Youth Runs Wild

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.

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.

From producer Val Lewton comes this awkward, hardly bearable WWII mini-soap with teenagers at its center. Beginning with a rash of newspaper headlines exclaiming the downward spiral of the era's delinquent youth, Lewton and director Mark Robson focus on working-class teen sweethearts who live next door in a small town housing project: she's from a rowdy, low-class family yet is inexplicably wholesome, he's a straight arrow who gets into trouble with the law by trying to impress his girl. The unsympathetic nature of the girl's parents is very believable and well-portrayed, but the kids themselves and the other adults are poorly-cast and sketchily-written. There's some business at the beginning about an auto shop dealing in stolen goods, but it's as irrelevant as the salty chanteuse who gets the girl a job as a hostess. Reportedly a troubled production, with R.K.O. altering the finished product against Lewton's wishes (he considered at one point removing his name from the credits). It has to be seen to be believed! *1/2 from ****

"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!!!

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.