discussion leads to some scufflin' between Al and Laura when Joy and Frank show up. Frank joins the scuffle on behalf of Laura, who watches awhile before picking up the pistol with intent to fire it at Al and do damage to his ability to scuffle...but ends up shooting her sister. Director Elmer Clifton then employs a fade he learned at the feet of D. W. Griffith and the scene shifts back to the hospital where Joy is winding up her explanation of how she got there by being shot by her sister. Some more stuff happens but Joy and Frank are soon back at the re-opened JIVE Club and Laura has learned a hard lesson about hanging out with white-trash and low-lifes.

Tame by JayDeeKay standards what with no underwear shots of the two leads who perform their cat-fight in full-length pajamas, and the only skin on display is that of Laverene and Betty as they stand around in tights watching Lindsay juggle.

"Youth Aflame" is an exploitation film that was intended to both fill theater seats with all sorts of talk of debauchery as well as warn against the behaviors it glamorizes! I love these sorts of film...and recommend you try it if you can tolerate these sorts of things!

Katy is a lame girl for many reasons. First, although her sister Laura is wild and headed for a major fall, Katy repeatedly covers for her in some misguided attempt to help her. Second, well, she's just really lame....and loves to hang down at the 'milk bar' with the other teens...where they dance, socialize and drink milk! As for Laura, she's infatuated with a criminal who pretends to want to marry her. And, since Laura is apparently no smarter than a peanut, she helps the guy but stealing her father's gun and giving it to the boyfriend! You can clearly see it's all headed for disaster....and DEATH!!!!

This film is unintentionally funny....like most exploitation films. While it's not as over the top as the best (worst???) of them (such as "Sex Madness"), it is needless to say quite entertaining because it's so bad and the message delivered so poorly....with bad acting, dialog and a silly message about crime not paying. Worth seeing if you like this sort of thing..otherwise, it is clearly a very bad film.

Youth Aflame (1944)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Sister Katy (Joy Reese) and Laura (Kay Morley) are about to hit the dating scene, which isn't smiled upon by their widowed father (Ed Cassidy). Soon Laura starts going around with a bad guy while Katy and her friends start up a "Jive" club where they can listen to music and drink milk. However, the club gets into trouble when someone spikes the milk.

YOUTH AFLAME was, for some reason, re-released several times including under the title of HOODLUM GIRLS. No matter what you call it this is a rather weak melodrama that was later sold as some sort of exploitation film. If you're expecting something like REEFER MADNESS, SEX MADNESS or THE COCAINE FIENDS then you're going to be disappointed because the only "bad" thing going on here is someone slipping some alcohol into the good kids drinks.

I will say that for the most part the performances really weren't all that bad and I thought the film moved along well enough. At just 57 minutes there's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but if you enjoy these types of movies then there are certainly much worse out there. The biggest problem here is the lack of story and the bottom of the barrel attempt at a "naughty" subject. I'm sorry but a milk bar?