Customer Rating: Summary: Great film, horrible quality print Comment: The Violent Years
Yes, this is a camp classic with wonderfully absurd scenarios, fabulous fifties outfits, dated homilies, ridiculous dialogue and plenty of sex and rock 'n roll. The film is so bad it's laughable and the situations are totally unbelievable. But for those of you planning on buying the DVD, cave canem! Buyer'd best beware because the quality of the film is terrible -- it's a faded black and white and the images are about as sharp as a butter knife. This is obviously an image recorded off a projection screen so anyone who really is a film buff, don't buy this DVD no matter how cheap it is! Even the sound quality sucks! OK, the lines are priceless and the hackneyed moralizing may be worth $2.99, $8.99, or whatever it costs. But be prepared for an extremely low quality film. Customer Rating: Summary: Girls gone somewhat askew Comment: Four teenage girls, who are well into their twenties, disguise themselves as boys (they wear bandannas) and "run rampage" through the city by pushing their sexual advances on a weaselly boy on Lovers' Lane and hitting a gas station employee with a handgun, not killing him of course, but, as one policeman remarks, "Not for lack of trying."
After enduring a friend of her father's who shows up at their slumber party, trying to hold a conversation with the "teens" as they make out robotically, Paula leads the gang on their most heinous crime of all: breaking into their classroom in order to slightly disrupt the furniture and even erase the blackboard! Fortunately, the cops show up before they can finish the job, and a shoot-out ensues. One of the girls, after being blasted with a shotgun, announces, "It wasn't supposed to be like this," before lying down gently with no visible signs of damage whatsoever. After running out of the school, the girls stop directly in front of the cops and chat long enough for another girl to be shot down as well. Day and night lose all meaning as the remaining two girls speed off at a snail's pace past the police.
After another shooting, the girls have a wonderfully ridiculous car crash into a plate glass window. One of the girls dies in the wreck. Paula receives some cuts on her face, but manages to live just long enough to give birth to her illegitimate child. A judge refuses to grant Paula's parents custody of the child and further punishes them by reading a speech so long and pointless that even he seems to be dozing off by the end. In short, it's the fault of the parents that Paula turned to crime as a hobby because they didn't give her enough love or force religion upon her. Let this be a lesson to us all.
"The Violent Years" isn't nearly as inept as "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "Glen or Glenda" (possibly because Ed Wood only wrote it, didn't direct it) but it's still terribly entertaining. Customer Rating: Summary: moral speach Comment: This movie has the best moral speach i've ever seen in a movie.
Customer Rating: Summary: "These aren't kids. These are morons!" Comment: I figured this movie was gonna be pure cheese, but it was actually alright. Paula is a mega-spoiled rich girl who acts all prim and proper but is actually a hard-livin' hoodlum who, along with her all girl gang, rob gas stations, molest boys at gun point (off camera), steal, vandalize the school, kill a cop and throw wild pajama parties.
Written by the great Ed Wood, Jr. THE VIOLENT YEARS would have been much better if it was also directed by him instead of William Morgan who's closet claim to fame was being the editor on SONG OF THE SOUTH, which by the way was a good movie.
Customer Rating: Summary: Good message, wrong audience Comment: You know, I think The Violent Years is actually a pretty decent film, despite its over handed commentary on the whole juvenile delinquency craze that swept through Hollywood in the 1950s. It's hard to believe, but filmmakers actually used to make films with messages, exhorting viewers to straighten up and fly right - or else, this could happen to you: kids with no respect for anyone, committing crimes just for the kicks, man, etc. Of course, the effectiveness of such movies can be called into question - but more on that below.
As for the film, witness one stone-faced young blonde with impeccable sweater-wearing skills and a lust for thrills. She leads a gang of buxom hooligans on a crime spree that escalates from gas station holdups to a physical attack on a young man (probably the highlight of the poor dope's entire life, truth be told) to fencing stolen goods to Communist-inspired vandalism to murder. Poor Paula Parkins (Jean Morehead) has been forced to grow up with rich parents who don't spend enough time with her, always out working or organizing charity events. Naturally, she has to rebel - and her parents, despite all of their money, are somehow incapable of buying a clue. Paula is a bad, bad girl, and it's only a matter of time before she discovers why living dangerously is in fact dangerous.
I could go into all the crimes they stuff into this one film, but that doesn't get to the heart of this movie. The whole point of The Violent Years is to lay the blame for juvenile delinquency squarely on the parents. Certainly, Paula's parents share some of the blame for their daughter's actions, since they were always too busy to talk to her or make sure she was really the good girl they thought her to be, but The Violent Years pins all the blame on Ma and Pa. Weren't these films targeted at young audiences? What good did it do to lay all blame for juvenile delinquency on the parents? Sure, judge, I robbed that store and shot a man in cold blood - but we all know I'm not to blame; it was those rotten parents of mine. Fortunately, Paula does pay the price for her crimes in this film, but she never takes responsibility for her own actions.
Well, maybe the big ending will help convince all those kids in the audience not to make juvenile delinquents out of themselves, even if they have bad parents. Uh, no - it doesn't. What you get is an exceedingly long and boring speech from a judge whose monotone could put kids to sleep by the thousands on the night before Christmas. As it turns out, none other than Ed Wood wrote the script for The Violent Years, and that does a lot to explain the judge's big speech at the end, which has him mandating a return to God and the rehabilitation of the whole woodshed industry. It's a good and valid message, but the excessive moralizing and seemingly endless length of the whole speech robs it of any real effectiveness.
To sum up, I think The Violent Years is a pretty good, albeit campy, film with an important message, but I think the message is directed at the wrong audience and thus fails to accomplish its obvious goal of curbing juvenile delinquency.
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