So Evil, So Young

A watchable British exploitation quickie incongruously shot in extremely pretty Technicolor, most of which takes place in a reform school for young ladies where common sense and self-control among both the inmates and the staff prove in unfortunately short supply; but where none of the girls otherwise live up to the film's lurid tabloid title. All the usual women's prison clichés are present and correct - the well-meaning matron (Joan Haythorne) whose good intentions are undermined by her brutal second in command (Ellen Pollock), lots of hair-pulling when the dormitory lights are out, and so on - but all presented in a genteel British fashion far from the unflinching brutality currently being depicted so graphically in the St.Trinian's films. The film keeps you sufficiently interested for the plot holes to be ironically more glaring than they would otherwise be in a less engrossing film.

The last of five productions on which The Danzigers had recently splashed out on Technicolor; the girls look incongruously pretty in their pink uniforms, as well as the pink pyjamas they wear in the numerous scenes set in their enormous dormitory, which cameraman Jimmy Wilson never tires of showing off, energetically dollying back and forth and up to the ceiling to give us a good view of it. Unfortunately, as earlier commentators have complained, the film has also been saddled with an insistent jazz score of the kind ubiquitous in British and Continental crime films of the early 60's (in this case lifted from previous Danzigers productions) which keeps barging in when least called for, and providing just the requisite trashiness lacking elsewhere.