Very well executed

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

With a rather low score of 5.1 and a silly title, I expected "Satan's School for Girls" to be a lousy film. However, this made for TV picture actually hols up pretty well and I have no idea why its score is this low. In fact, I strongly suspect that this film was the inspiration for the Dario Argento classic "Suspiria".When the film begins, Martha is on the run...being pursued by some unseen enemy. She eventually makes it to her sister's home but when Elizabeth arrives home, she finds Martha dead and hanging in the house! Martha had never been suicidal and despite the police ruling it a suicide, she decides to investigate. The trail leads to a weird 'girls' school (many of the actresses are 23-30) where there is a very strange sense of foreboding and some rather weird dealings. What is going on here?!In many ways, it reminds me of "Suspiria". Both are set at a women's school and both have a great sense of foreboding instead of actually scary stuff happening most of the time. Both lead to similar finales as well. Plus, if you see it, you get to see "Charlie's Angels" stars of the future, Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd, as two of the girls enrolled in this bizarro school. Worth seeing.

Satan's School for Girls (1973)** (out of 4) Made-for-TV flick about Elizabeth Sayers (Pamela Franklin), a woman who checks herself into a college under a fake name after the suicide of her sister. Elizabeth doesn't believe her sister would kill herself so she goes to the college to see what's really going on and sure enough other girls have killed themselves or is something much darker going on? Yes, the title pretty much tells you what's going on in this Aaron Spelling flick that has some good performances and nice atmosphere but very little else. At 78-minutes the film seems twice as long and the main reason why is that every single scene just keeps dragging on and on to the point where you simply stop caring about what's going on. It also doesn't help that the director seems to think that you're going to come to the film scared and that he doesn't need to do anything except having strange looking actors playing male parts and have scary music constantly going on the soundtrack. Just check out the opening scene where we get a couple males who just look creepy and yet this is supposed to make us scared. This trick happens throughout the movie as every male role is either played by an elderly man made to seem weird or of course there's the one good looking guy and you know what that means. There's a nice music score here but it gets played to death so much that you really can't help but roll your eyes and wish someone would hit the pause button. Even though it's not creepy at all, the film at least contains some nice atmosphere but I've found most TV movies from this era, no matter how bad they are, to have this one quality. Another good thing are the performances with Franklin doing a nice job in the lead role. The supporting cast includes strong performances by Jo Van Fleet and Kate Jackson as well as a very good turn by Cheryl Ladd in an early role. SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS offers very few shocks, no scares and there's really not too much going for it. In a decade full of Satanic films you can find much better ones to spend your night with.

I was 12 years old when this made for TV movie came out in 1973 and I remember watching it with my twin sister. We both loved watching all the t.v. movies of the week, especially the scary ones.This one stars Pamela Franklin as Elizabeth Sayers, a young woman whose sister Martha allegedly commits suicide. Elizabeth doesn't believe that her sister would kill herself, so she goes to the Salem School where Martha was attending to try to uncover what really happened to her sister.The movie has some truly creepy moments, such as when Elizabeth is roaming around the dark school grounds with a lantern during a storm. There is an underlying sense of doom throughout the movie.Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd, both future stars of Charlie's Angels, are in supporting roles as student's of the school, as is Jamie Smith-Jackson, who was in several good made for t.v. movies in the 1970's, for example, Go Ask Alice. Whatever became of her? JoAnn Fleet plays the headmistress of the school and Roy Thiennes is a creepy professor. Without giving too much away, Elizabeth discovers that there is a satanic cult at the school, hence the title of the film.Of course the movie has it's cheesy moments, but hey, this was a made for t.v. movie after all. I think it is one of the better ones, and the ending was a surprise to me. If you love 1970's made for t.v. movies I highly recommend this one. It's much better than the remake starring Shannon Daugherty.

Not bad, made-for-TV movie from Aaron Spelling and co. Although predictable for the most part, it has engaging lead performances and a sense of straight-laced melodrama that offers up a few surprises intermittently. Fans of "Charlie's Angels" will be interested to see Jackson here before she went on to bigger things, but the lead performance from Pamela Franklin is just as noteworthy (whatever happened to her career?). Moderately successful atmospherically, but hardly ground-breaking, it nevertheless isn't the worst of the wave of similar films from the same period, and it certainly has its moments.