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Tomorrow's Children
USA 1934
produced by Bryan Foy
directed by Crane Wilbur
starring Diane Sinclair, Donald Douglas, John Preston, Carlyle Moore jr, Sterling Holloway, W. Messenger Bellis, Hyram A. Hoover, Constance Kent, Lewis Gambart, Arthur Wanzer, Sarah Padden, Gene O'Brien, Frank LaRue, Lane Chandler, Dick Rush, Crane Wilbur, Ray Corrigan (= Ray 'Crash' Corrigan), Dave O'Brien
written by Wallace Thurman, Crane Wilbur
review by Mike Haberfelner
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17 year old Alice (Diane Sinclair) is a pretty regular girl who just
wants what every pretty regular girl wants: To marry her sweetheart Jim
(Carlyle Moore jr) and have kids with him - but at the time, that's
impossible, as she has to take care of her mother (Sarah Padden), her
unemployed and alcoholic father (Arthur Wanzer) and her siblings, all of
who suffer from physical or mental handicaps. Dr Brooks (Donald Douglas)
only means well when he sends the family the welfare ladies after seeing
what's going on at their home - but welfare thinks it's best to sterilize
the entire family, just to make sure they won't multiply no more,
suffering from hereditary issues all of them but Alice - a sterilization
that's completely backed and ordered by the courts. Now mom and dad don't
mind too much, as they don't want any more children as it is, but Alice is
mortified by this. Informed of this by Jim, Dr Brooks tries to convinve
the court to be lenient on sweet Alice, but no such luck, the laws are
very strict. It's only when it's found out that Alice isn't the real
daughter of her parents that the tides turn in her favour, but it takes
Jim, Dr Brooks and associates quite some time and quite a bit of alcohol
to get that truth out of her mum. Ultimately, the sterilization process is
stopped literally just before it's started ... Now on the
surface, Tomorrow's Children is anything but a good movie: It's not
very well told and relies way too heavily on clichées, makes its point
too bluntly while at the same time not not really tackling the core of the
problem (like who's to say which life is unworthy to live). At the same
time though, the film is a great low budget document of its time, picking
up a for its day very current topic and turning it into a piece of
exploitation that might be by no standards top of the crops, but much fun
from a nostalgia point of view.
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