PENROD AND SAM is not just a bad film, it's jaw-dropping in it's viciousness, condoned under the guise of "boys will boys". Booth Tarkington's novels of the Penrod character tell the tale of a mischievous trouble-making rascal but this Penrod is a truly psychotic, an extremely mean-spirited little bully who in "initations" to his clubhouse blindfolds the kids, has the gang kick them, locks them in a furnace while burning tobacco, pushes them down stairs in the basement while still blindfolded and for the final topper pours tar into their hair!! All the while snorting his evil little laugh throughout the film that suggests this punk grew up to be the Richard Widmark character in KISS OF DEATH!
The most disturbing part of all this is the director and screenwriter seem to feel it's funny to have these kids bullied, ostracized, and harassed, apparently acceptable since the victims are a spoiled rich cry baby and a blatantly effeminate kid who we are told is "not like other boys" and bluntly called "a pansy" by one of the gang. But then what do you expect from a film with one of the African-American children named "Vermin", and one "gag" that has Penrod running out the house and slapping the screen door hard against the back side of the black maid, with Penrod unconcerned and unapologetic.
Leon Janney as Penrod gives one of the worst child actor performances I've ever seen, he's believable if one-note as the brat but is comically awful when we see the "sad Penrod" grieving his dead dog with melodramatic gestures and grimaces that seem lifted from primitive silent movie shorts from the 1910's. Most of the kids (including Junior Coglan as "Sam", Penrod's best friend and partner in crime) are pretty bad here, not just their characters but their performances. Among the very few pleasures the film offers is an amusing performance by Elizabeth Patterson as the elderly, no-nonsense, off-key singing school teacher and Charles Seldon as the cranky banker who almost hates his pompous son as much as the gang does. ZaSu Pitts is pretty good as the smothering mother of the sissy kid but Johnny Arthur is bizarre as his equally effete father, a priss who calls his twelve-year-old son "darling". The movie ends with Penrod unrepentant from past shenanigans and launching another "initation".
The most disturbing part of all this is the director and screenwriter seem to feel it's funny to have these kids bullied, ostracized, and harassed, apparently acceptable since the victims are a spoiled rich cry baby and a blatantly effeminate kid who we are told is "not like other boys" and bluntly called "a pansy" by one of the gang. But then what do you expect from a film with one of the African-American children named "Vermin", and one "gag" that has Penrod running out the house and slapping the screen door hard against the back side of the black maid, with Penrod unconcerned and unapologetic.
Leon Janney as Penrod gives one of the worst child actor performances I've ever seen, he's believable if one-note as the brat but is comically awful when we see the "sad Penrod" grieving his dead dog with melodramatic gestures and grimaces that seem lifted from primitive silent movie shorts from the 1910's. Most of the kids (including Junior Coglan as "Sam", Penrod's best friend and partner in crime) are pretty bad here, not just their characters but their performances. Among the very few pleasures the film offers is an amusing performance by Elizabeth Patterson as the elderly, no-nonsense, off-key singing school teacher and Charles Seldon as the cranky banker who almost hates his pompous son as much as the gang does. ZaSu Pitts is pretty good as the smothering mother of the sissy kid but Johnny Arthur is bizarre as his equally effete father, a priss who calls his twelve-year-old son "darling". The movie ends with Penrod unrepentant from past shenanigans and launching another "initation".