Frank F

An excellent pre-code, depression-era film about the hardships and cruelty experienced by mistreated youth in a back-wood, uneducated, poor farming community. Jean Parker delivers an excellent performance depicting Mazie, an orphan who is under the foster care of cruel farmer Slag and his wife. Slag is beginning to look at his young, but well-developed ward Mazie in a not-very-fatherly way. Mazie's only friend, kind farm hand George Marshall, quits because of Slag's cruelty. George asks Mazie about herself and he promises to contact Mazie once he completes some research. Adam, a runnaway from a boys reform school, shows up one day while Mazie is eating alone by the stream. Despite being a bit scary acting, he only pesters her for food and keeps telling her to stay away. A friendship is developed between the two when Slag realizes that he can use Adam for free labor. All of the performances are spot-on. Arthur Byron makes an excellent heartless, despicable Slag. Tom Brown is a good boy at heart, who's only real crime was defending his mother from the beatings from his father.