Child Bride

Child Bride (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Incredibly insane film about mountain men (rednecks) who marry young girls to keep the population going. This film opens with a montage saying this is a warning to the public and it might have been but in the end this is pure exploitation. The shocking thing is that the film is actually very well made and the performances are right on the mark. The sexual nature towards the 10-year-old star is quite disturbing especially one skinny dipping scene, which has some nudity. There are some hilarious moments including a dwarf redneck, a school session with dumb kids trying to learn to spell and other stuff dealing with moonshine. Shirley Miles plays the young bride and her performance is wonderful and again, it's rather shocking too see the sexual nature and nudity. She would go on to star in The Grapes of Wrath.

The last time I was able to see this film was about three years ago. It was on tape and was on loan from a private collection. This is an excellent example of the moral genre of the period. The camera work shows great detail to use of light and position. I am eager to get this film in my collection and hopefully someone will see fit to put this on DVD.

Exploitation classic thats more humorous now then either titillating or shocking. This is an anti-child bride film. Yes there was a time when young, even preteen girls could get married to older men. This is the story of a young girl who may be doomed to suffer such a fate. A serious subject, the film is now very silly with some acting styles that went out of style in the early days of silents (Watch the scene when Jennie gets up in the morning and try not to fall on the floor laughing.) Give the film points for having some realer characters than many backwoods films coming from Hollywood, but take a few away since this film is really just an exploitation film. Notorious for a brief flash of nudity in a skinny dipping scene by the then 12 year old star (some prints excise it) its nothing even remotely titillating or sexy. Its actually done in such away as to be fleeting and not even clear. I probably shouldn't have even mentioned it except some people are shocked or horrified by it. The film itself is better than it should be, however its still not very good. As I said much of it plays more humorous than serious and its so creaky that you can see the machine like plot clacking away towards its conclusion where you end up on the edge of your seat waiting to see if Jennie will suffer a fate worse then death.(Its much less over the top than say a film like Reefer Madness where you can laugh at it, which takes away much of the fun) If you're a fan of creaky exploitation films give it a try. All others stay away.

Like most savvy exploitation mellers of the thirties and forties this one has two versions.One with a hot reel and one with a soft reel. The version that seem more innocent and is on the Mill Creek Collection is the one with the soft reel that cuts out two minutes of the skinny dip scene.

The hot version is still available on some download sites(not sure about the Alpha version) and it definitely raises the eyebrows higher.It's not kiddee porn but it could be perceived as close to it especially with the insert of the leering Hill Billy.

Much like Reefer Madness this pretends to be a moral plea to remove injustice but it's merely an excuse to get around the Hays office and show a lot of cleavage and violence.These films got away with this by playing mostly small towns and roadshows or one night midnight shows in the larger cities.They were in and out before the law knew what hit em.

While not as dizzying or bee-zar as Dwain Esper's Maniac,Child Bride has enough weird elements as to make Reefer Madness seem tame.Several scenes are of the S&M variety and there are a lot of politically correct references to race and handicapped people.

On the whole this movie is just plain wrong but I enjoyed it immensely

This low-budget independent film is considered one of the most controversial accomplishments of all time, as it portrayed the nakedness of a 12-year-old girl in a sexual context back in the 1930s. However, I think calling it a "sexploitation" movie is an unfounded exaggeration. The scene is neither explicit nor tasteless, nor does it depict or insinuate the act of sex. It's just plain skinny-dipping in a pond. The film is about a rural environment where it is customary for parents to marry their minor daughters with significantly older men. The girl who escaped from there, later returns as a teacher and tries to stop this tradition. Whether the intention of the author was really to criticize this ill custom and draw public attention to it, or whether he simply used it as an excuse to make for that time shocking film, remains to be speculated. Interestingly, most of the actors in this film never filmed anything else. Exceptions are George Morrell and Warner Richmond with rich filmographies, Shirley Mills with a few more roles, and Angelo Rossitto, whose height of only 88 centimeters brought him a bunch of interesting roles, from the cult "Freaks" (1932) by Tod Browning to the role of The Master in the famous Master Blaster tandem from "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (1985). The movie does not deserve any praise for its quality, but it's not badly done either. Certainly, it is worth a look as a curiosity.

6/10