Girl Gang (1954)

Director: Robert C. Dertano

Writer: ???

Composer: ???

Starring: Joanne Arnold, Timothy Farrell, Harry Keaton, Lou Monson, Mary Lou O'Connor, Mildred Kalke, Norman Stanley, Thelma Montgomery, Bernard Carroll, Ray Morton, Marie Meiter, Irene Gilmore, Peggy Winters, Miliza Milo

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Daring expose of teenage orgies! Torn from today's headlines!

Plot: A sleazy gangster has a gang of young girls commit robberies and prostitution for him by getting them hooked on drugs.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? YES!

You just know these kids are going to be up to no good.   No one hangs out in this formation without resorting to criminal activity.

Boy are these Juvi pictures fun!  Joe (Farrell) gets the gals hooked on drugs and has them do his criminal bidding.  First it's the reefer, then it's the Big H, Horse, Smack, Reindeer Dust!  He even shows them/us how to do it!  And then again two minutes later!!!  I guess it's to tell the impressionable youth that you can put it in anywhere.

The fuck?  This is 60 years ago! There is a lot of drug use in this picture and considering when this came out it's pretty shocking.  You can tell when they're under the influence with the flowing harp on the soundtrack.  So what do you have to do to get into the Girl Gang?

Make love to five boys...intimately!  YES!!!  Ooh, time for some half-assed, drug-fueled boogie woogie!

The piano player is rather clumsily playing but it's a fuck load better than what I can do right now.  You just you give me time to practice!  This scene goes on way too long, almost five minutes, but at least it's got some really fast West-Coast Swing dancing in the mix.  Afterward, everyone gets high on the Wacky Weed.  Cue the harp.  Hey, somebody wake up the harpist!

There's even more Heroin use and then, 40 minutes into this 62 minute drug-filled extravaganza, we get some crime!  One of the girls seduces her much older boss into giving her money.  She goes through his desk and takes his gun which Joe uses to shake him down.  If he doesn't pay up, the girl will accuse him of rape. Then it's back to the clubhouse. NO!  Dude's dead from an overdose!  He's dead I tells ya!

How to dispose of a friend.

It's a stick-up!  Geez, somebody call the cops!

This leads to the final few minutes with one of the gang being shot and the rest hunted down by the fuzz.  Justice has been done but how can we save today's youth?  It's a fun little picture that's got a lot of shock value considering its age.  The only spot that really drags is the five minutes of boogie woogie.  The rest of it moves along nicely. The story doesn't flow like a normal narrative since it's broken up by lots of scenes of drug use.  The crime scenes are a lot more fun to watch, especially the action-filled hold-up near the end.  I dug it. This is the second half of a double bill with THE VIOLENT YEARS (1956) on a great DVD by Something Weird Video (I FUCKING LOVE this company and I'm on a mission to own ever release of theirs - Hey, SWV, any chance you can slap me on the list of folks to get free DVDs to review?) that's loaded with similarly themed shorts (like classroom films), trailers, etc.  There's a Drive-In option that adds drive-in theater commercials for the snack bar, intermissions, et al before and after each film giving you a very fun 3+ hours of solid entertainment.