Untamed Youth

You have to be a real stick in the mud not to get a kick out of this movie; or it's sister film "Girl's Town." I am still wondering what inspired Pinky's great speech ("I am a just man") but the rest is simply. Cheesy rock and roll, cool chicks, and a moral lesson driven home with the subtly of a huge Cotton gin falling on you. Many of the current political problems with our immigrant work force are foreshadowed. If only today's politicos had a Mamie to help iron out all the fuss. If only they had given Eddie Cochran a better song.... The MST3K version is worth seeking out; but this is one that stands on it's own.

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.

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.

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.

Okay, I confess to paying money to see this exploitation flick back in '57. No doubt the juicy title plus mammary goddess Van Doren is what pulled this horny teenager in. Then too, it's likely my standards haven't risen much in the meantime. Anyway, back then, I thought the movie just plain weird—after all, the sight of super stud John Russell passion kissing a frumpy 50-year old Irene Tuttle was like seeing him, oh my gosh, passion kiss his mother. But now I think the movie's just plain goofy.

It's really two films badly stitched into one, like some mismatched two-headed critter that can't make up its mind. On one side is the rock-and-roll skin show, with kids in trouble but having a lot of fun anyway. The wild rebellious dance scene is still a grabber and could stand for that teen era, as a whole. Now, however, Van Doren looks more like a cartoon than anything real as she keeps slipping sideways for the camera.

The other half is a serious type expose with Russell showing no sense of humor or fun, at all. And he's backed up by a lot of corrupt county officials and thuggish henchmen who keep threatening the kids. Too bad the movie guys in charge didn't split this serious side from the R&R. With a little work and that monster cotton-combine, they might have had a follow-up to the classic farm-nightmare of Border Incident (1949).

Instead, this flick leaves us to ponder the eternal question of why Calypso didn't replace R&R as record exec's of the time expected. Oh well, some cosmic mysteries just aren't meant to be solved. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to hunt down more of these silly old teen flicks.