i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I recently saw this on TCM and had never seen it before. Director Edward Buzzell had a career in 30's and 40's films that were mostly actress driven romantic comedies before he made the leap to television in the early 50's. He also directed a couple of Marx Brothers movies. Here he is in his element directing three talented actress. Lana Turner is Val Parks, a playgirl heiress who is being forced to join the Women's Army Corp by her family before she can get her hands on any more of the family fortune. Larraine Day is Napoleon Rand, an army brat who knows the military rules book by heart and becomes a WAC to carry on a family tradition. Susan Peters is Annie Darrison, the wife of an army officer fighting in WWII. Parks and Rand instantly develop a dislike for each other and Darrison becomes the mediator as all three are assigned as mechanics in the same unit. What makes for believable on-screen tension between the Turner and Day characters is that they couldn't stand each other in real life. Day had billing over Turner in the only other film they appeared in, 1939's Calling Dr. Kildare when Turner was an upcoming starlet. By the time filming started on this movie in August of 1944 Turner was an established star and had billing above Day. Day was icy to Turner in 1939 and Turner returned the cold shoulder in 1944. Susan Peters is one of Hollywood's tragic figures. She lost her father in an accident as a young girl and never got over it. Her acting career got off to a rocky start and was dropped by Warner Brothers but MGM saw something promising and she had earned an Academy Award nomination for Random Harvest. A miscarriage kept her off the screen just when her career was at it's brightest and she returned to the screen for this film but less than two months after filming she was shot in a hunting accident and paralyzed from the waist down. She made an attempt in limited roles to keep acting on screen, stage and television but depression led to her divorcing her husband and becoming recluse and anorexia nervosa led to her death at age 31. The Cedric Gibbins MGM art direction team on this film features 8 time Oscar winner Edwin Willis as set director. Proliffic cinematographer Ray June is the films photographer but the soft focus closeups are so overboard they are almost laughable. Some corny, silly dialog and situations but actually it isn't too bad of a movie. A female version of a WWII buddy movie. Agnes Moorehead, Natalie Schafer and June Lockhart in supporting roles. It's worth a look and I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.

This is a great little movie with plenty of laughs and tears. Lana Turner is in stunning form as Val, for some reason she really reminds me of Marylin Munroe a lot in this movie. The rest of the cast is great too, especially Laraine Day and Susan Peters. The story is based around the idea of three women from different social circumstances joining the WAC. The combination of Laraine Day with her army family background and Lana Turner as a model, creates for some incredible tension and electric scenes between the two. These two actresses really spark off each other wonderfully and they have some really dynamic exchanges. All the while with Susan Peters trying to play peace maker and remain neutral. A really heartbreaking ending really adds good balance to this movie also. I feel some of the other reviews were a little harsh on this film, treating it rather whimsically, this film has great dialogue and some very whitty exchanges, the likes of which you won't find on celluloid these days. I find it so hard to believe people can pass off a great little gem like this as boring and uninteresting. Anyway at least it has me here to champion it. :)

Wow! Lana Turner, Laraine Day, Susan Peters, Agnes Moorhead, and June Lockhart---all in the same movie. Does it ever get better than this? Unfortunately, how such a collection of talent can be given such a poor material to recite is puzzling. Witness the following lines: "Worked in Vaudeville with a trained duck. It got so bad I ate the act." "Rust proof,shock proof, self-winding, and will darn your socks, too." "Best soldier to ever wear a skirt." Despite lines like these, the acting is good enough to compensate. Yet, the film tends to demean the concept of the civilian army. Turner plays a model seemingly patriotic enough to gain her inheritance. Day is the army brat trying to maintain a family tradition. Peters is the intellectual always mediating the feud between the other two. Their acting saves the film. A major weakness in this film is the explicit sexism of the movie's theme. The powder is not gun powder but facial make-up. Men mechanics in World War Two movies don't get oil on their cute noses, but women mechanics do. Men do not cry if they fail to qualify for Officer's Candidate School, but women can fail and just have a good cry about it! The only thing to cry about is a movie with good talent squeezed into a plot better fitted the weak training films of 1942-42 than those of 1945 when social change played a part in a number of good movies. Perhaps Hollywood was not yet ready for change, or perhaps it was hoping old formula flicks which predated World War Two would prevail. Still, the film has merit and is worth seeing, especially with it's great ending.

It is meant to be a comedy, but is only mildly amusing.It gives a glimpse of Natalie Schafer who later played Mrs Howell on Gilligan's Island - for those who interested.