The Violent Years

Thoroughly entertaining for most of the time, this is the story of a bored, wealthy young woman who forms a gang with like-minded friends and has a whale of a time robbing gas stations, trashing schools and making men sexual offers they can't refuse. They are occasionally employed by Sheila, a splendid older gang moll in a tight sweater, whose appearance sadly only lasts a couple of minutes prior to her being gunned down. The plot runs from one absurdity to the next including two cop cars racing to a disturbance at a school and going in with all guns blazing, as if Bonnie and Clyde were in there. Unfortunately Mr Wood seemed to forget what the audience had paid to see, and devotes nearly a fifth of the running time to the patently phony moralizing required to justify everything else. This provides some fun in itself, with the veteran actor playing the judge clearly reading his interminable lines, while the distraught mother bemoans giving her errant daughter Paula 'a new dress instead of a caress'. In fact Paula, played by the glamorous Jean Moorhead, looks ravishing in the one-piece she wears at the pajama party, no doubt from 'Victor Most of California', who gets a credit. Pity the film was so short and the ending such a washout.

I was concerned when I saw that "The Violent Years" was only written by Ed Wood, but was directed by William Morgan. I was concerned that it might come off as something other than an Ed Wood movie. Yet if you had to guess who directed this one without know anything about the movie, then I'm sure most b-movie lovers would guess it was Ed Wood.

"The Violent Years" has everything you could want out of an Ed Wood directed and written movie. Bad dialogue, bad editing and ham acting plague "The Violent Years" as much as any other Ed Wood production.

"The Violent Years" follows the exploits of a gang of four school girls led by the daughter of the local newspaper publisher. The "girls" all look like actresses who are closer to 30 than 20, but nobody should care since this is an Ed Wood written production. The girls get their thrills by staging armed robberies of gas stations and unarmed lover's lane couples. Along the way we get to see hilariously bad shoot out and crash scenes, an even more hilarious scene where the girls "rape" a man they discover making out with his girlfriend at the local lover's lane, and arguably the most hilarious monologue by a judge in film history.

The aspect of an Ed Wood written film that provides me with the most amusement is the dialogue. Like the above mentioned monologue by the judge. No judge would write a decision in a court case like the one we hear in "The Violent Years", except if he were at least as drunk as Ed Wood was when he wrote it. People just don't talk like they do in an Ed Wood movie, and this has provided many an Ed Wood movie viewer with many laughs over the years.

"The Violent Years" is there for the Ed Wood fan. It doesn't have much to offer to people who like to see good film making when they see a movie. However, if you're looking for an exercise in film making ineptitude for laughs, then "The Violent Years" is your movie.

In what is yet another bad juvenile delinquent movie from the moralistic 1950s, four "teenage" girls rob a gas station, erase a classroom chalkboard, and do other vile things. The four females are all miscast. They're too old to be teenagers. The main "girl", Paula, is 18 years old. But the role is given to an "actress" who looks more like she's in her thirties.

The film's sets are cheap looking. Dialogue is horrible. There's no subtext at all. Characters say exactly what they're thinking, which renders a production reminiscent of a high school play. Overall acting is amateurish. None of these people have any talent. They mouth the words without conviction or credibility. B&W lighting is conventional but tolerable.

With speech after speech about right and wrong, the worst element of the film is the ending, as a judge hits us over the head with a moralistic sledgehammer. He starts out by blasting a teenager: "...this thrill seeking became the one great thing in your life, piling one thrill on another until, with ever increasing intensity, you became much like the drug addict, with his continual increases of dosage ..." As the actor playing the judge continually looks down at a paper, which is probably the film's script, he slogs on: "... to kill for the love of killing, to kill for a thrill". The judge's sermon to the teenager goes on for several more minutes.

But the judge isn't through yet. Later, he gives another sermon, this time to the parents: "No child is inherently bad. He's made what he is by his upbringing and his surrounding. Adults create the world children live in". (I didn't know that! hehehehe) "And in this process, parents play the key role. When children grow up among adults who refuse to recognize anything that is fine and good or worthy of respect, it's no wonder that ..." Yawn! The film "credits" show that the infamous Ed Wood, Jr. was the scriptwriter. No wonder the script is horrible.

There are unintentionally funnier films out there than "The Violent Years". But the film still provides a good lesson for young filmmakers about what to do, and especially what not to do, when making a cheap movie.

This film is pretty steady and mediocre (you can tell Ed didn't direct it), lacking the weirdness and spastic nature of Wood's other films. But, it also happens to be the only film you'll ever see where a MAN IS RAPED BY A GANG OF GIRLS! A truly unique moment in film history.

Incredibly dumb and utterly predictable story of a rich teen girl who, not given love by her parents, starts a girl gang. They rob gas stations, rape guys (!!!) and kill a policeman.

All the "teenagers" in this film are easily in their late 20s/early 30s, the acting is all horrible and the script has every cliche imaginable with hilarious dialogue--it comes as no surprise that it was written by the immortal Ed Wood Jr.!

Worth seeing for laughs. Best lines--"They're shooting back!" and "It ain't supposed to be like this."