No offense to Mamie, she's a lovely, voluptuous woman. But her acting chops are minor at best, and she should never, EVER try to sing. Not that any of the 'hip' youthful songs in this movie were any good at all. The plot, about a town in a cotton pickin' county, is rather lame, involving a dishonest female judge and a sleazy cotton grower. Oil-hair boy has seduced the judge (a woman old enough to be his mother) into changing the city laws so that people can be arrested for even minor infractions such as jay-walking and then be sent to his cotton farm as free labor. There are plenty of 'interesting' lesser characters, such as the leering deputy who arrest mamie and her sister at the swimming hole, the drunken overseer, and the greasy chow cook with the pumpkin pie fetish. Why they call this film 'Untamed Youth' I don't know since most of these kids seemed really drab and half-asleep most of the time??? Rounding this out this cast was a woman whose purpose I wasn't really sure about and whose sex was indeterminate, since she looked like Greg Brady in a dress and wig. When these 'criminals' weren't slaving in the field, they were rockin' the house, although you'd think they'd be exhausted after all that physical labor. Unfortunately, no. We were treated to many, many scenes of bad singing and 'dancing'.
There was a subplot with one of the girls who was five months pregnant and whose nickname just happened to be baby. She dropped dead from a miscarriage, making you wonder if the director had a king-sized trowel for laying on the morality tale. To top it all off, the underscoring soundtrack was of the soft core porn variety, heavy on the sleazy trumpet.
These youth films of the late fifties, early sixties, were a curious phenomenon. It was as though the adults of the time sensed the coming of the hippie generation and were trying to hold on to their old way of life by brainwashing the youth of America into being good. I don't know who their intended audience was since I'm fairly sure none of the targeted teen types would have gone to see them. ???
There was a subplot with one of the girls who was five months pregnant and whose nickname just happened to be baby. She dropped dead from a miscarriage, making you wonder if the director had a king-sized trowel for laying on the morality tale. To top it all off, the underscoring soundtrack was of the soft core porn variety, heavy on the sleazy trumpet.
These youth films of the late fifties, early sixties, were a curious phenomenon. It was as though the adults of the time sensed the coming of the hippie generation and were trying to hold on to their old way of life by brainwashing the youth of America into being good. I don't know who their intended audience was since I'm fairly sure none of the targeted teen types would have gone to see them. ???