Years after inflaming passions with pre-pubescent skinny-dip in Child Bride ('39), SHIRLEY MILES (billed here as Shirley O. Mills) does penance by appearing in the Protestant Film Commission's What Happened to Jo Jo?(1950). Shirley's friend Jo Jo Wheeler (SUE ENGLAND), a self-described "rattlebrain," pities the poor folks in the slums of Mulberry Street and suggests that the overage kids of her Christian Citizenship organization somehow help them.
Wandering past all the scary ethnic types that prowl the streets, Jo Jo is weirdly excited by it all: "I was thrilled! I was actually slumming!" All that changes however, when she's beaned on the head by a rock thrown by young and snarling RUSS (Satan's Sadists) TAMBLYN (billed here as "Rusty"). Fuck helping the kids, Jo Jo now wants to send Russ to reform school until she has a spiritual awakening in the courtroom: "I'm a Christian and I've just begun to understand what it means!"
Directed by EDWARD L. CAHN who, a few years later, would forsake Christian youth for the leather-clad specimens of AIP's Shake, Rattle, and Roll ('56), Dragstrip Girl ('57), and Motorcycle Gang ('57). And watch for former Charles Foster Cane, BUDDY SWAN, as a tough talking Protestant: "Eats! How about the eats?!"
Then a high-strung JEFF (The Giant Claw) MORROW learns that God Is in the Streets (1956) when he checks into a fleabag hotel and is driven nuts by REED (Gilligan's Island) JOHNSON twenty bucks to throw fruit at them, Morrow takes a gun and sets out to murder former wife PHYLLIS (Lois Lane) COATES. Oddly, he eventually winds up at the Salvation Army where he learns that, "You're never alone...You're never alone..."
Then it's off to Poland for Yellow Slippers, a weird featurette that looks like a surreal kiddie film fairy tale - produced by FCU "Illuzjon" on stylized sets - about "the orphan boy who became a sculptor." Based on legend, a blond-haired waif endures, beatings, runs off with an acrobatic troupe, and evades "Black Raphael," a murderous thief missing an ear, in order to join a group of Medieval artists who are carving the spectacular (and authentic) altar piece for the cathedral Krakow. Though meant to be inspirational, we were nevertheless rooting for Raphael...Buy this or burn in Hell.
--Video Jones
Format: DVD-R
Year: 1950s 1960s
Color: Color and B&W
Starring: Shirley Miles
Co-starring: Sue England
Other cast: Russ Tamblyn, Edward L. Chan, Buddy Swan, Jeff MOrrow, Reed Hadley, Russell Johnson, Phyllis Coates