Youth Runs Wild

This is one of the few teen-age problem movies made during the war years of the early 1940's. Of course, the main problem most young males faced was surviving the horrors of Guadalcanal to D-Day to Iwo Jima, and naturally everything else paled in comparison. Nonetheless, there was a younger generation still in highschool and it's their often overlooked homefront problems that the movie dramatizes. As other reviewers indicate, despite the good intentions, it's not a very good movie, done cheaply, and pretty tame by today's freewheeling standards.

Still and all, it's an excellent little capsule for glimpsing the social mores of that long ago time when boys kissed girls on the cheek, teens gathered at the malt shop, and stealing tires was the height of wanton behavior. As might be expected, the solutions are pretty pat. If kids 'run wild' it's because Mom and Dad are busy at the production plant, while older siblings are caught up in the war. It's also illustrative that teenage Sara's reputation is damaged as the indirect result of gas rationing, at the same time that battered used tires fetch as much as diamonds.

Anyway, the acting is surprisingly good for a low budget production, while Lawrence Tierney's strong presence clearly qualifies for bigger and better things. Then too, it's not surprising that this little oddity came from the production crew of horror-specialist Val Lewton who in a tragically brief career specialized in the offbeat and unusual. It might be interesting-- in passing-- for a cultural researcher to compare this film with 1986's teen film "River's Edge" for a startling look at how times have have indeed changed. Worth a look for the curiosity seeker.

With parents at war, kids apparently had idle time on their hands during the '40s and some of them turned to crime. Yawn, yawn! This is the most obvious, the most painful depiction of juvenile delinquency ever scripted, even for a B-film.

The print shown on TCM was a poor one, making the skimpy production values look even worse than they probably were. BONITA GRANVILLE and KENT SMITH get top billing, but VANESSA BROWN is lower down in the credits and yet has a sizable role as an unhappy teen-age girl. The story makes any resemblance between these juveniles and today's troubled kids purely a coincidence.

KENT SMITH, as a level-headed wounded soldier, doesn't even make an appearance until the film is half over. It's hard to believe that this sluggish B-film was directed by Mark Robson and produced by Val Lewton. It's certainly got to represent the nadir of their respective careers.

GLEN VERNON, JEAN BROOKS, ARTHUR SHIELDS, DICKIE MOORE, and LAWRENCE TIERNEY are the slightly familiar names that fill the supporting cast--but nothing helps overcome the weak plotting, the preachy attitudes and dull and obvious storyline. Thumbs down on this one.

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.

Youth Runs Wild is an unusually good film for this genre, and given it's short running time and engaging story-telling, I recommend it.

Most Hollywood films of the war era make every effort to depict American family life on the home-front as unrealistically perfect. Those filmmakers who strayed from this prerequisite story often found their efforts on the cutting room floor. Conversely, Youth Runs Wild makes an honest and enjoyable effort to depict the more flawed reality and with a storyline that is not too marred by the passage of time. Our story here deals with what at the time was a relatively new problem in America; parents called away from their household and family obligations to support the war effort and leaving adolescent and even younger children with insufficient supervision. The resulting consequences could just as easily serve as a warning to the parents of today called away from their obligations far too frequently in the less justifiable quest to obtain material possessions.

For what is essentially an exploitive low-budget second-feature, Youth Runs Wild must be credited for its excellent casting. Both A-Listers and unknowns impart depth and warmth to their characters, and the largest contributing factor to the film's impressive honesty is that none of these people are purely good or purely evil.

I think the most touching and heartbreaking event in our story occurs when Danny's parents force him to end his relationship with his girlfriend next door, Sarah. This is exactly the kind of situation that occurs in many a home in real life. Danny has become truant from school, begun to get into all kinds of trouble, and is developing a real surly attitude at home. Sarah's parents would not be considered a good influence by anyone, Danny's parents naturally presume the apple does not fall far from the tree and blame Sarah for Danny's delinquency and forbid him to see her anymore. While entirely well intentioned, it is the worst thing that happens to him in the whole film, they have removed the most positive influence from Danny's life and nothing good comes of it.

The character of Sarah is well played by an unknown Vanessa Brown. This type of character was often given to Cathy O'Donnell, who would never have been able to give Sarah the underlying level of pathos that Ms. Brown does. Once Danny is removed from her life, Sarah attaches herself to the local bad girl, Toddy – played by Bonita Granville who is always wonderful in this type of role. Toddy leads her into a sordid nightlife, badly sanitized to meet 1940's standards of acceptability, but I think even contemporary audiences knew the life Toddy led her to was not being a simple "hostess", but a shill for a clip joint and probably eventually prostitution. Toddy does, after all, live rather well for an essentially orphaned girl in small town middle America.

It might not stand up to repeated viewings for some, and as others have pointed out, Turner Classic Movies' print of Youth Runs Wild is rather beat-up looking; but I would describe this as unusually good work for this particular genre and certainly worth investing an hour of your time. Honest and thought-provoking character film.

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 ****