Test Tube Babies (1948)

Director:

W. Merle Connell

Writer:

Richard S. McMahan (writer)

Release Date:

15 January 1951 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A happily married couple has been trying to have a baby with no luck. They discover that the husband is sterile...

Plot Keywords:

Artificial Insemination | Exploitation | Sex Education

Cast

Dorothy Duke	...	Cathy Bennett
William Thomason	...	George Bennett
Timothy Farrell	...	Dr. Wright
Peggy Roach	...	Cathy's Mother
John Michael	...	Frank Grover
Mary Lou Reckow	...	Dolores LaFleur
Stacey Alexander	...	Don Williams
Georgie Barton	...	Betty Williams
Zona Siggins	...	Nurse Mason
Guy Gordon	...	Phil
Bebe Berto	...	Jerry
Gine Franklin	...	Ralph
Helen Cogan	...	Grace
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Monica Davis	...	Nurse in inserts

Also Known As:

Blessed Are They (USA) (reissue title)
Sins of Love (USA) (reissue title)
The Pill (USA) (reissue title (recut version))

Runtime:

USA:70 min (recut version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:(Banned) (1950) | Finland:(Banned) (1948) | Sweden:15

Company:

Screen Classics (II)

Movie Connections:

Featured in Sex and Buttered Popcorn (1989)

Proof that PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is far from the worst film ever made!!

TEST TUBE BABIES is a sleazy and horrid little film that is actually much worse than Ed Wood's "masterpiece", PLAN 9! In every conceivable way (like the pun?), it's worse--the acting, the writing, the directing, the sets and the stripping (yes, I did say "stripping").

This film purports to be an educational film that is for adults who want to learn about the new miracle of artificial insemination (not, actually, "test tube babies" as the title would seem to indicate). However, apart from a very boring and poorly written last 1/3 of the movie (punctuated with a gratuitous nude scene), there is nothing educational about this mess. In fact, it's a soft-core porn movie by today's standards and an X-rated film for 1948! There is nothing educational about showing the young bride parading around the house in a see-through nightgown, a "wild" party where one of the females strips for her friends (where she and the female "friends" look like they really were either strippers or prostitutes), and when the young wife takes off her clothes in the doctor's office and you get a quick glimpse of her totally naked body! For 1948, this is VERY hot stuff, though audiences today might find it all pretty tame and it would have received an R rating.

But what hasn't changed over the years is the pathetic nature of the film from a technical standpoint--in 1948 as in now, it's a terrible film. The acting is very amateurish most of the time--with a blonde at the party and the young wife often speaking as if they're dyslexic and reading from cue cards, the husband mispronouncing the word "gynacologist", a doctor with the charisma of a tomato and the use of strippers/prostitutes for the female roles. And, when mistakes were made, they simply stayed in the film because the filmmakers seemed unwilling to edit anything! If PLAN 9 deserved to receive a score of 1 from so many viewers, shouldn't it be possible to give TEST TUBE BABIES some score even lower?!

My wife watched this film with me and is now angry that she lost an hour of her life that she can never get back. I guess I owe her some flowers or a back rub!