The Violent Years

Ed Wood, purveyor of class and dignity with a veneer of exploitation, gives us a great story about the consequences of parental neglect, albeit wrapped in nice, tight sweaters.

The movie deals with a newspaperman's daughter (who looks about the same age as her parents) who has become a wild child because her father is too busy at work to notice that he keeps giving her the same birthday present every year. In addition, her mom's continuously on the charity circuit, so she's never around for those heart-to-heart talks that young women need. So, left to her own devices, she has a gang of other females in need of thrills who rob gas stations and rape young men.

While this tragedy is at times overly done, the point is still well made that parents need to be involved in their children's lives. Sterno says give The Violent Years some time from your life.

Never let it be said that Ed Wood was afraid to tackle some burning social issues and he does so again here with his usual skill. The Violent Years talks about female delinquency as wealthy, but bored Jean Moorhead gathers around her some followers and they form a girl gang. These chicks are out for action and with them being masked, the law thinks that it's after your typical male holdup gang as the girls start going through all the local filling stations.

But these brazen harlots don't stop there. Unmasked they terrorize couples in a frequented lover's lane and tie up the women and then force men to their sexual wills. I don't know about you, but that's normally the kind of thing that is not best done under pressure at the point of a gun.

In the end Moorhead is pregnant and commits murder and the wages of sin are exacted by the long arm of the law in the person of noted character actor I. Stanford Jolley who looks like he's needing some laxative as he intones the sentence and his views on parents who do not give good supervision and values to their kids. Poor Jolley who is the only person in this cast who has a decent resume probably fired his agent after he signed him up for this.

Ed Wood, they'll never be another like you.

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.

A bit heavy handed and moralising but certainly has some feisty moments. I loved the girl gang with their big pointy bosoms and snarling expressions and guns. Holding up petrol stations for kicks and in the end wrecking schoolrooms and getting into a gunfight with the police. Actually they didn't do much more than push over the chairs and wipe the blackboard clean, even replacing the duster on the shelf afterwards. But they talked big, had those big bosoms and did seem keen on a bit more action than seemed to be promised elsewhere. Somewhere writer Ed Wood is trying to make some comment about all the juvenile delinquency being the fault of the parents, but there is a fine scene when a guy's girlfriend is made to take off her sweater (angora?) and skirt and then be bound in her shiny underwear whilst aforementioned guy is chased into the woods by the four bosom pals for some naughtiness. Our leading bad girl is removing her top in full frame as the picture fades and the young man protests.

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.