The Violent Years (1956)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The wretched acting gets a longtime companion with Edward D. Wood Jr.'s writing the moment that mom goes to write a check, simply tapping the check with her pen and hands it to her daughter. The young girl has made an effort to converse with her very busy mother who is too busy with charities to spend time with her. How about dad? He is working too many hours at his newspaper. So what is a girl to do when moms and pops are too unavailable? Rob gas stations, that's what. Yes, there is a history of rich kids turning to crime. I know... I had it happen to me twice, and I could tell that these delinquents were at least upper middle class. What causes kids with money to do such things? Drugs perhaps, maybe just the thrill of seeing if they can get away with it.Now if this D grade drama made any effort to explain why, perhaps it would rank a 4 instead of a 2. These buxom females are obviously older than the supposed 18 years. With angora sweaters covering their bullets over Broadway, they are one dimensional and unbelievable. At times, there is some little bit of intelligence, but I believe that was strictly by accident. A prologue concerning the parents in court is a finger-wagging moment that is up there with the rock musical where a long-haired old fuddy duddy smashes a record and shouts "Rock and roll has got to go!"I had seen the opening footage of the four nasty females approaching a blackboard and sneering at its attempts to show them values. None are present here. The same year's "The Bad Seed" gave logical reasoning to why sweet little Rhoda was a sociopath, but this shows none. They are animals, pure and simple, and not the kind that one would use the word to describe them... outside of a kennel.I waited ten minutes before deciding what fate I wanted for each of them. These girls would be approximately my mother's age now, and I have seen her high school yearbooks. Not one is her supposedly tough school looked like these bullies with breasts. Even John Waters created a more realistic tale with his expose "Female Trouble" where Divine at least had the motive of not getting cha cha heels for her life of crime.Today's teens can be just as bad with their selfish motives hidden by passive aggressive behavior. So if Wood was looking into the future, he got everything right but technology. "What did you expect them to throw back, powder puffs?", one of them asks when the police open fire on them. They mourn the sudden death of one of the quartet for a minute. An older woman whom they hide out with is their fairy godmother from hell. Watch for the obvious wretchedness in the amateurish acting and the ridiculously badly clichéd script. It's the only way to make it through this without gagging on your finger.

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.

A newspaper publisher's daughter suffers from neglect by her parents. She and her friends turn to crime by dressing up like men, holding up gas stations, raping young men at gunpoint, and having make out parties when her parents are away. Their "fence" gets them to trash the school on request of sinister un- American clients, and they run afoul of the law, apple pie, and God himself.Oddly, this rather boring film was the most successful of films touched by Ed Wood.Perhaps cuz it stars a Playboy centerfold. Who knows? Some of the film seems to be shot in silent mode with only SFX and music dubbed in. It also seems way too well written to be Ed Wood. Not saying it's good, BTW.

Unless you're prepared to undergo the horrifying experience of a cingulotomy you're best advised to avoid this Ed Wood written movie. It's just terrible.The central figure of the rich girl, Jean Moorhead, who is drawn to armed robbery by the thrill of it all is attractive enough and the half dozen high school girls, whose ages run between twenty and thirty, wear tight sweaters and brassieres that seem to be made of traffic cones. But there the delectations end.Scenes don't move. The acting is out of some community college stage in Cranford, New Jersey. The staging is positively primitive. The dialog is ripped off from "Dragnet." "There's one thing you forgot, Mister.""Huh? What's that?" "This movie transcends the unkempt. It reaches for a black hole." Fortunately, everyone bad is brought before the bar of justice and told off in no uncertain terms. And -- whew! -- it's over at last.