Delinquent Daughters

This was on the compilation DVD, Cult Classics. The transfered print was awful. There was a big scratch running through print for about fifteen minutes. About fifteen minutes of the night material was so dark that you might as well be listening to the radio.

What can be seen is quite poorly written. We are talking Ed Wood bad here. A woman pulls a gun on a man. The man says, "What have you got there." She answers, "Something that goes boom, boom, boom!"

Teara Loring is interesting as a real sociopath. She really enjoys lying and stealing. Mary Boward gives a cute performance as a blond airhead, more blond and more airhead than anything in movies until Marilyn Monroe's comic performances.

Fifi D'Orsay is funny as a French woman.

Other than a few interesting performances, the bad dialogue and inane plot make the film difficult to take seriously. It is only redeemable for a few camp moments.

1st watched 1/22/2007 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Albert Herman): Mediocre, at best, juvenile teenager drama which starts at the onset of a high school girl killing herself with the authorities trying to find out why. Of course, the kids remaining aren't much help as they were all out partying together the night before and don't want their parents to find out. None of the kids show much sympathy, which appears to be the point of the movie -- if you're a bad girl and party you lose all your sensitivity. Although later in the movie, the tables turn and the parents are shown to blame -- which was a nice turn(with a good scene with the judge helping the parents understand where they were going wrong), but it comes too late in the movie(about ¾ of the way thru). For the most part the acting is pretty bad and the lighting on some scenes is so horrible that you can barely tell what's going on(this may have just been the age of the movie, though). Besides this, the movie tries hard from a story perspective, but turns out to be pretty much a snoozer that you're just waiting on to end.

The newspaper-ads promotional material for this film featured a series of Coming Soon theatre script-written teaser-ads comprised of daily entries in "The Diary of a Delinquent Daughter." June writes:

Wednesday: "Had my first drink of whiskey today. Tastes awful...but what a wallop! Guess I passed out. If Dad knew what I was doing I'd get trounced! Gosh...wonder if he really cares what happens to me?"

Thursday: "Nick wants me to run away with him. Says I'm old enough to know my own mind. I'm sixteen, but I look older when I use makeup...Wish I could confide in Mom or Dad!"

Friday: "Can you keep a secret, diary? I'm going to slip away tonight. Dad will probably be tight as usual and Mom out painting the town (also as usual.) So it shouldn't be too difficult. I'm scared a little bit but I just can't stand things here!"

Saturday: "I'm on my way to the big city with Nick. That's the fellow I met at the dance. I'm in love with him, I guess, but he makes me awfully jealous. Always making passes at some other girl when I'm around. But anything is better than what I left behind."

Sunday: "What a big baby I am...I've been crying. I'm not homesick, just a little bit scared. Nick accused me of flirting and hit me. Just found out he's broke. We've got to get some money some way, and fast!"

The only reason to see the movie after that series of ads ran was to find out if Nick had figured out by Monday a swell way June could make them some money...from real-friendly strangers...fast.

Another day, another juvenile delinquency film courtesy of poverty-row American producers. This one concerns a couple of girls who get caught up with some low rent criminal types and end up going on something of a crime spree. It's a little like a low key BONNIE AND CLYDE except made without any discernible scripting, characterisation, or narrative drive.

Indeed, this is poverty-row filmmaking at its nadir, and there's little here to tempt fans of the genre. The dialogue has been written by somebody with a tin ear and the acting is hardly up to scratch. These films always seem to have some boring reporter guy who goes undercover to bring down the criminals at large. But the worst thing about DELINQUENT DAUGHTERS is the quality of the public domain print in circulation; half the scenes have a massive scratch running down the middle of the screen, while the rest are so dark you're staring at a black screen.

The film is more than Delinquent Daughters, there are also Delinquent Sons. They could have called it Delinquent Youth/Teens. The one main delinquent daughter is Sally Higgins. Sally is the one that really loves the bad life (crime, stealing, guns, the mob). The other kids started going down the wrong path but they are fairly easy to correct... but Sally is still mad that her parents wouldn't let her see her boyfriend and the boyfriend ended up leaving town. Sally's father also hits her, leaving marks and constantly pushing Sally away from her family. - Sally is still sore about it all.

The suicide at the beginning of the film is what kicked off the police officer and reporter getting involved in the teens. The parents of the teens aren't good (example hitting the kids which pushes the kids away even more instead of drawing them in closer).

It's not a great film - but it's better than the rating suggests it is.

4/10