Description

In any event, Pa (Ford Rainey) and Ma (Mercedes McCambridge) take their kids to a carnival as a means of celebrating after selling a valuable piece of land. Naomi gets lost, happening upon a swaggering daredevil who performs a “Wall of Death” routine with a motorcycle. Her brother, J.C. (Buddy Foster), wanders into a tent featuring strippers. In both subplots, mature characters exploit the country kids’ naïveté. The daredevil seduces Naomi, screwing her while other carny folk watch the encounter. Over at the stripper tent, an aging exotic dancer hears about the income from the land sale, so she lures J.J. into her mobile home. As this hanky-panky happens, Pa and Ma have no clue about their kids’ whereabouts, so they reluctantly head home, believing J.J. will track down his sister and bring her home. Watching Sixteen devolve is a bummer, not because it held the promise of being a thoughtful sociocultural investigation, but because the carnival scenes have an unsettling quality that should have led somewhere more interesting. Similarly, Sixteen features some creepy intimations of incest and religiosity; more material along those lines would have helped make the picture distinctive.