Les gamines explosives

My family and I always loved this movie. Since I am a Catholic school survivor I can relate to it. I was 7 years old when I first saw it at the drive in (remember drive ins?) and it always brings back good memories.

A clean wholesome movie and funny too! Whatever happened to clean and wholesome movies? Parts of this movie were filmed in Ambler Pennsylvania and the Castle in the movie is still there and it hasn't changed at all.

The plot of the movie was reflective of the times and the times represented change and the acceptance of change. This change was interwoven throughout the movie in the interactions and conflicting views between the modern sister George (Stella Stevens) and the old fashioned and reserved mother superior (Rosalind Russell). The moral of the story is: "A cloister can be a place but it can also be a state of mind."

Boyce and Hart (who wrote many hit songs for the Monkees) supplied the musical score which provided the groovy beat of the movie.

I loved Susan St James in this movie. She was such a bright young actress at the time. I loved the scene where she was caught riding on top of the bus. That scene was shot on a farm near my hometown.

I also appreciated the views of the Philadelphia art museum as well as city hall along with the center of the Ambler Pennsylvania town. Those views have changed over the years.

Those who were sent through the Catholic School system (voluntarily or not)will get a kick out of this movie.

You can buy the movie on Ebay and I think that a DVD version has been released.

Columbia and Roz Russell had a huge hit in Trouble With Angels and this film is the sequel. While Roz Russell's peers had to do horror films to stay in the public eye, Roz -along with Kate Hepburn and Lucille Ball-remained top of he bill movie stars. Ms. Russell repeats her role as Mother Superior and this film is cast with a lot of great character actors including Mary Wickes and Milton Berle. I am pleased this film casts the Catholic religion in a positive light, and why not? Ms. Russell was a devout Church going Catholic.

Ms.Russell is likely the most glaring example of a major star and actress that never won an Oscar.

Stella Stevens appears as a young modern thinking nun sometimes at odds with Mother Superior. Ms. Stevens is to me the most under appreciated star I have ever seen pass thru Hollywood with a gallery of great performances where she played Hookers, Tramps, Drug Addicts and also delightful in comedy such as this one and a two movies with Dean Martin, The Silencers and How To Save A Marriage and Ruin Your Life. A lovely actress, who somehow never reached the true levels of super-stardom Ms. Stevens deserved and I feel earned. I suggest film students study Stevens work in Synanon, The Silencers, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Nutty Professor, The Poisedon Adventure, et al. A great actress who let her work speak for itself. In Stevens' heyday Stella Stevens worked with Gene Hackman, Roz Russell, Glenn Ford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley, Jeffrey Hunter, and film makers such as Hal Wallis, and Sam Peckinpah. I wish Stella Stevens had worked with Billy Wilder who would have surely gotten an Oscar nomination for this fine Actress.

Why am I reviewing this? It's not typical of what I normally review , although that doesn't mean anything in particular because I don't review 99 percent of the movies that I see. I had never heard of this movie before but I was bored the other day and it happened to show up on cable on a channel with no commercials - and I'll watch just about anything that is sans commercials. Plus I'm a sucker for a road trip flick and I will take any chance that I can get to take a sixties road trip, even if it is with a bunch of nuns on a bus instead of freaks on motorcycles.

First of all, while fairly well made, this is not a great movie. It's mainly the story and plot, or rather the lack of them, that causes the problems here. Technically it looks fine and the shot on location photography is very nice. But the story is so incredibly thin and silly and riddled with the most over-the-top clichés and contrived plot devices that it becomes distracting. The entire film is nothing more than a series of connected scenes of the type that junior high drama students might come up with. The only progression in the film is the physical one of the bus travelling forward in time and space, because otherwise the scenes could be mixed and shuffled like cards and placed in any order and the end result would be about the same. This film has got to be one of the very last examples of well made but quickly written hack jobs written by old school Hollywood hack writers - except for a few of the "modern woman" touches gleaned from the swinging sixties optimism pre-Altamont this film could easily have been made in 1958 instead of 1968.

Just a few examples of the above can be illustrated by the church's school bus. The basic "plot" of this film is that a group of girls from a Catholic school and their Mother Nuns take a road trip to California for a rally. That's pretty much it. They have an old broken down school bus, which in one of a seemingly endless line of contrivances (you'll have to watch to see what this particular contrivance is) gets replaced by a brand new one for the trip. A nice shiny yellow brand new bus with the school's name on it. Early on in the trip, the driving nun stalls the bus on some railroad tracks with a train coming (of course). The brand new bus won't start. They start to evacuate the bus and the door won't open. It's one of those bus doors with the handle that the driver pulls - when have you ever seen one get stuck, especially on a brand new bus? So they go to evacuate out of the back emergency door. That one is stuck too. What the heck is happening with this bus all of the sudden? A brand new, perfectly functioning bus turns into s teenage virgin and nun deathtrap all of the sudden. So the girls start clambering out of the windows - I was only surprised that all of the windows weren't stuck too. Well, of course they all got out and the nun was able to restart the bus just in the nick of time. And the scene just ends with a circle fadeout and that's that. No mention of how they were all able to reboard the bus with the stuck doors and all.

Further on down the line the bus suffers a blowout on on of the brand new tires, runs out of gas (not the bus's fault there, but leads to a great scene with ridiculous biker "toughs" roughing up nuns), gets filled with water and suds in a truck wash, and breaks an axle while evading a charge of Indians on the warpath (yes, you read that right). I think that they would have been better off with the old bus!

I'm sorry though, I must apologize. It's easy to find fault with the writing here, as it is atrocious. But at the end of the day I enjoyed this film. It's a period piece to be sure - in the extreme. Movies like this will NEVER be made again. It echoes a sentiment that was naive even in 1968. It was past its time before it was even made. But it is entertaining, and even if you do pick it apart by the clichés and contrivances, well that can add to the fun. The cinematography is pleasing and the scenery of late 1960's midwest is pleasing too. You are not going to watch this film and then get depressed, and there is something to be said for that.

So go ahead and watch this movie, and take a road trip yourself back to a more innocent age. Relax and enjoy it - there is also much to be said for taking a detour to a couple of hours away from the stressful mood of the planet Earth in the year 2006. And as hackneyed as they can be, I'd still prefer one movie like this to one hundred of the market analyzed, test audienced, product placed and merchandise marketed complete and total cr@p ones that ooze from Hollywood's rear end these days.

Old fashion Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell) is struggling to change with the times. Sister George (Stella Stevens) is the young rebellious nun. They take the girls of St. Francis Academy on a cross-country bus trip.

This is a sequel to the 1966 movie with Rosalind Russell returning. Hayley Mills didn't return. This one is missing her star power. Stella Stevens is perfectly fine, but not the same thing. Among the girls, I do recognize Susan Saint James despite her very short hair do. She is supposed to be the new Hayley Mills although that's asking a lot. With this one, they are trying to tap into the counter-culture and the changing times. The comedy is rather tame with some boy-crazy teen drama. The biker gang section is trying to do some interesting darkness. Milton Berle makes a short appearance as a John Ford type character. There are some interesting stops along the way, but it's not adding up to anything bigger.

This was the sequel to "The Trouble with Angels", which was an excellent mid-'60s teen movie. To some, "Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows" was a disappointing follow-up. To me, I have always liked both very much, but I always preferred this one a little more out of the two. The reason being, it reflects the late '60s so much, it's so dated and borderline campy. This is what is appealing about the movie. The plotline is basic: a cross country trek to a religious convention, and all of the trials and tribulations the girls go through while they are on route. What 'makes' this movie is Stella Stevens as the hip & groovy liberated Nun that pickets against "the man", stands up to bikers, and later finds out what role she plays is in her students life. If you go in expecting this movie to be like the original, then you are setting yourself up for a big disappointment. If you liked other late '60s movies like "How Sweet It Is", "Impossible Years","Divorce, American Style", "Yours, Mine, and Ours" and "The Love God?", then you will definitely enjoy this late '60s groovy movie.