Untamed Youth

While the story may seem contrived (hitchhikers arrested and forced to do farm labor) , it was a fact that certain rural agricultural California towns did exactly that, for decades. Farmers who grow crops that must be hand-picked always need cheap labor and are never too fussy about where they get it. Mamie Van Doren steals the show. OK, the musical numbers are a bit silly but the cast members can dance. Some of them are doing goofy dance steps for laughs, but watch the other couples - that is a demonstration of 1950s teen dancing as good as you will see in film. If you just watch the musical scenes, you won't miss anything because the plot is predictable, and nothing really interesting happens when Mamie isn't singing and the kids aren't dancing.

As awful as most of the musical numbers are, it's great to see Eddie Cochran performing!

Mamie Van Doren is pretty good in this movie, as corny as it is. John Russell is great as the jerk ranch owner; very convincing bad guy.

Law and Order! Law and Order! How often have we seen and heard those words wreak untrue but in the bitter end the film Untamed Youth deserved a rightful ending and yes, the bad guys get their just reward and are put behind bars. Mamie Van Doren starred in this low budget black and white crime film and she got to show off her singing and dancing chops and of course she would not be Mamie Van Doren if she didn't deliberately open up her top to allow the male hormones a better gander of her singing and swinging lungs (no nudity).

Don't expect much when two sisters Penny (Mamie Van Doren) and Jane Lowe (Lori Nelson) are unceremoniously caught skinny dipping in a pond while 'en route to a paid singing gig when the local dirty sheriff arrests them for vagrancy and a forlorn female judge who is smitten by the ranch owner puts them on a cotton farm to pick cotton for him as cheaper labor than even the Mexicans would work for otherwise.

A romance begins brewing between Jane Lowe and a new ranch foreman Bob Steele (Don Burnett) who was recommended by his mother the cheating judge Judge Cecilia Steele/Tropp (Lurene Tuttle) to work for her secretly married husband the thieving cotton ranch owner Russ Tropp (John Russell) who runs his ranch patrolling his farm with two vicious Doberman Pincher dogs to keep both his prisoners and the farmhands in line.

Mamie Van Doren sings and dances as the girls are eventually freed from their wrongful imprisonment, and her sister Jane falls in love with the gentleman foreman Bob Steele who came to the prisoners rescue. So sing and dance your way as these young women and men are freed from their wrongful imprisonment and accept their fate as law and order eventually prevail.

I give the film a decent 6 out of 10 IMDB rating.

Untamed Youth (1957)

** (out of 4)

If you look at any critic books you're probably going to find this one with a BOMB rating and it being called one of the worst films of all time. Something this entertaining can't be considered one of the worst ever made. Period. Sisters Penny (Mamie Van Doren) and Jane (Lori Nelson) Lowe gets picked up by a crooked Sheriff and the two are sentenced by a crooked judge to a work farm where the owner abuses the workers and gets his pockets filled with their hard work. Soon the judge's son (Don Burnett) returns home from the Navy and begins to see what's really going on at the camp. UNTAMED YOUTH is one of many drive-in juvenile flicks that were released in this era and while it has one of the worst reputations of any, this is just so memorable because of all the camp, wild dialogue and unbelievable situations. I'm really not sure where you start but there's some of the most memorable dialogue that you're ever going to find in a film. There this: "Don't hit me in the mouth again. You'll break my dental plate". Also this: "If you had two heads you'd still be a moron." You've also got an opening sequence with the two beautiful blonds skinny dipping with the perverted Sheriff spying on them. There's also some very campy musical numbers, which for some reason the "inmates" are able to put on. I'm still not sure why the evil owner allowed all of this considering everything else he was doing to them. Then there's the hilarious ending where the people finally can't take any more. I won't ruin what exactly happens but it's certainly funny. Mamie Van Doren, as you'd expect, gives a pretty blah performance but that pointy bra is constantly at work. Nelson actually gives a pretty good performance as she's the only thing that doesn't come off campy. The supporting players all fit their roles nicely. UNTAMED YOUTH is pure camp and I'd say it deserves the right to be considered a cult classic.

The story of an unscrupulous cotton farm owner who uses the local correction system for his personal profit, the focus of "Untamed Youth" is really the unbridled sexuality of rock and roll, then in its infancy.

Consider this tagline: "Starring the girl built like a platinum powerhouse-- Mamie Van Doren." The film offers some scenes of rock and roll dancing awkwardly shoehorned into the scenes of dramatic social injustice. And those scenes of dancing are not bad, despite the corny gyrations of Van Doren. The story as a whole is a mess.

Best viewed as a novelty, "Untamed Youth" fits perfectly into the genre of low-grade drive-in movie fare.