Mom and Dad is far the most successful exploitation/sex-hygiene film ever made, and not because of it's subject matter or it's production value. The main reason this little $65.000 film made over 22 million dollars in just under 11 years was because of Howard W. "Kroger" Babb, his carny like showmanship and unwavering promotion would always get 'em in the door, or as he would say "you gotta tell 'em to sell 'em". Shot by William "One Shot" Beaudine on a old Monogram lot in Hollywood over the course of a week, This film would go on to make Kroger Babbs tons of money.
The story is a simple one that would be copied by many others afterwards to capitalize on it's popularity. It's a story about a high school student who gets pregnant by a airplane pilot, he dies in a plane crash. Knowing she's in trouble and about to give birth, she confides in her high school teacher, but the teacher rats her out to her parents, and her parents get the teacher fired because she answered sex hygiene question in class?!?!. So, mother and daughter run away to another town to have the kid, the teacher gets re-hired and starts a class on hygiene. Experts are brought with films on childbirth and VD to the school to teach the little kiddies!! But to foil a happy ending the girl who was pregnant gives birth to a stillborn child, and I guess everyone lives happily ever after.
Although this film is nothing special or sensational, it was the marketing of it that made everyone come to it. The shows were segregated by gender, attendants posed as nurses and handed out booklets on sexual hygiene, all this added to the expectation that what audiences would see is something special. When audiences were sometimes letdown, a square up reel was shown (a square up reel is another short film afterwards, typically something really hot). Usually the square up reel was a live childbirth scene, (or something more sensational) that more than likely gave the audiences some satisfaction in seeing this film.
