hyped garbage

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Problem Girls is a really bad film. Shot on a dental floss type budget with pedestrian direction it has one saving grace. The incredibly florid and campy performance of Helen Walker as the hard bitten, hardhearted mistress of a school for Problem Girls. Walker whose best career years were behind her knew this was a turkey and she gobbled through her role like Thanksgiving was coming up. Nurse Ratched had nothing on this woman who runs a school like a prison with generous doses of sadism and a corrupt staff of whom she has something on each one.But our story here concerns Walker planning something truly sinister for amnesia patient Susan Morrow and in the process getting her hands on a fortune. To find out what you watch the film for. But fans of bad Ed Wood or Arch Hall films will love Walker in the lead. Even us more discerning fans will appreciate what she does to save a turkey.

Problem Girls (1953) * 1/2 (out of 4) Incredibly stupid mystery from Columbia about a new teacher (Ross Elliott) at a school for rich, troubled girls who comes across what could be a murder case. It seems his co-teachers might have several secrets about the identity of a certain student. The dialogue in this thing is so incredibly bad that I'd almost recommend the movie just so people could hear it. This film falls in the range of stuff like Reefer Madness with the exception that this film seems to have had a pretty good budget. Being a studio film the production is a tad bit higher than you'd expect for this type of film but the performances are so bad, so over the top and campy that it's impossible to take anything here serious.

Just a sharp, compact little B-picture partly written by Jack (Indestructible Man) Pollexfen. Unlike a lot of the "girls dormitory" pictures of the 40s and 50s-- largely a boring lot, save for GIRLS TOWN-- this one is lively and in some cases, very funny. Check out actor Anthony Jochim as a weird old doctor at the girls school, who despite having murdered his wife in days of yore proves to be of invaluable help to the sterling young hero investigating corruption at the school. The Mephisto Waltz sequence is a howl! Also lots of familiar faces from the B's: Beverly Garland, Mara Corday, Joyce Jameson... if TCM shows it again check it out!

Happened to catch this one on TCM today, and it's truly bad. So bad that it's kinda fun to watch. Hardly a moment goes by that the viewer's willing suspension of disbelief doesn't work at all. Picture an alleged schoolfor wayward girls of extremely rich families in the City of Angels. Imagine a faculty made up of castoffs and ne'er-do-wells desperate for work and willing to therefore place themselves under the thumb of an evil couple with a plot to steal the fortune of a billionaire oil man. Now imagine clumsy dialogue, wooden acting, melodramatics galore, and a few catfights between women in their 20s attempting to pass as teenagers. Loads of fun! Catch it if you can.