Tomorrow's Children / Child Bride (Forbidden Fruit Vol. 5) Blu-ray

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Tomorrow's Children (1934) / Child Bride (1938)

Forbidden Fruit Vol. 5 Blu-ray

Exploitation films of the 1930s didn’t only warn citizens of the dangers of drugs and venereal disease. The genre brazenly confronted on a wide array of distasteful issues, as evidenced in this double feature of two of the most bizarre entries in the exploitation canon. Tomorrow’s Children is an exposé of eugenics, in which a young woman (Diane Sinclair) from a family of genetic degenerates is ordered by the court to be sterilized. Notorious even by today’s standards, Child Bride follows a crusading schoolteacher (Diana Durrell) as she tries to halt the practice of child marriage in a backwoods community, before it claims another innocent victim (Shirley Mills).

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Tomorrow's Children
A young woman wishes to marry her boyfriend and raise a family, but because her own family has been deemed "defective" by the state health authorities--her parents are lazy alcoholics who continue to have children, and her siblings (brothers here) are crippled, have mental problems or are jailed--she is ordered by a court to undergo sterilization so that her family's "defective genes" won't be passed on to any more children. Her boyfriend and a kindly priest desperately search for a way to stop the forced sterilization before it's too late

Child Bride
Jennie is a twelve-year-old girl living with her parents in extremely rural mountain country. Her schoolteacher, Miss Carol, though a mountain girl herself, has gone off to be educated and returned in hopes of stopping the tradition of child marriage which permeates the culture. Jennie's father Ira is a good man who tries to protect Miss Carol from the men who threaten her if she doesn't call off her crusade. One of these men, Jake Bolby, has his eye on little Jennie and plots to make her his bride.

Posters

Theatrical Release: July 1934 / March 2nd, 1938

Reviews More Reviews DVD Reviews

Review: Kino - Region 'A' - Blu-ray

Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	Kino - Region 'A' - Blu-ray
Runtime	Tomorrow's Children: 0:56:51.282 / Child Bride: 1:02:22.113
Video	1.33:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 31,134,713,996 bytes Tomorrow's Children: 13,443,106,368 bytes Child Bride: 15,260,298,816 bytes Video Bitrate: 28.06 / 29.12 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate Tomorrow's Childrenren Blu-ray:
Bitrate Child Bride Blu-ray:
Audio	LPCM Audio English 1536 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1536 kbps / 16-bit Commentary: Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Subtitles	None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Kino 1.33:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 31,134,713,996 bytes Tomorrow's Children: 13,443,106,368 bytes Child Bride: 15,260,298,816 bytes Video Bitrate: 28.06 / 29.12 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video Edition Details: • Audio commentary for Tomorrow’s Children by Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films • Audio commentary for Child Bride by film historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas • Tomorrow’s Children Trailer (2:02) Blu-ray Release Date: May 5th, 2020 Standard Blu-ray Case Chapters 8 / 9

Comments:

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (May2020): Kino have transferred another two of their "Forbidden Fruit" series to Blu-ray. Volume 5 has Tomorrow's Children (19334) and Child Bride (1936).

The image quality on Tomorrow's Children is the superior of the two - but also has anomalies (see below). Child Bride has more imperfections with frequent damage (see bottom capture) but both - in the final tally - are watchable for what the content is offering. The audio is of similar quality to the video - occasionally weak, but audible dialogue and some poor effects. Part of the appeal here are the low budget production quality. It adds to the 'camp' appeal.

Kino offer no subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

Some of the best parts of this Kino Blu-ray package are the supplements. We get an audio commentary for Tomorrow's Children by Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films, where he gives background and context on the film including the opening text screen rationale. Plus we get second commentary for Child Bride by film historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas who has written seven books on exploitation cinema (ex. Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study) with a focus on gender politics. I agree with her that the film seems even more challenging to watch today with a more contemporary understanding of child sexuality as a deeply taboo and transgressive subject. She dives into some pretty delicate subject matter in a fair an honest way. Both commentaries are worth more than the films in terms of cinephile value, imo.

Well, not your usual entertainment fare. Like Kino's other Blu-rays; Unashamed / Elysia (nudity, nudist camps), Mom and Dad, (STDs, birth control), Marihuana and/ Narcotic (drugs) these films represent a curiosity of both topical concerns of the past as well as the extent of early film exploitation-ism. In the case of these two - we are 'shocked' to see a skewed view of potential forced sterilization, child birth, transmitted disease, race suicide etc. and in Child Bride the unsavory topic of child sexuality, forced marriage and human trafficking - the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labor and sexual slavery. Ughhh.

This also became an appealing factor for viewers who wanted to see the unusual concerns 'exploited' in the early days of cinema. It is amazing that these ever existed and a great distraction from the usual movie. Being relatively short at around an hour - they might make for a good start a Double-Feature night... especially the shock value on Child Bride, although I don't know what you would show afterward. The commentaries offer excellent analysis and background. This 'weird' cinema remains its own level of unique fascination.