Pop TV

Born Innocent

Donald Wrye

United States

1974, 98min

Fiction, Drama

VO. English

With

Linda Blair, Joanna Miles, Allyn Ann McLerie

A repeat runaway is sent to a temporary detention center for girls where brutal and inhumane treatment awaits her, under the indifferent gaze of the social staff. A harsh and scathing critique of a corrupt system, brought to life by the young Linda Blair.

In 1974, NBC reached a record audience for a TV movie in the US with this grim chronicle of a teenage girl transformed by physical, psychological, and structural violence in a social institution. Linda Blair plays the young Chris, struggling with an abusive family and indifferent bureaucracy, only one year after her macabre turn in Friedkin’s The Exorcist. A polemic film that had many a viewer cringing.

Direction

Donald Wrye

Screenplay

Gerald Di Pego, Creighton Brown Burnham

Image

David M. Walsh

Editing

Maury Winetrobe

Sound

David M. Ronne

Music

Fred Karlin