The Violent Years

Dir: William Morgan

1956

**

I love a 1950s exploitation movie but some are much better than others. Written by the infamous Edward D. Wood Jr (or Ed Wood as he is more affectionately referred to), The Violent Years is one of those films whereby the trailer is so much better than the actual film itself. Full of iconic imagery and one-liners, the film is actually more successful when the visuals are used on snap-shot posters or when the dialogue is sampled in popular music (see Ministry’s 1989 album ‘The Mind is a Terrible Thing To Taste’). It’s one of those films where the poster has adorned many a student dormitory even though the students have never seen it. I do love a bit of Mystery Science Theater 3000 but it isn’t nice to mock older films because they didn’t have the same budget as modern films have but I do believe that movies such as The Violent Years are fair game. As much as I didn’t really like it, it is also fascinating from a historical angle. I’m a huge fan of film history and the 1950s American exploitation films are as interesting as they are puzzling. They depict a rather strange social mood of the time and played on the fears of an older generation. These films were made by young people and they were tongue-in-cheek films for young people, although they knew that the older generation would be outraged and both flock to see it and raise its profile by openly condemning it. Exploitation films such as The Violent Years are regularly discovered by a younger generation, and in some respects they never go out of retrospective fashion. It’s not a great film like I said but it has plenty of classical moments that I couldn’t help raising a smile to. It is ridiculous, badly acted and full of nonsensical moral preaching. The contradictory message of ‘work hard’ seems lost, when the parents of the juvenile delinquents are punished for working hard (because they have to to make ends meet) rather than looking after their kids. The juvenile delinquents are always of a wealthy background in these types of films, which I’ve always found to be a wonderfully delightful way of kicking the target audience and angering the sort of people that would essentially make these film the infamous cult movies that they are. Of course it isn’t just being spoiled that turns the kids to crime, it is also communism, a system of social organisation in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs, that is represented here by the murder of a policeman. It would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that so many gun-owning citizens still believe in such nonsense but I digress, it is important not to take such film seriously and remember that this story was written by the same man that wrote Bride of the Monster. Okay, so that is slightly unfair, as he also wrote Glen or Glenda, which is genius and Jail Bait which deserves far more credit than it has been given but The Violent Years is still as about as realistic and representative of actual social unrest as Godzilla is in Japan – ridiculous but a bit of fun.