In the 1940s, Val Lewton made quite a name for himself as a producer of low budget horror films. These weren't the traditional vampire or monster films, but instead focused more on psychological tension in order to hide the fact that the budgets didn't allow for fancy makeup. RKO did quite well with these films and today many "in the know" see Lewton as a great filmmaker.
Well, I guess even the best of them sometimes have a disappointing film, but WOW was this a B-I-G disappointment. It bore none of the earmarks of a Lewton film and instead had a painfully bad script with occasionally horrid acting. In addition, the plot had a very moralistic stance about kids running amok while the parents are working in defense plants during the war--but it also offered no answers and the kids in the film seemed ridiculously unrealistic and stupid. For example, the two leading characters are supposed to be nice young adults, but every time a degenerate tells them to do something shady they walk right into it like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm!! Can any teens be THAT stupid and still be called "good kids".
Even for a B-picture, this trite film is bad--really bad. And I also suspect if it didn't have Lewton's magic name associated with it, the rating would be even lower than a dismal 4.2. And, viewers might have been tempted to seek out the writers and hang them!!! Avoid this like the plague unless you have serious ambitions of seeing all of Lewton's films--even the very bad ones.
By the way, for the "Lewtonites" out there, you'll see several familiar faces that showed up in other Lewton films--not just Kent Smith but Elizabeth Russell as well.
Well, I guess even the best of them sometimes have a disappointing film, but WOW was this a B-I-G disappointment. It bore none of the earmarks of a Lewton film and instead had a painfully bad script with occasionally horrid acting. In addition, the plot had a very moralistic stance about kids running amok while the parents are working in defense plants during the war--but it also offered no answers and the kids in the film seemed ridiculously unrealistic and stupid. For example, the two leading characters are supposed to be nice young adults, but every time a degenerate tells them to do something shady they walk right into it like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm!! Can any teens be THAT stupid and still be called "good kids".
Even for a B-picture, this trite film is bad--really bad. And I also suspect if it didn't have Lewton's magic name associated with it, the rating would be even lower than a dismal 4.2. And, viewers might have been tempted to seek out the writers and hang them!!! Avoid this like the plague unless you have serious ambitions of seeing all of Lewton's films--even the very bad ones.
By the way, for the "Lewtonites" out there, you'll see several familiar faces that showed up in other Lewton films--not just Kent Smith but Elizabeth Russell as well.