Director: Boaz Davidson
Cast: Timothy Weid, Mary Cannon, T. K. Carter

Often when I think way back to when I was much younger than I am today, in some ways I am struck about how in some ways I was more intelligent than usual. When I was five years old, I drew a long and complicated map detailing the route between my home and my school that was over a mile away, and didn't make one mistake. My parents were amazed at what I did, which struck me as kind of odd, because I felt that what I did was just an ordinary kind of project. A few years later, I remember walking home from school while my older brother and one of his friends were about fifty feet behind me. Though I knew my brother and his friend were behind me, I told myself, "Don't bother them, don't show you are a pesky brother and little kid by interfering with their conversation." When my brother's friend then departed, my brother ran up to me and seemed confused as to why I hadn't joined them. Yes, I sure had some smarts when I was a child. But when I think about my childhood some more, I am forced to admit that I also had the opposites, some "dumbs". When I was very young, I had my theories as to the explanation as to where babies came from, theories that were very bizarre and made me feel embarrassed when I learned the truth several years later. Later on, I seem to recall that it took me a little longer than other kids to fully realize that Santa Claus and his abilities just couldn't be possible in this world of ours. And for some reason, there was a period in my childhood that thought painting road marks on highways and other kinds of roads was the best possible job a person could ever get.

As I grew older, I started to learn more and more about life, and I started to get smarter and smarter. Still, when I was in my teenage years, I certainly made my share of dumb decisions. But all the same, I learned from various sources that there were some actions that certain teenagers made that never made any sense to me. Getting drunk on alcohol? You have a high chance of getting caught or subsequently getting in trouble some other way. Taking drugs? Even just one little hit of an illegal narcotic could really screw up your life. And then there are teenagers who get sexually involved with other teenagers. That seemed like one of the craziest things a teenager could do. One reason being that most teenagers don't seem ready or prepared to handle a deep romantic relationship. There is also the fact that if you have sex, there is a chance of pregnancy happening even if you think you are taking all the proper precautions, let alone getting some sort of disease. When I was a teenager, I saw all those potential problems, so I swore to myself that I wouldn't get sexually involved until I was definitely prepared for it. That seemed logical to me, but as you probably know, many teenagers haven't taken the time to stop and first think things through about this issue. Why is this so? Well, I guess one reason is that every teenager makes his or her own stupid decisions, such as I did - some teenagers may be more susceptible to other things than other teenagers. I think another reason is that teenagers have a lot of active hormones going on in their body, and they need some kind of relief from it. Also, love seems so wonderful to many people, including teenagers, so teenagers may seek some way of making the experience even more pleasurable.

When it comes to movies, there haven't been a huge number of movies concerning teenage couples dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, at least dealing with it for the most part of the movie. That's kind of bad, because if there were more such films dealing honestly with the issue, it could teach real teenagers the possible consequences. When I finally managed to track down Seed Of Innocence after many years of searching for it after learning what it concerned - a teenage couple dealing with an unplanned pregnancy - I actually wasn't that confident that I would get an in-depth and realistic look at such a scenario. That's because the movie was a Golan-Globus production, one of their first efforts after buying Cannon Films just a short time earlier. Also, the movie was directed (and co-written) by Boaz Davidson, who just a short time earlier had made the Israeli international megahit Lemon Popsicle, which was a comedy about horny youths on the prowl, with Davidson making a few years later the American (and Cannon) remake, The Last American Virgin. But the idea of a serious theme being made by schlockmeisters made me curious about the movie all the same. The movie concerns two American teenagers, Danny (Timothy Wead) who is of driving age (despite what the poster for the movie shown to the right of this paragraph claims), and Alice (Mary Cannon) of statutory rape age, who are deeply in love and are having sex. It should come as no surprise that Alice eventually (actually, very quickly) gets pregnant, and once the couple's parents find out, all hell breaks loose. Alice is shipped off to a convent to quietly have the baby and subsequently get it adopted, while Danny's father blocks all contact between the two youths. Danny manages to track down Alice, and the two escape, deciding to go to New York City to live and take care of their baby once it is born. When arriving in New York City, they are eventually helped by a friendly streetwise young man who calls himself "Captain" (T. K. Carter, The Thing), and they get a place to stay. What follows are some good times for the couple such as the birth of their baby, as well as bad times like struggling for money to support themselves... but there is a feeling that eventually things will turn permanently bad for both Danny and Alice.

As you could probably see from that plot description, Seed Of Innocence flirts with a lot more seriousness than most other Cannon movies of the 1980s. But even when the movie is at any point trying to be sober-minded, it often all the same is directed very inconsistently. The opening sex scene (with nudity by both leads) kind of starts things off in a sleazy fashion, and there is also a completely gratuitous scene in a burlesque house later on. That's it for sexual material, but that's overshadowed by the weird feeling generated in the first third of the movie before the two lovers flee the Illinois countryside to New York City. Maybe the fact that director Davidson was not shooting on his home turf of Israel explains why Illinois in this movie doesn't feel authentic and feels artificial instead. It also feels really cheap and tacky at times, such as the scenes taking place in the convent. When things move to New York City, the direction does improve somewhat. The movie is often still cheaply executed (the hospital delivery room scene is completely filmed with tight close-ups) Davidson successfully manages to capture early '80s N.Y.C. with all of its worn, gritty, and often dangerous features before it was cleaned up some years later. Davidson also manages to throw in some interesting visuals in this section such as a sweeping foot chase across several city blocks. But even then, Davidson doesn't seem to be able to find a consistent tone to this drama. I realize that this story has both ups and downs, but the ups and dows should all the same come from one world and seem to fit comfortably together. Here, the lighter moments (sometimes executed with strident "happy" music in the background) and the darker and solemn moments often seem to come from two different stories each told with different attitudes.

As a result of the somewhat schizophrenic and low budget direction of Seed Of Innocence, it's hard to get involved with this story, but there are other problems that are just as much as a hinderance. Due to Davidson both directing and co-writing, he has to share a lot of blame for the unsatisfying portrayal of most of the characters. I admit that despite being generally written as a stereotypical African-American street hustler and wiseguy (and you can probably - and sadly - guess the eventual fate of this character), the "Captain" character has a lot of energy and heart thanks to actor T. K. Carter, who also is careful not to go overboard with the character's fun-loving attitude. He's tolerable, which is more than you can say for the rest of the characters. The worst characters in the movie are the family members of the young couple. The parents get very little screen time and very little to say, and what they do get to say comes across more as convenient for the story to move on instead of showing real personality and real opinion that could have added some real dramatic depth and made us see things through their eyes. (Alice, by the way, has a brother - who is never named, by the way - whose only purposes in the movie seem to be to punch out Danny for knocking up his sister, and then subsequently driving Alice to the convent.) Things are just as bad for the portrayal of the young couple. For starters, both of them are played by actors who are clearly too old to be playing teenagers, which instantly makes it difficult to believe these are naive adolescents who don't know all the harsh realities of life. Making matters worse is that actors Weid and Cannon can't act in a way that comes across as naive adolescents. Weid has a kind of gee-whiz attitude, while Cannon pretty much stays at one particular note through the entire running time. It's pretty easy to see why both Weid and Cannon didn't have much of an acting career after making this movie.

But even if the leads of Seed Of Innocence had been cast with more capable and believable actors, the movie would still greatly suffer thanks to a very badly written script. It's not just the supporting characters that are weakly constructed. We never find out why Danny and Alice are in love. What do they see in each other, and what do they have in common? We never learn these things. They are introduced with that aforementioned sex scene, and then less than five minutes later there is the pregnancy discovery, leading then to a twenty-minute stretch where the two are apart and not about to communicate. Then when they are reunited, they almost immediately decide to go live in New York City with just a few seconds of discussion and consideration. During their stay in New York City, they never really have any moment where they discuss problems or issues in their lives in depth, always finding themselves hugging and forgiving less than a minute after things promised to be heating up. With these two characters being hopelessly underwritten, it should come as no surprise that other aspects of the script have some big faults. Shortly after the birth of their baby, the movie suddenly jumps ahead in time where their daughter is walking and celebrating her first birthday. There are also some lengthy sequences - Alice being chased down an alley, Danny encountering a psychotic customer at the greasy spoon he works at - that serve absolutely no purpose except to pad things out. And there are some scenes that make no sense, such as when upon the birth of his daughter, Danny calls his parents to give them the good news... and they don't seem the least bit upset about him bogth running away and having not contacted them for a long time. As well, the last scene of the movie (SPOILERS AHEAD) has Danny in court, but the exact offenses he's been charged with are never spoken out at any time. As you can see, Seed Of Innocence is a real mess. While it may be of interest to serious aficionados of Golan-Globus Cannon movies (especially since until recently, it was almost impossible to track down for decades after its scant theatrical and VHS releases), I think even they will see this early effort was the seed for further bad moviemaking to come from the Cannon company.

(Posted March 9, 2025)