Rebellious Daughters

Rebellious Daughters (1938)

** (out of 4)

Claire (Marjorie Reynolds) and Barbara (Verna Hillie) are at a nightclub with their boyfriends when a fight breaks out and both are arrested. Each girl gets sent home to their parents who just don't understand the problems of teen girls. The two decide to take a modeling job that they were offered and they run away for greener grass. Soon they both realize that they're just being used by a no-good con man who likes to set up married men to make them pay to keep their secrets from their wives.

REBELLIOUS DAUGHTERS is another social drama from the 30s that is pretty boring all around. The "naughty" title is more suggestive than anything else because the truth is that this certainly isn't much of an exploitation movie and in fact it's rather tame even by 1930s standards. The main point of the film is to show young girls that their parents might ignore them or might force too many rules on them but that's a lot better than some of the creeps they might run into out on the streets.

At 70 minutes the film is pretty predictable from start to finish as you just know that the "tough" friend is going to cross too many lines while the "good" and "naive" one isn't going to realize how much danger she's really in. Then you've got the father who wants his daughter back, the newspaper reporter who likes her and of course a few other twists and turns. The performances are pretty much what you'd expect here and for the most part the film is slightly entertaining. The exploitation matters are extremely clear and a little naughtier storyline might have helped the entertainment value.