| Untamed Youth | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Howard W. Koch |
| Written by |
|
| Produced by | Aubrey Schenck |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Carl E. Guthrie |
| Edited by | John F. Schreyer |
| Music by | Les Baxter |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 80 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Untamed Youth is a 1957 American teen film directed by Howard W. Koch, written by John C. Higgins and Stephen Longstreet, and starring Mamie Van Doren and Lori Nelson as two starstruck sisters who are sentenced to farm labor.
Plot
Sisters Penny and Jane Lowe are arrested for hitchhiking and skinny-dipping and are sentenced to work on a rural Texas farm for a corrupt agricultural magnate named Russ Tropp. The judge, who sentenced the sisters to the farm, is dating Tropp and is unaware of the treatment of the prisoners; her son is hired to work at the farm and uncovers that a scam had been going on. Through dating the judge, Tropp ensures that all delinquents and rule breakers are ordered to work off their sentence at his farm, therefore giving him a stable amount of cheap labor and allowing him to undercut all competition he faces. The judge's son falls in love with Jane, while Penny, who performs four songs in the film, dreams of making it big in show business. One of the girls, named Baby, at one point falls ill, leaving the judge's son to hijack one of Tropp's cars to rush her to a hospital for treatment. Baby dies from internal hemorrhaging caused by a miscarriage.
Cast
- Mamie Van Doren as Penny Lowe
- Lori Nelson as Jane Lowe
- John Russell as Russ Tropp
- Don Burnett as Bob Steele
- Glenn Dixon as Jack Landis
- Lurene Tuttle as Judge Cecilia Steele Tropp
- Eddie Cochran as Bong
- Yvonne Fedderson as Baby
- Jeanne Carmen as Lillibet
- Robert Foulk as Sheriff Mitch Bowers
- Wayne Taylor as Duke
- Jered Barclay as Ralph
- Valerie Reynolds as Arkie
- Lucita as Margaritia
- Matt Malinowski as Hair
Reception
According to a reviewer for the New York Times who saw the movie's premiere in 1957, Untamed Youth sought to "portray sisters who run afoul of the law and are sent to a prison farm populated almost entirely by rock 'n' roll addicts...Call it a fate almost worse than death."[1] Decades later, the film was featured on an early episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and an updated livestream version in 2021 during Joel Hodgson’s Make More MST3K campaign on Kickstarter featuring four generations of Tom Servo performers.[2]
Mystery Science Theater 3000
References
- ↑ "Untamed Youth' Full of Rock'n' Roll." New York Times. (May 11, 1957).
- ↑ #MakeMoreMST3K Livestream II: UNTAMED YOUTH!, archived from the original on December 15, 2021, retrieved April 30, 2021
External links
- Untamed Youth at IMDb
- Untamed Youth at AllMovie
- Untamed Youth at the TCM Movie Database
- Untamed Youth at the American Film Institute Catalog