Child Bride (1938)

Child Bride of the Ozarks
Child Brides
Dust to Dust

Cast:

Shirley Mills is Jennie Colton
Bob Bollinger is Freddie
Dorothy Carrol is Flora Colton
Diana Durrell is Miss Carol
Warner Richmond is Jake Bolby
Angelo "The Master from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" Rossitto is Angelo (as Don Barrett)

What the box says:

Exploitation feature about a schoolteacher who tries to stop the hillbillies' practice of marrying young girls. Includes a notorious "skinny-dipping" scene.

Plot:

A disclaimer informs us this movie isn’t meant to ridicule or defend the cultural practices of mountain folk but to stop child marriage.

Flora Colton wakes her daughter, Jennie who does her chores.

Freddy, Jennie’s friend stops by to visit her. Hog sloppin’ ensues and Jennie falls into the mud. Hilarity…

As Jennie and Freddy walk to school, they hear a shot and find Freddy’s father, Mike, has been shot. We see the villainous Jake Bolby sneak off. Jennie gets her parents to help Mike. The kids get sent on to school. Mike vows to get the shooter.

At school, after a few incidents of tomfoolery, Miss Carol lets the spelling test ensue.

Later, Miss Carol’s fiancé, Charles, pays her a surprise visit. He wants to marry and for her to abandon her futile quest to educate the mountain folk. Carol wants child marriage to be outlawed.

Back in the big city, Charles starts convincing the governor to support the child marriage ban proposal.

Carol tries convincing women to want to be educated and to convince the men not to marry young girls. The men don’t cotton to her stance no-sireeeeeeeee-bob. Meanwhile Charles keeps working on the governor.

At the still, Jake demands that Angelo, the midget, give him the money for Ira, Jennie’s father. He refuses. Jake starts roughing him up. Yes, redneck midget beat-down ensues until Ira shows up and beats Jake who vows revenge.

Several men want to run Carol out of the area. Jake is just the man to lead them into action. That night, a group of masked torch carrying goons drag her through the woods. Angelo tells Jennie and her parents about the men. Ira grabs his shotgun.

Needless to say, the men don’t cotton to Carol stirring up ideas they don’t like. As they get ready to tar and feather her, Ira and Angelo arrive at the nick of time. Unmasking them, Ira whoops Jake again. Jake swears vengeance again.

The next day, Freddy and Jennie head to the creek to swim. However, she won’t go swimming with him anymore because of their differences. She takes the plunge and the skinny dipping ensues. Jake spies on her from a non-Bette Middler Distance. Freddy hears him and warns Jennie.

At the town, someone starts a rumor about Flora running around with Jake in front of the drunken Ira.

Ira staggers home and is convinced that Flora has been stepping out on him. Slapping her around, Flora whoops him though sadly without the cast iron skillet. Jake sneaks into the house and kills Ira.

Jennie gets home and finds her mother beaten. She checks on her father and tries to wake him up to no avail when Jake arrives. The charming fellow claims that Flora killed her husband but will take the body and make it look like an accident.

The next day, some men find Ira’s body. Funeral ensues.

Several months pass, Jake wants Flora to give Jennie to him in marriage. If not, he’ll see Flora hang.

Later, several men tell Jake about the marriage law about to be passed.

Jake announces his intentions to Jennie. She’ll go along with it if she doesn’t want her mother to hang. He also tells her to stay away from Freddy. Freddy pays her a visit. Jennie who reveals she has to marry Jake and can’t go to school anymore.

Freddy tells Miss Carol about Jennie’s upcoming nuptials.

Wedding fu.

Somehow the Deliverance quote about having a "right purty mouth" takes right hand turn into Freaksylvania... Ewwww dirty old man kissing a 12 year old. Where’s Law & Order: SVU when you really need them? ICE-T laying thte beatdown on the guy would be truly appreciated at this point...

Charles is posting signs about the new child marriage ban. Carol realizes the law protects Jennie.

Jake takes Jennie to his cabin. The long slow walk ensues. As Jake is about to go from dirty old man to dirty old sex offender a shot kills him. Jennie finds Freddy with a shotgun. They’ll get married when they’re old enough.

What I say:

Pre-MPAA era movies were sort of like a race to develop the atomic weapons. OK, that's not a fair description but the low-budget exploitation realm kept pushing the boundaries. The Hayes Code which was established some sort of moral code for movies was easily avoided if the movie wasn't made in the studio system or claimed to be an educational film. The envelope was slowly being opened by Kroger Babb who milked every cent possible from the infamous "hygiene" movies like Mom and Dad. Though nowadays, movies like Reefer Madness are probably more of the famous attempts of low budget educational movies from the 1930s.

How was Child Bride able to get away with everything? One of the production codes rules was if the purpose wasn't for entertainment. For all intents and purposes, Child Bride was created to be an educational film which allowed it to try to be more titillating. The entire "this is bad and why it shouldn't be done but now lets get back to the more footage of topless tribal dancers." Now the titillation from Child Bride provides, it is more on par with just being plain creepy than anything else.

The realm of 1970s hicksploitation was normally about moonshine and Claudia Jennings. Nice combination. Later, it became the Dukes of Hazzard. Though decades before, true "hicksploitation" was born...To this day, some people still think of anywhere south as backwoods and a bunch on inbred rednecks. After Ned Beatty was "deliveranced" by a bunch of proctologically obsessed rednecks saying things like the immortal and immoral "squeal like a pig." Well, don't think that one geographic location has the copyright on stupidity because if there is anything that is a bit more universal than stupidity I'd like to know what it is.

It's nice to know that something out there that some movies are able to elevate the Beverly Hillbillies to highbrow humor quality. Basically, directors think that putting some guys in bib overalls with straw hats and let the bad Suthern accents fly is all they need to do... That wasn't a mispellin'...("Ah rekkin yu ain't hurd a true Suthern akcent...") Movies seem to love to have easy targets to mock. In fact, it is just so easy for movies to still portray the South as a hotbed of ignorance, moonshine, and cousin marrying (We all know that cousin marrying is only prevalent in Shelbyville [Got to have a Simpsons injoke every so often]).

There is a difference between laughing at or laughing with others. However, most movies seem to be more on the side of the cheap laugh. This isn't some rant on political correctness. Who is going to come out and try stop Southern stereotypes? Very few people are going to try and stop movies that mock the South. Boycotters look like loons. Ever heard of any NASCAR fans protesting the Wil Ferrell movie Talladega Nights: the Legend of Rickie Bobbie?

What exactly is so controversial about this movie? Child marriage isn't a big problem today in the US. I'm sure most people have grandparents or great aunts and uncles that recall getting married younger than what is considered acceptable today. Though the fact in this movie, it seems that every guy who wants to marry a young girl who is barely old enough to be their grandchild is certainly creepy. Well, the skinny dipping scene is the reason this movie is remembered today and considered so much more scandalous in the 1930s. While Jake watches some old crone pops up mentions to Jake that Jennie is "purty." Shirley Mills who played Jennie was only 12 at the time it was filmed. It is surprising that no one was arrested for the movie. Today, photographers get in trouble for doing anything that is risque if they're photographing anyone underage: remember the Jessica Biel photos from a few years back.

Strange that in the country a group of masked guys with torches try to tar and feather to scare people away they don't want around. The fact that a group of masked men trying to scare away people they feel are interfering with their ways couldn' t happen. They are never mentioned as the Klan but who else could they be intended to portray? By the late 1930s, the Klan had already starting to lose a lot of steam it gained after it was re-estabalished in the 1920s. Even though, Child Bride didn't have any message about politics or segregation. The fact of someone coming from outside and trying to change the ways would definitely be a cause to drive them out. Yes, it wasn't just a joke about tarring and feathering someone to drive them away. There were several actual cases of people being tarred and feathered.

We have the heroic midget who is almost up there with Bob from Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town. Angelo may have been tossed around by the uber-evil and creepy Jake. He still wouldn't cow tow to anyone. When he learned of the teacher being in trouble, he went to get help rather than snivel in fear. Angelo Rossitto had a career almost as long and on par with Billy Barty's. That is quite an accomplishment.

A few things in the movies are bit ambigious. How did Ira die? Though with Jake wanting to get him so badly, it would only make sense for him to kill Ira and then blackmail Flora into giving her permission to allowing him to marrying Jennie. That almost sounds like a redneck version of Shakespeare. However, don't take this movie as some sort of back woods version of Nabakov's Lolita. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to the Police's "Don't Stand so Close to Me" while writing this.

Quotable Dialogue
"You forgot them goldurn things."
"You can't drown a pig in mud."
"We've got to marry 'em young, we're short of women."
"Is daddy drunk again?"
Morals of the Story
Country boys must wear ratty straw hats.
All country folks are required to make moonshine with their own stills.
One room schoolhouses must have pirds in the faters.
Teachers are commonly tarred and feathered.
Storms appear in 4 seconds.
Dolls are dowry presents.