User Reviews

"Back where we come from people are kind and good and strangers are welcome" ... so says sappy Sarah at the beginning of this film that seems like a feature length edition of one of the "Why We Fight" series. To see "Produced by Val Lewton and Directed by Mark Robson" is hard to believe with the above speech and the underlying moralistic tone. The film also came right in the middle of Lewton's creative period.

Mary returns home to wait for husband (Kent Smith) who has been injured and won the purple heart. She returns to a quiet home - her parents work shifts at a munitions factory and brother Frank is unsupervised and playing truant from school. His parents blame his behaviour on the new girl next door but his situation is not much different than Sarah's - both sets of parents are shift workers at munition plants.

Frank is on the "road to ruin" - he doesn't want to stay at school - he wants to work to take Sarah to movies and to buy her things. Sappy Sarah would be in 7th heaven with a walk in the park.

There was a much longer film in there I feel. A lot of deleted scenes - Dickie Moore, credited as "son who kills his father - scene deleted" his only scenes were in the back seat of a car.

Lawrence Tierney started out as his usual hard self, within 15 minutes he was "giving those kids a break". Halfway through the film he was gone - only coming back in the last scenes. When he left so did the punch and grittiness.

Kent Taylor and Elisabeth Russell were Lewton veterans. Russell, who played Sarah's mother always seemed to have so much more to give than her roles required.

Worst Actress Award is won by Tessa Brind, who plays sappy Sarah. She is not believable for a minute and when she visits Bonita Granville in hospital (which is the most ludicrous part in the film) she can be seen reflected through this plastic shield with the biggest smile on her face - maybe Tierney had just cracked a joke!!!!

Don't judge Lewton on this effort, please!!!

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.

An unusual entry from horror producer Val Lewton and his team, it is not a very good film, but at least it paints a picture of the 1940s and existing attitudes at the time reasonably well. The messages of the film are unsubtle and heavy-handed, the music choices are tiresome, and the characters are utterly simple. It is downbeat, rather predictable and quite dreary to watch. If assessing why youths turn rebellious sounds appealing, 'Rebel without a Cause' comes recommended instead. This is not quite a terrible film, with some performances that are arguably earnest, but it is not nearly a good one either, and is best recommended just to fans of Val Lewton who are interested in some of his lesser known productions.

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 ****

... as in being behind them. I would be referring to Lawrence Tierney the actor, here as Larry, the bad guy, before Tierney would have his big chance with "Dillinger" the following year and then ultimately blow that chance with all of his bad behavior off the set. But I digress.

I could tell this was not an A or even B list film because TCM is airing a print that looks like it came from a public domain source - very fuzzy. And who knew that in 1944 VD did not just stand for Victory Day???

While the adults are off working double shifts in wartime factories the kids are getting involved in delinquency. The spotlight is on Vanessa Brown's character, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Frankie. Frankie gets into stealing tires to make extra money. Sarah's folks are hardly Ward and June Cleaver. They drink and play cards when they are not working and seems like they would be indifferent parents even if they didn't have intense work schedules. They throw Sarah out at the first sign of any trouble she might be in, and she is reduced to working as one of the hostesses in a dive, which seems like it is shorthand for something a bit more adult. Up to her fall, she is bullied and manipulated by the older world weary Hot Toddy Jones (Bonita Granville). But then, strangely, Toddy morphs into a mentor to the girl.

There are all kinds of unexplained things going on. When a couple of teens are spotted by a security guard stealing tires, he shoots at them! I knew rubber was valuable during the war, but really? One of the cars the teens are stealing tires from in the plant parking lot has a toddler locked inside. This is never explained or commented on. Did the harried factory worker forget about the kid, or is this all they can do for day care? And when a fight breaks out in the dive in which Sarah works and a young healthy person is thrown to the floor in the resulting scuffle, she winds up in the hospital in .... an oxygen tent? With a priest doing last rites? Things never got this bad during the frequent fist fights at the Long Branch saloon in Gunsmoke!

Too goofily constructed to be a stirring social drama with a message, and with too much heavy stuff going on to be an effective kitschy romp, this film fails on every level. It was based on a piece in Look Magazine. Look didn't like the finished product to the point that they refused to promote the film in the magazine, or even to allow their name to be used in the film's credits. .Val Lewton later disavowed the final version of the film and attempted to have his name removed from it. It really had no love 77 years ago when it was released and lost money at the box office, and today I can agree with that assessment.

In the 1940s, Val Lewton made quite a name for himself as a producer of low budget horror films. These weren't the traditional vampire or monster films, but instead focused more on psychological tension in order to hide the fact that the budgets didn't allow for fancy makeup. RKO did quite well with these films and today many "in the know" see Lewton as a great filmmaker.

Well, I guess even the best of them sometimes have a disappointing film, but WOW was this a B-I-G disappointment. It bore none of the earmarks of a Lewton film and instead had a painfully bad script with occasionally horrid acting. In addition, the plot had a very moralistic stance about kids running amok while the parents are working in defense plants during the war--but it also offered no answers and the kids in the film seemed ridiculously unrealistic and stupid. For example, the two leading characters are supposed to be nice young adults, but every time a degenerate tells them to do something shady they walk right into it like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm!! Can any teens be THAT stupid and still be called "good kids".

Even for a B-picture, this trite film is bad--really bad. And I also suspect if it didn't have Lewton's magic name associated with it, the rating would be even lower than a dismal 4.2. And, viewers might have been tempted to seek out the writers and hang them!!! Avoid this like the plague unless you have serious ambitions of seeing all of Lewton's films--even the very bad ones.

By the way, for the "Lewtonites" out there, you'll see several familiar faces that showed up in other Lewton films--not just Kent Smith but Elizabeth Russell as well.

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.

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.

I remember stories that my uncle told of the Great Depression and one of them was that for a few years after graduating high school in Rochester, New York there were just no jobs to be had. He was basically hanging around with nothing to do for a few years until World War II came and Uncle Sam solved his employment problem. In fact with domestic industries converted to a war footing believe me there was no reason in 1944 for Youth to Run Wild. For that matter my mother after high school worked at Bausch&Lomb which had converted to a war footing.

So I was a bit skeptical watching this film Youth Runs Wild it just didn't ring true for me. What happens is that after some youthful hijinks three teens are put in the custody of Kent Smith just mustered out of the army with a million dollar wound. Jean Brooks is Smith's wife and one of the kids is her brother Glen Vernon.

Val Lewton directed Youth Runs Wild and what he did with Cat People he could not do with this film. Bonita Granville who a few years earlier was Nancy Drew was just ludicrous as a bad girl. Lawrence Tierney has a minor role, blink you might miss him.

As compared to 50s youth rebellion films like The Wild One or Rebel Without A Cause, Youth Runs Wild does not run wild at all. In fact it stays in some respectable and dull traffic lanes.

Youth Runs Wild (1944)

** (out of 4)

Val Lewton produced this WW2 drama about teenagers who start getting into trouble while the older folks are either working or fighting in the war. Lewton hated horror films and wanted to be taken more serious and I guess this film was his attempt to do that but the movie is really boring and bland. The strange thing is that Lewton's horror films didn't contain much horror and this juvenile film doesn't contain too much stuff dealing with the subject. There's a subplot of a tire stealing ring, another story dealing with teenage love and yet another dealing with a soldier returning home. None of them work and together they just make for a mess of a film. The film should have centered on one story and followed it but as it is the film just becomes tiresome even at 67-minutes. Bonita Granville of Warner's Nancy Drew series gets top billing but she too is rather bland, which was a disappointment since I enjoyed most of her early roles. Glenn Vernon, Kent Smith and Lawrence Tierney co-star.

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.

Fearing the US State Department the executives at RKO edited Val's work until it no longer resembled a Lewton production. They kept Val's name in the credits to attract patrons. I don't consider this a Val Lewton movie.

I'm a huge fan of producer Val Lewton and his moody atmospheric horror films that relied on suspense, and implied horror over showing a goofy looking monsters in ypical Universal or William Castle style of horror films. Lewton's films stood apart as something unique, including "Cat People," The Body Snatchers," and "Isle of the Dead." This film, "Youth Runs Wild," was a change from his usual horror picture for RKO and is instead a standard juvenile delinquent film, following a group of young people who's parents are either away fighting WWII or working in industrial plants, leaving the kids to their own devices, which, as you might guess from the title, is to go wild. It's a disappointingly routine film of this sort, but it was recut against Lewton's wished because the studio felt it was too violent and controversial, so I suppose you can't lay blame for the film's weaknesses all at Lewton's feet, who actually disavowed the finished film and I can see why. What's left is pretty safe and not all that compelling, despite the fact that it was directed by one of Lewton's frequent collaborators, Mark Robson, and has a cast that includes Lawrence Tierney. Overall, this isn't worth watching unless you're curious to see a non-horror Val Lewton produced film, which I was, but it's disappointingly routine and honestly pretty bad.

The youth are running wild while the adults are busy fighting the war. There are some youth and they're mildly wild. Mostly they're being led astray. This seems to be a sincere effort to direct kids towards more orderly pursuits. During wartimes, this could backfire in lowering morale for the adults. They have more than enough to worry about without worrying about their kids. The kids won't like it either. As a wartime film, its usefulness is a bit dubious. As a cinematic film, this is strictly in the B-movie realm. The actors are too green. The material is too melodramatic. There is little daring and it feels old. This is a good opportunity to spoof although I don't know if anybody actually did that.