the audience applauded

Must See Movie...

Good movie but grossly overrated

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

When I saw the title "Girl Gang", I assumed I'd see a Mamie Van Doren movie imitation, with lots of dumb situations, ridiculous dialogue, and a laughable script. This movie about drug addiction in the early 50s is incredibly cheap and not funny at all.A group of high schoolers looking for fun unwisely become involved with "Joe" (Timothy Farrell) and "Doc" (Harry Keaton), a drug pusher and his doctor supplier, respectively. A few puffs of "weed" lead to addiction, robbery, murder, blackmail, prostitution, bankruptcy and just about everything else. The kids graduate from "weed" to heroin, becoming so addicted that their lives are ruined. The acting is horrible and the situations unbelievable, but for some reason the proceedings just aren't funny.I did learn a lot: a heroin injection is a "joy pop", heroin withdrawal is "the jumpin jives", a person can overdose almost fatally on "weed", and 10-minute piano solos seem to be a lot of fun. Instead of being unintentionally funny like "Reefer Madness" however, "Girl Gang" is really pretty depressing. Its frank (though poorly acted) treatment of heroin addiction is just sad. Most of the actors never appeared in another film, which tells me something. If you want to laugh, watch "Untamed Youth" or "Girls Town", but be warned that "Girl Gang" is depressing and not funny. Maybe it was meant to be that way.

****SPOILERS**** Movie about juvenile delinquency in the mid 1950's USA with a gang of teenage girls and their boy hangers ons, for drugs sex and party going, working for this sleazy drug pusher Joe who uses them to steal cars and blackmail, by screaming rape, their male victims. It's Joe's #1 squeeze June a drug addicted hooker who together with disbarred doctor, for preforming abortions on the side, Doc Bedford who run the operation luring clueless teenager into their gang and corrupting them with both drug & sex.Joe overplays his hand by staging a gas station robbery that goes bad with two of his main players or robbers Bill & Wander ending up being gun down by the gas station attendant after he himself was shot down by them. With Wanda barley hanging on to life she's rushed to Joe's hideout where Doc Bedford is ordered to preform a life saving operation on her without an antistatic. Being barley sober, after taking a few shots of whiskey, to get the job done he screws up big time letting Wanda die on the operating or better kitchen table after going into shock due to loss of blood. That's just as the police storm the place busting Joe & June with Doc Bedford taking to flight.***SPOILERS*** Doc Bedford's attempt to escape the long, in this case short, arm of the law ended up in disaster for the old guy. Shot in the back while fleeing the police, despite being unarmed, the Doc ends up fatally wounded in a drainage ditch and dies before medical help can arrive. As for Joe & June their facing long hard time behind bars for what they did as well as reprisals from their fellow convicts who in many case were, in being addicted on drugs, victims of theirs. P.S "Girl Gang" was released as a double feather with the Ed Wood classic "The Violent Years" that covered much of the same material, juvenile delinquency, that it did.

A study in drug abuse like Reefer Madness, Girl Gang emphasizes the sleazy aspects associated with like-minded juveniles who find themselves corrupted by marijuana, and Heroin and delivers a mish mash of gratuitous exploitation.In an isolated apartment on the wrong side of the tracks June (Joanne Arnold) hangs out with her friends who come there to buy "weed" cigarettes, marijuana, from Joe (Timothy Farrell) who runs a business of selling Heroin to school kids and getting them addicted so they will pull crimes for him. Joe keeps a disbarred alcoholic physician Doc (Harry Keaton) on hand to help with assisting the school kids with clean injections. Joe secures a job for June with a local merchant in order to support her mounting heroin habit. June begins selling sexual favors, and when she is caught stealing money from a business Joe and Doc come forward to blackmail the man into silence. When Joe sends June and some others out to rob a local gas station, a girl gets shot and the police close in on the drug-infested apartment.It's too bad that, given the resources, the movie could not have been better. Judging by the mise-en-scene, the budget for the film looks to be about as good as it was for Detour nine years earlier. The major difference being that Detour has a strong central character and a strong story arc that carries the viewer from the opening through to the end, whereas Girl Gang never seems to focus on the right thing, first having a girl-gang robbery, which introduces us to drug dealer Joe, which leads us to June, but since June is our main character it only makes sense for us to learn about her and where she comes from and why she has ended up at Joe's apartment. Since we never know why June does what she does we have nothing to care about in the character and her downfall doesn't mean anything to us.Part of this is the charismatic screen persona of leads Tom Neal and Ann Savage in Detour. Not to take away from the relative merits of Joanne Arnold, and Timothy Farrell, but they were not A-listers nor were they strong actors, although Farrell did have a stronger presence than the eye-candy Arnold. To be honest Arnold was cast because they had a great body and this vehicle was to sell from the male gaze that was seeking cheap visual thrills from her presence on screen.Arnoldhad done the Playboy spread in 1954 and the producers must have thought they had a sure box-office with her in the movie. She's beautiful to look at but seeing her in motion in the movies it's clear she is not an actress. Her face never registers a glimmer of thought and the lack of her characters progression in the film makes it a flat gratuitous thing.

This is, without question, a bad film. The acting is often pretty crappy (with 'actors' who can't deliver their lines), the production values low and the emphasis is purely on exploitation! However, in a sleazy way, it's also very interesting and certainly will keep your attention! It definitely falls into the category of 'so bad, it's good'! This film is of some mild interest because one of the main characters, 'Doc', is Harry Keaton--Buster's real life brother. You can't tell this by looking at him or seeing him act--he's just another apparent no-talent in a vast sea of no-talents! Additionally, the film stars Timothy Farrell as 'Joe'--a sleazy sort much like the guys he played in other no-budget exploitation films as "Test Tube Babies", "Glen or Glenda" and "Jail Bait". He plays his usual greasy crooks--and in such roles, Farrell (a bailiff in real life) was pretty effective."Girl Gang" begins with a group of nasty women beating a guy up and stealing his car. It seems they are heroin addicts and have brought the car to Joe so they can get a fix. In fact, throughout the film LOTS of troubled people come to Joe for pot and heroin--and Joe is very obliging--giving them their first dose for free. Then, when they get hooked, Joe has them commit various crimes to pay for more. You see ladies prostitute themselves, blackmail, commit robberies and the like--all to get their beloved heroin. Eventually, as in all exploitation films of the era, these folks get what's coming to them. But in between, the film is very explicit for the time--with rather frank discussions of prostitution as well as how to shoot heroin. The latter was VERY realistic--and I wonder how many folks might have learned to use the drug simply by watching Joe give a step-by-step lesson to a newbie on using it! As I said, the film is pretty funny because it's so badly made. Look at the 'ladies' delivering their line when the gang meets up with Joe at his hangout or the cop and doctor talking outside in front of the Prison Ward sign. None of them delivered their lines with any conviction--just like some semi-literates reading cue cards. Also, look for the shootout. When one of the wicked ladies shoots the gas station attendant, she then tosses the gun to the attendant who is lying on the ground bleeding. And, he then shoots the gang members!! Huh?!? But my favorite is the ultra-lame cat fight near the end of the movie. Seeing Betty White and Bea Arthur doing this scene together would have been sexier--and a lot more convincing!! Overall, terribly bad...but a hoot to watch with other bad movie buffs. Enjoyable trash.