Untamed Youth

source: Untamed Youth

Trailer—Untamed Youth

Untamed Youth

.........................................makes this whole sorry mess worth viewing. In fact, any rock music fan worth their salt, will want to view this "epic" simply to catch the opportunity of seeing the late, great Eddie Cochran on screen. Admittedly, his appearances are only sporadic and he only performs one song.. the hardly memorable "Cottonpicker," but it is still good to be able to see one of the all-time greats of rock 'n' roll music on film. As for the film itself, well it is pretty dire. The storyline is quite unbelievable, and the dialogue could well have been written during a lunch break, by a five year old! The players do as well as possible with the pitiful material at hand, but they must have had trouble keeping straight faces when delivering some of their lines! To conclude, this slice of 50's exploitation is memorable for one thing only....the participation of Eddie Cochran!

If I were to go back in time and make a bad kids movie, I would put all of my budget into getting Mamie Van Doren, who is to this genre what Sean Connery is to the Eurospy film. Mamie and Lori Nelson (Hot Rod Girl) play Penny and Jane Lowe, two sisters who have been arrested for hitchhiking and skinny dipping. This sends them to a Texas work farm owned by Russ Tropp (John Russell, TV's Lawman). He's got a great scam going, because he's dating a judge (Lurene Tuttle, the "First Lady of Radio") who he's using to get any teen who commits a minor crime sent to his business as cheap labor. Eddie Cochran plays Bong, another prison worker, and Mamie does four songs. I love every single one of them and really wish that I hadn't seen nearly every one of her movies, because then I could see them all over again and get the charge I had when I saw them for the first time. Howard W. Koch, who directed this, also made Frankenstein 1970 and went on to produce the Airplane! Movies.

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.

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.

50's Beach Blanket Bingo in potato fields; a soupçon of Giant with John Russell as Big Daddy. Misses James Dean, Paul Lynde, Don Rickles, Robbie the Robot and an alien or two to be a classic...we've Mamie Van Doren, Eddie Cochran, maybe it is!

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.

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.