NFR Project: 'Mom and Dad' (1944)

 

NFR Project: “Mom and Dad”

Dir: William Beaudine

Scr: Mildred Horn

Pho: Marcel LePicard

Ed: Richard Currier

Premiere: Jan. 3, 1944

97 min.

Oh, boy. Is this really an exploitation film? It is if you consider how it was distributed throughout the country. Banned from movie theaters due to its content, it was shown on the fly – in rented halls in small towns across America. It was promoted by a huckster named Kroger Babb, who made it seem like a shocking, revelatory, forbidden insight into SEX. It made Babb a fortune.

More than 300 prints of the film were struck off, and Babb created a storm of controversy wherever he intended to show the film. His employees would send in letters of protest to the local authorities, and a massive amount of advertisements would appear in local papers before the screenings. This would whip up the curious, and drive attendance. Sex “lecturers” would accompany the film, taking questions from audiences. Printed materials associated with sex education would be sold at the screenings as well.

However, it is not so much an exploitation film as it is a sex hygiene film. It has at its core three short clinical films – one of the gestation process and a woman giving birth, a second of a Caesarian section, and lastly one that shows the effects of late-stage venereal disease. These are anything but titillating. In fact, they are horrifying. However, they were as close as you could get the time to serious, accurate information about what was called then “sex hygiene,” or sex education.

The clinical films came at the end of the movie. To pad out the film’s length, these films were imbedded into a narrative about a girl whose mother refuses to teach her about sex. As a result, she “goes too far” with a handsome stranger and finds herself pregnant. Ashamed, she reveals her condition to the family and is sent back East to have the child, far away from her hometown.

The fictional section of the film was produced on a bare-bones budget and directed by a man best known for his low-budget films, William Beaudine. The acting is wooden, the script is turgid and awful. It serves as a cautionary tale and introduction to the material covered at the film’s end.

Anyone in their right mind seeing these films would not be inspired to have sex. Rather, they would be disgusted by the whole affair and turned off from the prospect. Babb didn’t care. He was just making a buck.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: National Velvet.