Mom and Dad

Using carnival-like methods of promotion, combined with word-of-mouth advertising, this movie exploited sex hygiene et cetera with incredible success. When I was 16 (a long time ago) this movie was in re-issue and a group of us drive 50 miles each way to the drive-in theater playing it exclusively. On a work night, suburban Washington DC's biggest drive-in was sold out. It was a "roadshow" one-theater attraction and they came with a carnival-like crew because at some point the film was stopped and they hawked sexual hygiene books to the audience. There was a rumor I'd heard many times over many years that the film contained an actual scene of sexual intercourse (untrue, but worth talking up.) The movie itself was pretty good, and the entire experience, including the carnival-hustle, made an unforgettable experience.

Mom and Dad is far the most successful exploitation/sex-hygiene film ever made, and not because of it's subject matter or it's production value. The main reason this little $65.000 film made over 22 million dollars in just under 11 years was because of Howard W. "Kroger" Babb, his carny like showmanship and unwavering promotion would always get 'em in the door, or as he would say "you gotta tell 'em to sell 'em". Shot by William "One Shot" Beaudine on a old Monogram lot in Hollywood over the course of a week, This film would go on to make Kroger Babbs tons of money.

The story is a simple one that would be copied by many others afterwards to capitalize on it's popularity. It's a story about a high school student who gets pregnant by a airplane pilot, he dies in a plane crash. Knowing she's in trouble and about to give birth, she confides in her high school teacher, but the teacher rats her out to her parents, and her parents get the teacher fired because she answered sex hygiene question in class?!?!. So, mother and daughter run away to another town to have the kid, the teacher gets re-hired and starts a class on hygiene. Experts are brought with films on childbirth and VD to the school to teach the little kiddies!! But to foil a happy ending the girl who was pregnant gives birth to a stillborn child, and I guess everyone lives happily ever after.

Although this film is nothing special or sensational, it was the marketing of it that made everyone come to it. The shows were segregated by gender, attendants posed as nurses and handed out booklets on sexual hygiene, all this added to the expectation that what audiences would see is something special. When audiences were sometimes letdown, a square up reel was shown (a square up reel is another short film afterwards, typically something really hot). Usually the square up reel was a live childbirth scene, (or something more sensational) that more than likely gave the audiences some satisfaction in seeing this film.

Its incredible but this $67,000 film made between $40-100 million at the box office! Thats Star Wars money in the 40's. In fact, it was difficult not to know about it back then. Its an old school exploitation film of the, believe it or not, 'sex hygiene' sub-genre. It faced many legal challenges and was even condemned by the National Legion of Decency. It used the tried and tested method of circumventing censorship laws by positioning itself as an educational film. It was never allowed to play in the big cinemas, it instead played mainly as a travelling show at various towns, with separate screenings for women and men.

Its storyline is melodramatic nonsense about a girl who falls pregnant to an older boy. She can't tell her mother, as mum's morals are stuck so firmly in the Victorian era that she gathers a posse and gets a teacher at the school fired for teaching sex education! Needless to say, things get worse before they get better.

But so what you might think? Where's the money shot in all this carry on? Well, towards the end an obstetrician is wheeled out and he shows some films to a class of teenage girls and this is where things get psychotronic. There is graphic footage of live births - one natural and one Caesarian. The latter is endurance testing stuff I can tell you....ugh! Then there are various images of body parts mutilated with syphilis and venereal disease! Horrible scars, rotting teeth, infected genitals and oozing open sores are the order or the day! There is no build up or warning for any of this stuff! Its all there to educate of course.

A proper curiosity piece this one. Well worth watching if you are at all interested in the stranger corners of the cinematic world.

Billed as an educational product by Hygienic Productions- this film is surprisingly progressive! Viewing pearl-clutching mothers very critically and being firmly anti-abstinance-only education and pro-knowledge, this seems like the antithesis to Reefer Madness with actual awareness of reality and a willingness to say the parents are to blame for their children's ignorance.

The narrative half of this movie has some genuinely good character dynamics; a believable brother-sister relationship, one character that is the picture of sleazy fuckboys and a teacher that only wants the best for his students. It also deals with attempted suicide and frank discussions of sex.

The educational half has some shocking moments, most famously depicting actual footage of live human births, including a C-Section that is just as graphic now as it was then. Also images of venereal diseases with uncensored footage of infected penises and vaginas- it's so impactful to see it in a mainstream movie in the mid-40's!

There is some strange musical tones this movie has, like the music is so classic-Hollywood, it clashes with the realism the film is trying to convey, it seems to attempt to drown out the sorrow the main actress has when she realizes she's pregnant and other realistic dramatic and brutal moments.

Still a genuinely provocative movie for its time and now!

"Mom and Dad" is a so-called 'Roadshow Movie" and was rarely shown in actual movie theaters. Instead, the folks would travel the country with the film, showing it in various auditoriums. Why? Because the film is a sex education drama...and most theaters refused to show such 'filth'! Of course, many folks really WANTED to see the films...either to educate themselves or, more often, because they heard it was a 'dirty' film and wanted to see more! Many Roadshow movies weren't the least bit educational and were there simply to titillate. Others, like "Mom and Dad", were more well-meaning and educational.

Because this film was made in the 1940s and folks were extremely phobic about talking about sex AND because a 'sex film' MIGHT get you prosecuted by local authorities, the film, though well meaning, also hedges its bets. Many common words about sexuality simply aren't in the movie and euphemisms are often used. The only portion that is really educational is late in the movie when there is a very dry movie within the movie and it shows footage about childbirth and various STDs.

As for the rest of the story, it's about a nice girl whose mother is about as phobic and hung up about sexuality as possible. And, when the girl becomes pregnant, she cannot go to her parents to tell them what's happened because of this. Thanks to a nice ex-teacher who was fired for actually talking about 'social hygiene' (the euphemism the film uses for sex), the parents attend to the girl and everything works out fine...though, just to drive home how bad sex is, the girl and baby almost die!!

Overall, a film that is NOT bold nor shocking (words the film uses at the end) because of the time in which it was made. But for an exploitation film, it's pretty tame and actually has some decent production values for a cheap sex ed film of the mid-1940s. Not very good....nor all that bad. An interesting curio.