Three Bad Sisters

I have a weakness for so called exploitation films made for the youth of America in the 50's and this is one of the best. I do not agree with one reviewer who said it was possibly the first soft core porn film made for the mainstream. Clearly the UK censor of the time had similar thoughts in mind and banned it. To my knowledge it has never played in a UK cinema or shown on television here. It has its moments of violence, but this is a film in the tradition of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Olivia de Havilland as the ' good ' sister. And yes in this black and white melodrama there is always a good sister and the good/slash bad hero goes for her. In fact in its over the top way it as moral as any major Hollywood film of the 40's or 50's. If anyone wants to check this point out take a look at ' Female on the Beach ' with Joan Crawford plus a male and female pimp selling Jeff Chandler in sexy swimsuits to the highest bidders. It is just as violent as this film plus a not too moral ending. This in contrast keeps more or less to the straight and narrow. But in its delirious and improbable scenario and in its acting it is a Camp film and Marla English stands out as really quite a good actress. And the ending in its crazy way reminded me of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in ' From Here to Eternity '. I would like to lay a bet it was on the mind of both director and writer. In all it is not to be missed just to see both how well made it is and how it makes censors often look like fools, especially in the UK in the 1950's.

This is a very low budget soapy thriller--and it makes no attempt to be anything other than entertaining. It ain't the least bit sophisticated and is a bit silly--but it IS enjoyable on a low-brow level. Just sit back and watch the fireworks. I guarantee you won't be bored!

"Three Bad Sisters" begins with a plane crash. A rich guy is killed--leaving his vast fortune to three really screwed up but beautiful daughters (sort of like really bad versions of Hilton girls). One daughter, Valerie (Kathleen Hughes), is greedy and wants to force the pilot of the plane, Jim, to work with her to somehow cheat her sisters out of the money--but how is never really stated. The guy (John Bromfield) seems to have no choice and comes to stay with the family on a trumped up pretense. He soon learns that one of the sisters, Lorna (Sara Shane), is emotionally unstable and seems to be struggling with suicidal impulses--and she's by far the best of the bunch! Vicki (Marla Craig) is a combination nympho and home-wrecker. And, Valerie is just evil. What's Jim to do? And what exactly is Valerie's plan? Tune in to this VERY juicy film to find out more.

Subtle it's not nor is it especially believable. But, it also it great fun and the actors do pretty well with what they've been given. Sure, a few characters are a bit broadly written but it never bores...never. It's sort of like a poor man's "Peyton Place"...on crack! I'd not say it's a great film but it's a wonderful guilty pleasure--the sort of overwrought trash that can be very difficult NOT to watch.

The title tells a lie: It's actually two bad sisters. The middle sibling Lorna (played by Sara Shane) proves as virtuous as she is dull, compared to the psychotic (Valerie, played by Kathleen Hughes) and the nymphomaniac (Vicki, played by Marla English) with whom she shares a mansion and their dead father's millions. (Also in the mix is a boozed-up busybody of an aunt played by Madge Kennedy.)

The trouble, which has been brewing for three lifetimes, boils over when dad dies in a plane crash. The pilot (John Bromfield) claims to have tried to save him, but doubts abound. Valerie, sniffing an opportunity, schemes to have him brought into the family business and marry him off to Lorna, engaged to the estate's executor (Jess Barker). She hadn't reckoned on Vicki, who throws herself at Bromfield as though lust had just been put on the market in easy-to-swallow caplets (`I graduated magna cum laude from Embraceable U,' she coos at him).

Valerie and Vicki make Goneril and Regan look like Little Sisters of the Poor. They openly and viciously taunt one another, and Lorna, about age, and looks, and anything else their stoat-like minds can come up with. In one eyes-like-saucers scene, the twisted sisters get into a cat-fight concluding with Valerie's taking a riding crop to Vicki's face, driving her (quite literally) around the bend. All the while she's photographed in pitiless close-up, her thickly-lipsticked maw stretched wide in ecstatic triumph. But wait! There's more....

Suds'd-up trash so pungent it's hard to pass it by, Three Bad Sisters was a late-50s Z-movie template for the motivelessly malignant soaps and serials that soon became a staple of television screens, filling the days of our lives. Script, acting and production boast no redeeming qualities whatsoever, except excess and sheer effrontery. In regard to those qualities, Three Bad Sisters offers an embarrassment of riches.

Directed by Gilbert Kay with a script co-written by Gerald Drayson Adams and Devery Freeman, the best thing about Three Bad Sisters is the three young beauties who are the title characters. Of course, as other reviewers have pointed out, there is a bit of a problem with the title since the three Craig sisters include two who are wicked and one who is virtuous. Blonde bombshell Valerie (Kathleen Hughes) and sultry brunette Vicky (Marla English) are in a competition for nastiest sister title; blonde beauty Lorna (Sara Shane) is sensitive, somewhat timid, but always well-meaning. The chief male love interest is hunky pilot Jim Norton (John Bromfield). As others have also pointed out, it is possible to count nasty sisters to three if we take the sister of the late father, Aunt Martha (Madge Kennedy), into the mix.

The film begins with the off camera plane crash death of the millionaire father of the main three. He was the sole passenger of pilot Jim Norton who survived. Was the pilot negligent? Did he even actually murder dear old dad? Will the three daughters share and share alike? Not likely. The movie poster shows the back of a woman's legs, the seams going up her stockings, and the legend: "What They Did To Men Was Nothing Compared To What They Did To Each Other!" The script has a super boo-boo at one point. Bad sister Valerie actually says to good sister Lorna, "It takes a woman to hold a man like Jim, not a psychopath!" Huh? What? Didn't Adams and Freeman know what a psychopath is?

Dialogue makes more sense when an exasperated Jim exclaims, "I'm getting tired of being blamed for what goes on in this nuthouse!" As readers have probably guessed, Three Bad Sisters has no artistic pretensions, no moral pretensions, and no social or political "message." It is fast-paced, titillating, trashy fun. Plane crashes, car chases, intense confrontations, dirty dealings among the fabulously wealthy, flirting and cheating, all make for a flavorsome popcorn box of a movie. It is especially good at underlining the sensual charms of its female protagonists as when Vicky raises her shapely high-heeled legs up from her position on a couch.

Kathleen Hughes enjoyed a rich and varied career that lasted most of her life. Perhaps her most well-remembered achievement was a photograph of her in an attitude of terror, hands thrown up, eyes super wide, mouth open as if in a scream. The famous picture is often used for comedic purposes and is iconic of a "scream queen." Both Sara Shane and Marla English left acting for other careers.

Sara Shane had a busy acting career in the 1950s and early 1960s before retiring from acting in 1964. She went into business. In 2018, she directed a health center in Australia where she resided. She also published books, including a book entitled Take Control of Your Health and Escape the Sickness Industry. She returned to the cameras (in front of them and behind them) in 2008 when she wrote, produced, and co-presented the documentary One Answer to Cancer.

Marla English started acting after winning a "Fairest of the Fair" beauty pageant while still in her teens. She bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor and was known as a scream queen. However, she left acting when she was only 21 years old to marry a wealthy business executive and become a housewife. She took care of his daughter from a pervious marriage and bore four sons.

Although Three Bad Sisters did not call for great acting, it got adequate performances from all its major actors and can be counted a colorful feather in their caps, regardless of how long or short their acting careers were.

That hilarious line is typical of what these naughty sisters say. (It's funny on its own terms and pretty funny unintentionally , too.) Only two of the sisters are really bad. Boy, are they bad, too! One is given to pinup poses and salacious comments where e'er she goes. The other is got up to look like Marilyn Monroe. She has those sensual, slightly parted lips. And, not to give anything away, she is even more bad than the other.

All three sisters are played by starlets. The man who stumbles into their lives is played by John Bromfield. He had something of a career.

This looks today like possibly the first mainstream soft-core porn ever marketed. Well, of course not the first but the raciest at that time.

The girls wear as little as possible and let's not forget about the female audience members: Bromfield is shown shaving with an electric razor -- whose fetish was this? -- bare-chested. He also is shown sopping wet in a swimsuit.

There's a real plot here, too: The girls' family, see, is cursed. They are prone to suicide -- or dramatic deaths that can be made to seem like suicide.

The movie is not bad. I truly don't know where it was shown. Maybe it was made for drive-ins. Somehow, and I could be wrong, I felt that the typical male audience was not the primary target here. The women are scantily dressed. They often resemble lurid covers of mags like Police Detective or jackets of dime novels.

But the guy seems to be the central focus. Not everyone in the movie likes him, but all the girls love him. And I think the audience is meant to also.

It's lots of fun -- and on its own terms, too.