Hugh Baddeley's DON'T BE LIKE BRENDA telegraphs its preachy amateurism in the title. This is terrible, not even campy scare tactics posing as instructional cinema.
Our 17-year-old heroine is in love with Gary, as shown in S.O.L.I. footage that convinced me this was made in the '60s, though IMDb assigns it a way-too-new-seeming date of 1973. When she's unexpectedly pregnant, Gary says "I'll call you tonight at 8" to discuss what to do. Instead, Gary's mom rings Brenda, and reads the poor girl the riot act, basically informing her that Gary's engaged to another girl, so don't ever darken our doorstep again.
Brenda has the kid (Baddeley never alludes to the existence of abortion, typical of these ostrich-like documentaries) and puts the baby boy in a foundling home awaiting adoption. Movie makes it clear the government is running these places and doing a fine job, thank you.
However, the title comes into play when the kid is discovered to have a congenital heart problem, and nobody wants to adopt the tyke. He'll evidently spend the better part of two decades without a family, until presumably the dear home boots him out on the street, ready to become a Teddy Boy and, I suspect, end up doing hard labor in stir.
Baddeley shows us an alternative girl, all decked out and beaming at her wedding, as the true role model. I found the whole farrago annoying and insulting, a prototype of how older generations seem to always fall into the same trap, talking down to kids and adolescents. No wonder we always rebel (of course, I'm in the AARP set now!).
