Reform School Girl

(1957, 72 min.)

Starring Gloria Castillo, Ross Ford, Jan Englund, Ralph Reed, Edd Byrnes, Yvette Vickers, Luana Anders, Donna Jo Gribble, Wayne Taylor.

Written and directed by Edward Bernds.

Castillo plays Donna, a hard luck teenager who lives in a crappy little apartment with her shrewish aunt and lecherous uncle. On top of that she hangs out with what might have been described at one point as a 'bad element.' One night some friends, Josie (Anders) and Gary (Taylor), stop by her apartment to pick her up for a night on the town, arriving just as her uncle is putting the moves on her. They've come with Vince (Byrnes), a car thief who's been using them for a racket he's got going, but whom Donna has never met before. He certainly makes a strong first impression on her, laying out her pervo uncle with a few choice blows. Despite this early indication of Vince as some sort of anti-hero, this is the first and last semi-decent thing he does in the film.

After ditching Gary and Josie, Vince gets Donna alone in his car and tries to move in on her himself, but she has an aversion to being touched and rebuffs him. He decides to get his groove on with some quality speeding, but when a cop car starts chasing them, he inadvertently runs over an innocent bystander. Vince splits, Donna gets nabbed and, because of her reluctance to name him to the police owing to Vince's threats, she gets sent up to reform school, effectively becoming the title character.

On the inside Donna takes up with Ruth (Englund), who's tough but sympathetic. Both of these qualities come in handy as some of the other girls, most notably über-bitch Vicky (Vickers), take an instant dislike to Donna that only increases after a false rumor gets started that she's a snitch.

She's also got something of a friend in Mr. Lindsay (Ford), a teacher and psychologist, who's there to study the girls' behavior and who appoints himself Donna's personal social worker. For a psychologist this guy's about as sharp as a spoon when it comes to figuring people out, but at least his intentions are honorable.

One day during work detail Donna meets Jackie (Reed), a local guy who's passing by outside. He sneaks onto the grounds to see her, bringing a friend for Ruth. Donna finds that she's beginning to feel she can trust someone again. Which, by the way, means that serious trouble is just around the corner.

By various machinations and misunderstandings, Donna's reputation as a squealer increases to a dangerous level, leading Vince to believe that she's going to name names. He heads towards the school with the intent of ensuring her permanent silence, only he'd better hurry as the girls have a similar idea and they're already on the inside.

This hails from the juvenile delinquent genre, and it's a cautionary tale, though writer/director Bernds' script is refreshingly short on preachiness. (Refreshing on the one hand, unfortunate on the other. After all, the faux self-righteousness of many JDs is one of the things that make them campily funny.) But it's also a tame precursor to the Women-in-Prison films. A very tame precursor. This is like an episode of The Magic Garden compared to what would come later.

Nevertheless there are early indications here. The catfights (though not, it should be noted, the obligatory shower fight, one of the elements that wouldn't turn up for a while). The whole stool pigeon thing. The mentally-addled waif of whom our heroine feels protective. In fact the girl in this film, Cathy (Gribble), is first seen clutching a doll and it's almost certain that the similar character who also carries a doll around in the 1986 WiP spoof Reform School Girls is a direct reference to this one.

I guess my main problem with this film is the lack of payoff at the end, to whit: there are characters who are built up towards getting what's coming to them in the end- and it just doesn't happen. It astounds me to say this as a committed leftist but…I think I may have watched too many Chuck Norris movies. I've become used to the inevitability of the bad guys paying the piper in the final reel. This film ends with Vince getting captured and Donna learning that it's nice to have a boyfriend who doesn't steal and strip cars for a living and that's about it. The other girls, particularly Vickers and Anders, the latter of whom winds up in the school, believing incorrectly that she's in stir because Donna snitched on her, are set up as villains and vicious ones at that. Characters like this are generally either dispatched in a timely and nasty manner in the grand finale or occasionally, in films like 1983's Chained Heat, they join up with the heroine in the end to fight a worse evil, usually the warden. And yet here after assorted activities including putting a snake in Donna's bed, braining Ruth with a baseball bat and tying up one of the matrons in an attempt to break into solitary where Donna is being kept so they can off her, nothing happens to these girls, at least nothing that we see onscreen. I don't require a bloodbath, but acknowledgement of some sort of comeuppance would have made things a bit more satisfying, not to mention more dramaturgically complete.

JD movies are one of those niche genres, like oaters and Edgar Wallace krimis and Hal Hartley films: they may not have huge audiences, but those that believe, believe most fervently. It would probably take someone with a finer appreciation of JD films than I to say whether or not this movie really works on those terms. From my standing as an amateur however I'd guess the answer would most likely be not.