Delinquent School Girls

Oh Lordy! Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. Having seen the cut-to-ribbons British release version on some ropey little label when I was a youngster, I recently became curious to see this exploitation roughie again, and finally tracked down a copy after months of trying. And while I was watching it (or more precisely, watching most of it - the video copy I located had about twenty minutes' worth of vertical rolling and picture snow, rendering the first act unwatchable) I couldn't help thinking how the memory has a nasty habit of cheating. The buxom, bouncing women are all there, present and correct, and Stephen Stucker is just as funny as I remembered him (he also gets to show off his piano playing), but I'd forgotten - or was too young to fully comprehend - just how crass and insensitive this film really is. Sam Peckinpah upset the moral majority by showing Susan George coming to enjoy being raped by her ex-boyfriend in the gruesome potboiler STRAW DOGS, but in this sleaze-fest the idea that women enjoy being molested and violated is repeated again and again, even to the point of previously sobbing, near-hysterical victims sitting down to enjoy a glass of wine and a little light refreshment with their assailants moments after their ordeal! And yes, there's another male myth proudly on show here - the women who (almost literally) "ask for it"! In the pre-politically correct seventies, this was standard X-film fare, but seen thirty years later it seems so outrageously corrupt and wrong-headed that DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS looks every bit as if it came from a weird parallel universe that has yet to catch up with our more enlightened times. The film's technical credits are every bit as fumbled as the hapless victims - the photography is grimy, the lighting poor, the sound muffled, the editing looks as if it was done with a hacksaw and the performances are dire (Bob Minor looks embarrassed, and who can blame him). Then there are the 'action' scenes, which are so poorly choreographed they resemble a skit from The Goodies that somebody forgot to speed up. A karate adviser is credited, but judging from what's on show here he didn't hang around the set for long. When he's not contriving up-skirt shots or leering over the mistreatment of his buxom female cast, Gregory Corarito's direction is as static as a house brick. And what's the deal with the inane, parping, faux-Benny Hill music that accompanies the double rape scene in the kitchens? DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS is a shot of pure sleaze, right between the eyes, and won't disappoint anyone looking for mean-spirited misogyny.

This is the video release of the 1974 movie of the same name. Released on Vestron Video like many other exploitation films. It was part of the first wave of early eighties of video tapes where they would release anything done in color that was fairly recent because they were so starved for product. Ahhh the good old days!

There's a scene towards the end of Carnal Madness where two cretins driving a van happen upon a semi-naked girl and offer her a lift, her subsequent attempts to tell them about three convicts being on the loose, molesting woman, go unheard mainly because the two men in question are too busy drooling over and trying to fondle her breasts. If ever there was a scene that perfectly illustrates where a film's head is at that is it. Set at a private girl's school where all the female students have exceptionally large breasts and where all the teachers are uptight puritans who secretly daydream about the girls falling out of their t-shirts, the whole of Carnal Madness (better known as Delinquent Schoolgirls, or if the distributor is nervous Delinquent 'College' Girls or merely The Delinquents) could have been dreamed up by those two horny van drivers. Similar to the many 'Cheerleader' films of the time, pom pom titillation is the name of the game at the school, where the majority of the girls have been sent home for the holidays save for a bunch that have behaved especially bad. Not that detention has much effect since the girls waste no time in indulging in dope smoking, lesbian petting and flicking through porn mags. Enter the aforementioned escaped convicts, who chancing on the school begin virtually foaming at the mouth over the idea of wreaking some sexual mayhem. What they haven't counted on is that aside from the above pastimes most of the girls also practice karate and having had detention forced on them by the teachers are in no mood to be pushed around by men. "I won't stand for it, that chauvinist pig" a militant Sharon Kelly proclaims whilst practicing karate topless in the film's less than convincing stab at feminist credentials. The escaped goons are played by the unusual (to say the least) trio of character actor Michael Pataki, stuntman Bob Minor and the late Stephen Stucker (best known for the 'Airplane' films). Of this bunch Stucker is a psychotic gay fashion designer while Minor's character is simply known as Dick, possibly not the best name for someone in a male prison, but a name he lives up to on the outside, forever raving about needing sex after years behind bars. Pataki is an actor who effortlessly conveys the sense of being a few sandwiches short of a picnic and plays the head convict as if the character were a face pulling, desperately trying to be funny comedian. Had say David Hess or Jamie Gillis played the role then Carnal Madness would have turned out quite the severe little number, but the shambolic convicts in Carnal Madness have more in common with the Three Stooges (check out the escaped snake sequence) and Pataki's quirky characterisation is very in tune with the film's juvenile, R-rated sex comedy tone.

Carnal Madness is in fact one of the great examples of how exploitation films can often be a thinly veiled front to indulge in all manner of fetishes on behalf of a needy audience, and Carnal Madness is no cheat jollily delivering episodic fetishes in spades, catfights cum mud-wrestling, women in wet t-shirts, women exercising in their underwear, forced nudity, some light bondage. A sense of equality is established by the fact that the film also gets off on scenes of men being overpowered, clobbered about and karate chopped by feisty women. It all goes on here, to the degree you wonder why the film isn't more well known in exploitation film circles, it really should be regarded as a classic, or why companies like Something Weird Video haven't sprung it from its undeserved obscurity.

One of the most noteworthy aspects to the film, and a legitimate reason why all the female students do have exceptionally large breasts, is because the financiers had ties to a Los Angles company that specialized in cheesecake loops designed to showcase Hollywood Big Bust models. As a result many of the most well known big bust models of that era, Nika Movenka, Rosalie Strauss and of course the legendary Roberta Pedon make up the female cast. The fact that many of these women, ubiquitous of skin magazines of the time, only ever appeared in this one film does give it great novelty value, and makes the film that something bit special.

Of all the women Roberta Pedon makes the most impact, and the film does a particularly fine job at eroticizing her. The infamous 'jumping jacks' sequence clearly held in high regard by the filmmakers given that they repeat it again at the end in slow motion, has rightly entered into legend. Providing eye candy aside Roberta's performance does hint at an appealing exploitation film actress in the making (I'm reliably informed by someone who knew her that the peculiar foreign accent she speaks with in the film is just her acting rather than how she actually spoke). All of which makes it that more unfortunate that fate, personal problems and various outside elements would conspire to make Roberta a one movie wonder. The trouble with Roberta is that its very easy to fall under her spell and become completely enchanted by her, this eventually leads to a need to discover what was beyond the big breasts, the pretty face and the famously alluring, slightly crooked smile. Once you cut through much internet mythologizing of her as a free loving hippy chick pin-up, and get to some hard facts the story of the real Roberta comes across as truly heartbreaking, desperately sad. Yet while being privy to the tragedy behind unhappy starlets does tend to rob you of the ability to ever think of them merely as fantasy figures it does strengthen the resolve that these people should continued be celebrated and make sure they and their legacies never be forgotten. It's the best thing that we can do for the forever lovely Roberta.

It's simply amazing how such a low budget production can rise to the platonic model for low brow greatness.

The production knew how to pack every frame with a plethora of breast with all cup sizes represented, and continually lay on one sleazy scenario after another. The attention to detail is amazing. Several of the girls take a swim and the camera lovingly lears at the giant breast from an underwater POV. At one point the film cuts abruptly to a giant breast bouncing on a trampoline.

This film is currently only available on an old Vestron Video VHS tape. It should be sought after, restored, and released on DVD.

This ranks up there with the best works by Russ Meyer.

Three prisoners escape and wreck havoc at an all-girl school. The girls stay behind at the school due to their delinquencies. Lots of softcore sex, and nudity. Not a bad movie at all!