Teenage Mother
(1967)
Director: Jerry Gross
Cast: Arlene Farber, Frederick Riccio, Julie Ange
I think that
for most of us, the one person that concerns us the most is in fact
ourselves. I realize with that statement, that there will be a lot of
people who will instantly protest it, claiming that it is one of the
most selfish things that they have ever heard. In response, I will tell
those people just to think about it for a while, more specifically
think about their own lives and what they do on a day to day basis.
Those people will see that most of the things a person does a day is
for their own good. Nothing selfish about that - it's just plain old
human nature. But there are plenty of times when we think of others.
Many times it's when we think of our friends and our loved ones, and
the well-being of these people. At the same time, there are a lot of
times when we think of others in a way that has us wondering what
others think of us. All of us have accomplishments that we hope others
have seen and as a result these people think highly of us. In my case,
one of my accomplishments I am proud of and I hope people think highly
of is the work I have done on my web site. I've been doing this web
site for over fourteen years, and I feel much rewarded by all of my
efforts. But while we have accomplishments that we may be proud of, all
of us have skeletons in our closets that we are embarrassed by. I'll
admit a few that I have right now, and these skeletons also concern
this web site. When I look back at some of the reviews I have written
in the past, I am embarrassed by them. Sometimes I think, "You moron -
how could
you have written something so dumb?" In fact, I have seriously
considered several times rewriting some of these reviews, but I've
ultimately decided not to because not only would such action seem
dishonest to me, these certain reviews as they are serve as a reminder
to me to write better or face even more embarrassment.
As I said, everyone has embarrassments in the past. This
includes people who we hold in high esteem, like politicians. In fact,
if you look at the movie world, not just at movie critics who review
obscure movies, you will find a great deal of people in this world who
have some major embarrassments in their film-related worlds. These
embarrassments can happen at any time to these people. There are plenty
of people in the film world who managed to establish themselves as
people to be admired, then made a slip-up that they will be regretting
for the rest of their lives. For example, with the movie Showgirls,
it was not only a humiliation for the famous director Paul Verhoeven,
but also for famous screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. And I am sure that
actor Brian Dennehy to this day is repeatedly asking himself, "What
were you thinking?!?" when he agreed to take off his clothes in the
movie The Belly
Of An Architect.
But for most people in the film world, their embarrassments come from
the early years of their film career, when they were starting off and
would take any job so that they would be able to put food on the table.
One famous case of this was with Paul Newman, who was so embarrassed by
his film debut (The
Silver Chalice),
he wrote a letter of apology to his local newspaper when a TV station
in his area scheduled an airing of the movie. (Of course, Newman's
published letter resulted in the TV station getting
high ratings when they aired the movie.) Other embarrassing debuts
include Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hercules In New York,
and Sylvester Stallone in A Party At Kitty And
Stud's.
As you have probably guessed by now, the movie being
reviewed here - Teenage
Mother
- not only has the debut of a yet-to-be-famous actor, but a debut that
this now-famous actor is probably very embarrassed by. The actor in
question happens to be comedian Fred Willard (Cracking
Up), who in recent years has appeared in popular movies such
as Anchorman
and American
Wedding. I suspect that he is embarrassed by this movie for more
than one reason. The most obvious reason is the salacious subject
matter
of the movie, though another reason would be because it was made by the
notorious schlockmeister Jerry Gross, who in his long career created
and/or distributed
cheap schlock such as I Spit On Your Grave
and Girl On A
Chain Gang.
Fred Willard making his debut in a movie written and directed by Jerry
Gross? I knew this was a movie I had to see. The plot centers around a
high school and the people in it.
When the movie opens, the school has just hired a new teacher, Erika
Petersen. Erika has come all the way from Sweden to be the school's sex
education teacher. Not all of her new students are friendly towards her
- one student named Duke is a real creep, not just towards her, but
also to his former girlfriend Arlene (Farber, The French Connection).
Arlene, while still showing some feeling towards Duke, is currently in
a new relationship with her dopey boyfriend Tony. She loves Tony enough
that she wants to have sex with him, and they eventually do. Not long
afterwards, she announces to Tony and her family (and pretty much
everyone else) that she is pregnant. This leads to a number of heated
consequences, including Arlene running away from home as well as the
parents thinking that Ms. Petersen's sex education classes are to blame
for the pregnancy. Can Ms. Petersen keep her job? More importantly,
what will Arlene end up doing?
I
am sure that one of the things you are most curious about concerning Teenage Mother
- if not, the biggest thing - is how Fred Willard comes across in the
movie. Not wanting to imitate the movie's attitude of teasing the
audience for the longest time, I will start my critique of the movie by
telling you if Willard has plenty to be ashamed of. Actually, when it
comes to his performance, Willard doesn't really have anything to be
embarrassed about. Willard, who here is almost unrecognizable from how
he looked even just ten years later in his career, plays a rather minor
role as the school's coach, making only a few brief appearances during
the course of the movie. His acting here isn't exceptional, but neither
is it something to be humiliated about. In fact, his character comes
across better than any of Teenage Mother's
main characters. While Willard's character has the excuse of being a
minor character for being fairly featureless, there is no excuse for
the poor way that Erika, Duke, Arlene, and Tony come across. Although
these characters each have significant amounts of time onscreen, none
of them become flesh and blood characters. For example, Duke is a guy
who likes to crack jokes, deal drugs, and bully characters around. But
we never see what is motivating him, or anything else that makes us
understand why he is such a jerk. Another example of this is with the
character of Tony. When he hears the big announcement from his
girlfriend
that she is pregnant, how does he react? Actually, I'm not even sure if
you can label what he immediately does as a reaction. He shows no big
emotion at all, no
panic at the prospect of his planned future possibly being changed in a
way that would not be his first choice. He just mutters a few lines of
dialogue in a way that's so passionless that it's no surprise that
Arlene subsequently decides to take him out of the picture and run away
from him.
I don't really blame the actors for how they come across
in this movie. The blame for how badly these characters come across
lies with writer and director Jerry Gross. He instantly gets some
demerit points for some real bad miscasting; the actor playing the
teenage Duke looks (at least) in his late 20s, and Arlene's best female
friend looks like she is in her 40s. Also, the actors can't be blamed
for the fact that much of their dialogue was obviously not recorded
during shooting, but was later (and very obviously) dubbed during
post-production. Gross also forces the cast to play some real tired
stereotypes. Should it come to a surprise to anyone that the school's
prudish librarian is a woman who wears glasses and looks close to
retirement age, or that Duke's drug supplier wears a hat and
sunglasses? From reading stuff like that, it should also come to no
surprise that Gross seems helpless behind the camera in other areas. I
realize that he was working with a really low budget, but that's no
excuse for not hearing anything when someone is slugged twice in the
stomach, or deciding to stage some scenes in hard to make out darkness
instead of rewriting the scenes to take place in brighter conditions. I
am sure that for some of you, stuff like that isn't a concern, and you
are just looking for the sleazy stuff. Well, I hate to be the bearer of
bad news, but for the most part Teenage Mother
- at least by today's standards - comes across as extremely tame. None
of the cast takes off their clothes, nor do we get to see any sex
scenes. In one scene when pornographic pictures are passed around, we
never get to see for ourselves what is in those pictures. An attempted
rape sequence doesn't get very far before the would-be rapist is scared
away, and drug taking is devoted to just one puff of a marijuana joint.
Oh, and remember Arlene's pregnancy? It turns out she
was not pregnant - she lied to her boyfriend and everyone else about it
for reasons that are never really made clear. As I said, Teenage Mother
fails to deliver on its sleazy promises for the most part. However,
near the very end of the movie, Jerry Gross pulls something out that is
so sleazy and gross that it feels like the entire movie is sordid. It
takes place at a school board meeting, where parents have been invited
to talk about how Ms. Petersen's sex education lessons have been
corrupting her students. In her defense, Petersen pulls out a film she
was preparing to show her students, a film showing the birth of a baby.
What follows is some of the most disgusting footage I have ever seen in
a film. The film, which is shown to us, begins with a closeup shot of a
spreadeagled woman showing off her, uh, lower regions. Then we get to
see the delightful image of a doctor jamming "universal obstetric
forceps" far up into that lower region. We then get to see the woman's
baby s-l-o-w-l-y pulled out by those forceps, bringing with it a lot of
bloody juice and other gruesome vaginal products. Although this birth
footage only lasts about three minutes long, it feels like an eternity,
coming across as so sick and repulsive that there is no titillation for
the audience, just a need for vomit bags. And after this birth footage
ends, Petersen is asked why she was going to show this. (A real valid
question, if you ask me.) And she answers, "They would have seen the
beauty and purity of the reproductive system!" Well, that line does
give Teenage
Mother's
audience a good laugh, but as you probably concluded, it isn't worth
sitting through nearly eighty minutes of incompetent writing and
directing, as well as a truly barf-inducing moment, to get a few
seconds of entertainment. Come to think of it, this movie might be a
good addition to modern high school sex education classes. Sex-related
matters in this movie come across as either so boring or so gross that
I'm sure it would reduce the teenage pregnancy rate.
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See also: High School Hellcats,
Hot Summer, Malibu
High
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