“And if you were a man, baby, I’d knock your teeth out.”

So movies have taught me that your average 1950s teenagers were all in their 30s and as a course of habit always getting into every kind of convoluted predicament imaginable. Case in point: Daddy-O from 1958.

Plot

It starts with Phil (Dick Contino) driving a truck and being cut off by a curvy blonde in a Thunderbird, and he runs her off the road. Her name’s Jana “Jan” Ryan (Sandra Giles), and they argue so much that its obvious they end up together. They meet again at a restaurant/bar where Phil, “Daddy-O” to his friends, sings to the crowd on occasion. One of Phil’s friends, Sonny, is in a sullen and rather creepy mood (see, its ironic because his disposition doesn’t match his name, which...eh, you get the idea). Sonny’s in bad with a fat man named Sidney Chillis, sort of a cross between Orson Wells wand Sidney Greenstreet (played by Bruno VeSota). Chillis is obviously evil, and even has a slack-jawed henchman wearing coke bottle glasses. His name’s Bruce Green (Jack McClure) and he runs a gym and he’s incredibly unintimidating.

Whoo, things are getting complicated. Jan meets Phil again at the restaurant and challenges him to a race. Loser has to buy pizza. They get separated during the race and independently, Sonny was run off the road by Chillis and Bruce and died. The police think Phil did it through reckless driving, but his car doesn’t show any damage from a hit & run. Still, Phil’s license is revoked for other traffic violations because reasons. Phil suspects Jan, but she didn’t do it. Together they go into junior detective mode and track Sonny’s trail to Chillis and Bruce. Chillis offers Phil a job as a singer and errand-boy for his new club the Hi-Note, and Phil accepts, getting a fake ID and a new car. Phil also takes a codename (which is just his performing nickname) for his shady deliveries. Complicated story simplified, Chillis is using Phil to run dope for him while Phil tries to figure out the cause of Sonny’s death. Basically it leads to a goofy climactic fight scene in a basement filled with wine racks.

Characters

Contino is affable enough as Phil, though in a somewhat bland way. Phil gives the impression of being a decent guy who doesn’t think things through before acting. His song, “Rock Candy Baby” is kind of bad, but also just catchy enough for the refrain to worm its way into your head and remind you how bad it is every now and then.

Jan is spunky and shoots her mouth off a lot in the beginning. She’s also a reckless driver. Then she morphs into a love interest/sidekick for Phil and the two have a brief falling out when Phil starts palling around with Chillis’s secretary for a little bit.

Bruce Green is, again, not an imposing henchman. The absurdly thick glasses lead to that perpetual squinty-look. You know, the kind where the nose scrunches up and the mouth hangs open a bit. Bruce’s face is like that the ENTIRE MOVIE.

Sidney Chillis is, oddly enough, the most interesting character. He’s smug and clearly crooked, but he’s also a really classy and erudite guy. He gives Phil two jobs doing what he likes (singing and driving), provides him a car, sets him up with a fake ID, and even gets him some nicer clothes. If it wasn’t for the whole “dope smuggling racket” he had going, he’d be a fantastic boss.

Conclusion

Wait, before the end, I have to note that a young John Williams did the musical score for this movie. Its jazzy and better than a lot of contemporary music, but also not quite the level of awesomeness that Williams would eventually reach. Still, the music’s pleasant.

Daddy-O is ultimately another inoffensive, forgettable teensploitation movie from the 50s. A few interesting elements/characters and a listenable soundtrack don’t do anything to lift it above its contemporaries. But I can’t say that its downright terrible. Its merely forgettable.  

No trailer for this, but here's Rock Candy Baby from the movie, because if I had to listen to it, you can too.

“Don't hit me in the mouth again, you'll break my dental plate.”

Teensploitation. No, it’s not about working long hours for low pay on a golf range for the summer. It’s a film subgenre that tells scandalous stories about teens, starring teens in movies geared toward teens and inexplicable musical numbers. In Fifties terms I suppose that translates to being a bit like Blaxploitation only with white kids, less violence and less nudity. Anyway, I am not at all thrilled to review 1957’s Untamed Youth.

Goddamnit.

Plot
So we’ve got two sisters hitching toward LA that stop to skinny dip in a pond and get picked up by a local cop for indecency and vagrancy. They get taken before a judge who sentences them to 30 days either in prison or a community service-like work program. They opt for the labor and get taken to a cotton farm where they and other untamed youths (DUN DUN DUN!) begin to work off their sentences for long hours and low pay (no golf courses in sight though). Guess what? It’s bad there and the teens are forced to work under all sorts of unfair and unsanitary conditions. Can our lovely ladies survive long enough to get to LA?

Characters
Penny Lowe: The lovely Mamie Van Doren is the elder of our hero sisters. She wants to get to LA to be a singer and performer. And she sings a lot during the movie and is the more impulsive of the two. There’s not a whole lot to the character, though she provides a bit of the comic relief here and there, but the real important thing here is that she looks good doing it.

Because I like you, audience.

Jane Lowe: Lori Nelson plays the younger Lowe sisters who is arguably the actual main character. She plays guitar, gets a love interest and has a bunch of scenes that are important to the progression of the plot. She also looks good, just not as…impressive.

Russ Tropp: John Russell (who made a bunch of Westerns) plays our Villain, and what a colossal douchebag Tropp is. Tropp worked out a deal with the judge (with his, er, little combine harvester, if you know what I mean) that gets him dirt cheap labor for his farm and he makes a giant profit off of it. It’s not a very ambitious scheme compared to a lot of the stuff that passes through Castle RMWC’s walls. Still, Tropp’s a big fish in a small pond, and is a total asshole about it.

Bob Steele: Don Burnett plays the square-jawed hero. He’s recently home from the military and happens to be the judge’s son. The judge uses her connections to get him a job with Tropp and Bob quickly realizes two things: The teens are suffering much more than their petty crimes warrant, and Jane is hot. For what it’s worth, he’s the badass of the film because he isn’t afraid to call people out on bullshit and is a friend of JUSTICE.

Jack Landis: Glenn Dixon plays one of Tropp’s main henchmen, though he’s a drunkard and a really ineffective foreman.

Judge Cecelia Steele: Lurene Tuttle plays the government employee who’s been seduced by Tropp. She’s instrumental in his big scheme but is really just being manipulated.

Lillibet: Jeanne Carmen plays one of the teens that’s been there for a while. She was working as a “housekeeper” for Tropp (if you know what I mean), but was booted back into the fields after she let someone else do the vacuuming (if you…okay fine. Of course you know what I mean).

Baby: Yvonne Lime plays a character who gets ill a couple of times in the field and then dies (because Pathos, that’s why). Honestly though, until she died the character was just there and little more than an extra.

Bong: Eddie Cochran (yes, the “ain’t no cure for the summertime blues” guy) in one of his only two acting roles. It’s not much of a part and he sings a song. Cochran didn’t get a chance to do more onscreen stuff because he died in a car crash in 1960 only three years later. Bummer.

Pinky the Cook: Wally Brown is really on in the movie for one scene, as a loquacious cook who jovially banters with the teens during a late night party. He just comes out of nowhere and starts laying out a Christmas Ham of a performance for the movie and then he’s gone, and would’ve been my pick for badass of the film, but then I realized that he’s working for Tropp and knows that he’s serving the kids slop made from dogfood and also recommends Penny go up and “personally audition” for Mr. Tropp, who also owns a local TV station. This guy’s actually rather creepy when you think about it…

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Howard W. Koch (who went on to become the producer of films like Dragonslayer and the two Airplane! movies, so…good career change) The visuals are. They just are. It’s difficult to make farming exciting and this movie is not exciting. Though Mamie Van Doren’s outfits often are, in a 50’s girl-next-door sort of way. Yowza!

Writing
Story by Stephen Longstreet and John C. Higgins. The script is quite mediocre. Dialogue isn’t great, the plot moves rather predictably and the whole thing is a kind of paint-by-numbers affair. Dull & Boring by modern standards.

Sound
Original music and songs written by Les Baxter with most songs performed by Mamie Van Doren and one by Eddie Cochran. The songs are somewhat subpar 50’s pop songs, but they’re inoffensive enough, though with names like “Cottonpicker” and “Oobala Baby” you really can’t expect much.

Conclusion
Untamed Youth has very few bright spots, but it does have some high points (if you know what I--shit, sorry). It’s a low budget musical drama and nothing more. It’s not really memorable, certainly not good, and there’s no sea monsters or werewolves or space invaders to really justify watching it for crazy guilty pleasure fun.