Too Soon to Love ** (1960, Jennifer West, Richard Evans, Warren Parker, Ralph Manza, Jack Nicholson) – Classic Movie Review 7852

Jack Nicholson co-stars as Buddy in the tolerable 1960 unplanned pregnancy sex/ romantic exploitation drama Too Soon to Love, the feature film directorial debut of Richard Rush, aiming at the drive-in market.

It stars Jennifer West, Richard Evans, Warren Parker, and Ralph Manza in a moral tale of unmarried teenage lovers, high school students, Cathy (Jennifer West) and Jim (Richard Evans), and their unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, Buddy tries to steal Cathy away from Jim.

The film is by turns tame (the sex) and overheated (the issues), and some of the acting under par, but it retains its interest as a period artifact, and as an early film of Evans and Nicholson, who give striking turns, and sheds a lot of light on the attitudes of the era. It has a small place among the first of the American Sixties new wave of film-making.

The film was made for $50,000 and sold to Universal Pictures for $250,000.

Too Soon to Love is written by László Görög [Laszlo Gorog] (story and screenplay), Richard Rush (story and screenplay) and Francis Ford Coppola (story). It was Coppola’s first writing assignment, though director Richard Rush said ‘he had more youth than discipline’.

Nicholson was cast after appearing in The Cry Baby Killer (1958) and went on to make two more films with Rush: Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) and Psych-Out (1968).

It is on DVD in a double bill with Unwed Mother (1958) with Norma Moore and Robert Vaughn.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7852

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