The Wildcats of St. Trinian's

I've seen all the other St Trinians films, and the superb (and superior) forerunner The Happiest Days Of Their Lives, so I felt that I should watch the 1980 film, even though I'd read somewhere that it was poor.

Poor is an understatement. The script is awful. The acting is dreadful - doubtless the cast would blame the script but really they are equally at fault.

This is probably the worst British film that I've ever seen - certainly it's the worst portion of a franchise. If you think that some of the 1970s Bond films are bad - try watching The Wildcats of St Trinians.

Not one for a blu-ray release...

This movie starts out with a group of younger "fourth-form" girls from the titular "St. Trinian's" girls' school singing a surly rendition of their school song, which is strangely intercut with shots of the more mature "sixth-form" girls doing a sexy dance in unfeasibly short skirts. This strange opening scene is very typical of the strange movie to follow. Not being British, I'm not really familiar with the earlier 50's and 60's "St. Trinian's" films. I know they featured rebellious, cigarette-smoking, working-glass schoolgirls and were not quite as innocuous and family-friendly as something like "The Trouble with Angels". Still they really couldn't have hoped to compete with the saucy, sex-obsessed fare that dominated home-grown British cinema by 1980, and they really shouldn't have tried to.

Not that this is a sexy, "adult" movie by any means. There's a scene where the girls trick their voluptuous gym teacher (perennial British cheesecake actress Louanne Peters) into going for a nude swim and then steal her clothes, which somehow results in her spending the rest of the movie in a clinic bed with a thermometer in her butt (offscreen, of course). There's also a scene where a couple of busty sixth formers (including Debbie Linden from Pete Walker's "Home Before Midnight") pose topless for pictures in the notorious page 3 of the "Sun", which the the dirty old rotters in the Ministry of Education proceed to lecherously drool over. But while this is obviously isn't a children's film, it's hardly a Mary Millington sex flick either. Nor is it even really a "coming-of-age" movie like the American film "Little Darlings" (which it somewhat resembles). The girls, by and large, aren't interested in sex or "losing it", but instead have hatched some half-assed scheme to "unionize" all the girls' schools in Britain and start a "general strike" (Way to belittle the British labor movement of the era!)

Near the end of the movie, Debbie Linden and some of the more sex-obsessed sixth-formers have been "infiltrated" by a group of boys, who are "spies" for the Ministry (don't even ask), and they are all having some kind of half-naked, "petting" party out on a barge. For some reason this threatens the "solidarity" of the "strike", so the younger girls, who are leading the whole thing, dress up as pirates and invade the party, among other things smacking their older schoolmates with wooden swords on their barely-clad bums. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be racy or just funny, but it really isn't either. Like the opening scene, and pretty much the rest of the movie, it mostly just left me kind of agape and wondering exactly what anyone here was thinking when they made this.

How many "St. Trinian's" films were made altogether (not counting the new 2007 version) ? If you said four, based on the fact that that is how they are packaged on DVD into a two-disc four-film box-set, then you would be mistaken - there were in fact FIVE films to this series, this last one coming fourteen years after the last effort, "The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery". Like that film, it was also made in colour (the first three were in black and white), but the end product shares very little else in common with any of it's four predecessors. Claiming that George Cole was asked to reprise his role as "Flash" Harry cuts no ice with me - this film is such a mess casting-wise as to be unbelievable.

At the time this was made, in 1980, the trade union movement was a lot more militant in nature than they are today (the "Winter of Discontent" fresh in peoples minds), and it's true to say that the TUC card-carrying Sun-newspaper reading working-class audience this film aimed itself at probably didn't like to see their union movements mocked on the big screen.

"Carry On... At Your Convienence" was a huge loss-maker at the time of its cinematic release for mocking the unions, and this factor probably also had some effect on the success - or lack thereof - of "Wildcats". It's not a good idea to mock your key audience demographic by making fun of trade unions. All in all though, it wasn't really a good idea to make this film, and this is easily an entry that the "St. Trinian's" franchise could have done without. The fact that this fifth film is overlooked by the other four in the series is probably a good thing. This is an interesting curio for anyone who has ever seen and enjoyed the other four films in the series (or likes ogling actresses in school uniforms - gym-slips, stockings, suspenders, heels, etc.) but is nowhere near the quality of any of its predecessors. Very few people will ever get the chance to see this film. You should probably be grateful. Not that bad, but not that good either. 3/10

"once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane." Rudyard Kipling

Well, well, well... St Trinians as political comment. Other reviewers have mentioned this, but it is little wonder that this film flopped in 1980 when it was released upon a trade-union obsessed UK public. The film sends up the trade union movement and strongly critiques any attempt to compromise with the "workers" and meet their demands... a lesson that the 1980's UK government took to heart after the appeasement tactics of the 1970's. Unlike most other reviewers I liked this film: it is a clear and obvious continuation of the original franchise with many character touches lifted directly from the first four films, much more-so than the remakes (updated versions) in 2007 and 2009.

I bought this film because of its reputation - here is a UK film so "appalingly bad" that you can't actually buy it in the UK (my copy had to be bought via the USA but from a UK based-supplier!) - and I was prepared to witness a truly atrocious piece of cinema... Perhaps that mindset helped me to see the good in it where others can only see the bad. This film is a product of its time - much as the originals were. Wildcats from 1980 is similar in style to the Carry On movies minus most (but not all) of the smuttiness and bawdy humour. It is still *very* much a children's film - for UK children.

To me, this film was truer to the original film than the remakes because the driving force behind the girl's mayhem was the "lower sixth form", still wearing silly hats and wielding hockey-sticks, and not the "upper sixth form" in their short skirts and bikinis (and for all those tut-tutting about that... the "sexy" schoolgirls were in the earlier films too... If you watch Wildcats and all you can see are the upper-sixth girls, pro or con, then I can guarantee that *you* are bringing that perspective with you to the film... that said, the opening credits' "dance number" was truly crass). The 2007 and 2009 remakes switched this "upper/lower" dynamic around and let the upper-sixth lead the action far too much - which was a mistake in my opinion.

This film fails - or is rather unintentionally funny - when it lurches over into bizarre racial and gender stereotypes - particularly Harry who is running a "legitimate" Chinese take-away actually disguised as a Chinese man (which he is not) in a truly this-could-only-be-the-70's-or-early-80s sort of way. Or the bimbo fitness instructor (was she actually Swedish or was that just a joke?), or the Dutch headmistress with her box of chocolates - although, to be fair, nobody can follow Alastair Sim as the headmistress and get away with it. Note the underlying theme here: foreigners - welcome to xenophobic England! The acting is more ham-fisted "TV comedy" than "film star" but then again that's also the case with the Carry On films... It is what it is.

Bottom line: slightly better than just "ok". If you like the more raucous UK comedies from the 1970's (and I do) then this will work for you. It is nowhere near as bad as other reviews are making out. I laughed with it and I laughed at it. It's a comedy. And a window into the attitudes of late 1970's UK.

'Wildcats' is the fifth, last, and easily the worst of the St. Trinians films. Made after a fourteen year gap, it attempts to bring the series up to date, but the results just look too forced.

The plot of the film is simple; the pupils wish to form a trade union in order to demand luxuries from the government. As a premise this could have really worked, and had some good possibilities. But the film just blunders along aimlessly, with a poorly thought out plot, poor dialogue, and wooden characters.

This film lacks the attributes that made its predecessors so successful; in 'Wildcats' the girls seem to lack the confidence, and resourcefulness that has always characterized the classic St.Trinian pupil. The other characters have also been over exaggerated; particularly 'Flash Harry'!! What were the film makers thinking of? why destroy his credibility with that silly hat and satchel?

Overall, I don't recommend this film, there are much better ones to see. 2/10