Untamed Youth

Untamed Youth
Untamed Youth
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Howard W. Koch
Written by	John C. Higgins; Stephen Longstreet;
Produced by	Aubrey Schenck
Starring	Mamie Van Doren; Lori Nelson;
Cinematography	Carl E. Guthrie
Edited by	John F. Schreyer
Music by	Les Baxter
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	March 10, 1957;
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 4 generations of Tom Servo performers.^[2]

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

Mystery Science Theater 3000

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[1] "Untamed Youth' Full of Rock'n' Roll." New York Times. (May 11, 1957).

[2] #MakeMoreMST3K Livestream II: UNTAMED YOUTH!, archived from the original on December 15, 2021, retrieved April 30, 2021

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