Youth Runs Wild

I was confused early in this movie. The story seemed to jump around. Characters it was assumed we know were unclear. In the movies for which Val Lewton is famous, this would be unthinkable.

The point of view shifts, too. So we find it difficult to care about any of the characters: We don't really know them. They are types: They're cardboard cut-outs.

It's essentially a juvenile delinquent movie. The kids are not that delinquent, though. Neither do they really come across as kids.

Their parents are cold and uncaring. But on the other hand: The war is going on. One mother apparently works in a munitions plant or some other patriotic spot. So we can't fault them totally.

In some ways the biggest kick of the film comes from the casting of one relatively small role: Of all people, Lawrence Tierney plays a basically decent guy. He doesn't want to see the youth start to run wild. That soon changed, in terms of his casting.

The youth are running wild while the adults are busy fighting the war. There are some youth and they're mildly wild. Mostly they're being led astray. This seems to be a sincere effort to direct kids towards more orderly pursuits. During wartimes, this could backfire in lowering morale for the adults. They have more than enough to worry about without worrying about their kids. The kids won't like it either. As a wartime film, its usefulness is a bit dubious. As a cinematic film, this is strictly in the B-movie realm. The actors are too green. The material is too melodramatic. There is little daring and it feels old. This is a good opportunity to spoof although I don't know if anybody actually did that.

"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!!!

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.

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.