Mom and Dad is a 1945 film directed by William Beaudine.
It is an Exploitation Film dealing with sex and teen pregnancy. Joan Blake is a fresh-faced, innocent young high school senior. She knows nothing about the birds and the bees, and her deeply conservative mother Sarah, who heads the local "Morals Committee", is determined to keep it that way. When Mr. Blackburn, a teacher at the high school, gives an extremely meek and vague lecture about sex ed, Sarah Blake and the committee have him fired.
Consequently Joan is vulnerable to the amorous attentions of Jack Griffin, a handsome pilot. Surprisingly, Jack actually loves Joan and seems to want more than a one-night stand... but unsurprisingly, Jack dies in a plane crash. And even less surprisingly, Joan finds out that she is knocked up.
Presented in the later portion of the film, and the real point of the movie, are films showing graphic depictions of the female anatomy, and live footage of actual childbirth. In some editions, another film is shown, which presents graphic images of the effects of syphillis and other STDs.
Mom and Dad was made in one week for $67,000, which even in the 1940s was very fast and cheap. Like other exploitation films of the era it was shown by exhibitors who rented out movie theaters, a way to avoid the censorship rules of The Hays Code. It is believed to have grossed at least $40 million in the 1940s and 1950s, making it one of the highest-grossing movies of that era.
No connection to Nicolas Cage vehicle Mom and Dad.
Tropes:
- Auto Erotica: Where Joan and Jack do it, in his car.
- B-Movie: Shot on the cheap on Monogram's lot, exhibited in road shows.
- Body Horror: The ghastly, horrifying, and apparently real footage of adults and babies suffering from the effects of syphillis.
- Cool Teacher: Mr. Blackburn, who talks to the kids about sex and STDs even though he knows it could get him in trouble. He does in fact get fired.
- Defiled Forever: Joan feels this way about losing her virginity, acting like she drowned a bus full of orphans.Joan: But I feel like a leper, unclean, and unable to associate with my friends.
- Dramatic Drop: Joan dramatically drops the dishes she's holding after hearing her father read a newspaper story about Jack's death.
- Educational Short:
- The interpolated short film about menstruation and childbirth is actually a pretty legit documentary of the menstrual cycle, fertilization, fetal development, and childbirth.
- The film about the physical effects of syphillis is more obviously an excuse to use Body Horror to shock the audience.
- Exploding Calendar: Shots of the pages falling off an exploding calendar serve as a Time-Passes Montage in which Joan frets about her belly expanding.
- Exploitation Film: By far the most successful one. The bulk of the movie, Joan's story, delivered much less than it promised, basically a soap opera story without any Fanservice much less sex. But the graphic footage of the female anatomy and childbirth was more explicit than just about anything else in this era outside of porn. Like with many exploitation films of the 1930s and 1940s, Mom and Dad was billed as an educational film in an effort to deceive/placate local censors.
- Mammy: The Blakes have the standard obese, servile Mammy, named Janetta. She doesn't tell her employers about Joan going out at night.
- Moral Guardians: Sarah, who is the closest thing to an antagonist the film has. In the opening scene she grossly overreacts to the sight of two guys drinking on the train. She flips her lid when Mr. Blackburn gives a sex ed lecture to the class, and gets him fired. She actually leads a group called the "Morals Committee.":
- No Periods, Period: Averted. The penny drops for Joan when she reads a letter from Jack, observing that "It was just a month ago today that I met you." She starts flipping through her calendar, obviously having figured out that she missed her period.
- The Noun and the Noun: Mom and Dad
- The Plot Reaper: Given how much Jack was crazy about Joan, he might have married her. If he didn't die in a plane crash that is.
- Re-Cut: There were different cuts of this film shown at different times of day, with the graphic childbirth footage omitted in earlier showings but included in later showings that were billed as "Men Only". The STD footage wasn't included in all showings. Apparently there were different endings, with the baby sometimes being stillborn and sometimes put up for adoption.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: The film cuts away when Joan and Jack kiss, and cuts back to them driving home with Joan looking agitated.
- Sexy Sweater Girl: Joan might be an innocent maid who isn't allowed to read a "hygiene book", but she knows that tight sweaters are good.
- Teen Pregnancy: Joan Blake, high school senior, gets knocked up.
- Title Drop: The opening titles decry the lack of sex ed in schools and state "This problem is a challenge to every Mom and Dad."
- Tomboyish Name: Possibly an Ironic Nickname. But for whatever reason Dave calls his very feminine sister Joan "Butch".
