Child marriage in the mountain hinterlands is the topic of this low-budget exploitation film, billed as "A throbbing drama of shackled youth." Progressive schoolteacher Miss Carol (Diana Durrell) fights to abolish the institution of child marriage in her native community of Thunderhead Mountain with the help of her fiance Charles (Frank Martin), who works in the state capital as an assistant state's attorney, while crooked moonshiner Jake Bolby (Warner Richmond) schemes to wed young Jennie Colton (Shirley Mills) by framing her mother for her father's murder, much to the dismay of Jennie's sweetheart, Freddie (Bob Bollinger).Sensation and scandal were the stock-in-trade of exploitation films, which were made on low budgets by independent studios and producers. Like many exploitation films of the time, it used socially redeeming messages to justify the showing of titillating content that the large studios, who subscribed to Hollywood's self-regulating Production Code, wouldn't touch. These films were calculated to be shocking, but their shock value usually diminished over time until they eventually came to be appreciated by audiences mostly for their unintended humor. In contrast, Child Bride might well be more shocking to viewers today than it was intended to be by its makers, director/screenwriter Harry J. Revier and producer, Raymond L. Friedgen.
What makes Child Bride shocking today is its flirtation with pubescent eroticism, the only non-standard feature of an otherwise standard poverty-row potboiler. Twelve-year-old Shirley Mills occupies center stage on two levels: an actress whose talent is immediately appearent, her Shirley Temple-like style of acting and irrepressible presence standing out in the midst of a mostly mediocre cast, but also a nymphet costumed in obviously outgrown dresses which highlight her legs and budding breasts. She also shows more skin in this film than would have been possible for an adult actress at the time, mainly in a swimmin'-hole sequence in which she is spied upon by Jake. It's a sequence that, to my mind, is more sensual than sexual when viewed in context, and shows her innate propriety and natural lack of shame. It also spotlights Jennie's puppy-love relationship with Freddie, which is affectionate and intimate without being sexual, but it's also a sequence that no amount of defense will redeem to someone determined to find something inappropriate (to give some context, art-house director Catherine Breillat, in her films of recent decades, treats the theme of pubescent eroticism more seriously, and more explicitly: compared to films such as 36 Fillette and Fat Girl, Child Bride comes out looking like Little Women). It has to be said about Jennie that there is nothing sexually precocious about her character, nor is she shown to be an object of lust to anyone but Jake, who's had plenty of chances to be pegged as a villain by this time, and it goes without saying that she comes through her experience in the film with her innocence and faith in human nature intact.
The film's treatment of Jennie hits present-day sensitivities in a way that nearly guarantees that we forget the other elements of the film: the lurid melodrama, the cartoonish picture of mountaineers, the confusing and sudden finale, in a word all the bad-movie characteristics we have come to cherish. Actually, the outdoor scenes are effectively and beautifully shot, and if the characters are mostly corn-pone stereotypes, the extras used in this picture have an appropriately hard-bitten look that suggests the hard life of the mountains. Some typical bad-film moments include Charles's pleas to the governor to support anti-child marriage legislation, Miss Carol's narrow escape from a tarring and feathering by Jake and his henchmen for stirrin' up trouble, and the appearance of midget Angelo (Angelo Rossitto, credited as Don Barrett) along with his dim, oversize buddy Happy (Al Bannon), along with a typically jolly Rin-Tin-Tin-like dog named Ritz.
The film benefits greatly from Shirley Mills's (b. 1926) appearance, which was her first in films and shows her as a skilled professional even at the age of twelve. She went on to a busy career in the forties and fifties in films and later, television, a career highlight being John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940) in which she appeared as Ruthie Joad. In addition to acting in feature roles, she was a talented dancer and appeared in several films during the war with a dance group called the "Jivin' Jacks and Jills." She also worked in photo and ad modeling, night clubs and the stage. She went into business in the sixties, first in the computer data processing field and later as an independent entrepreneur. After retirement she made frequent appearances at movie conventions. In 2009, the 83-year-old Mills ceased to make public appearances due to bad health. We wish Ms. Mills all the best. Her official website has a page devoted to Child Bride as well as to other films of her career.
Because the film has passed into the public domain, I found this film at the Internet Archive, where it is hosted in a few formats including one suitable for burning to DVD. But according to the Internet Movie Database, the film is also available commercially on DVD through Amazon.
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