HIGH SCHOOL HELLCATS (1958)

Joyce, the new girl at the high school, is given a hard time by rough-edged Connie and her even rougher-edged buddy Dolly (she likes to play with jackknives). They're the heads of the local girl gang who call themselves the Hellcats. The gang meets in the balcony of a dilapidated theater which they enter through a secret entrance, and using intimidation, they force Joyce to attend a meeting and put her through an initiation period to join the gang. She has to shoplift, get no grade higher than a "D," and ask out a guy who already has a girlfriend. Joyce goes along with most of it--though she fakes the shoplifting--and spends some time unloading on Mike, a cute clean-cut college boy who works at a small diner. Soon, the two are dating, but despite Mike warning Joyce to stay away from the Hellcats, she continues with the initiation. At a party (held in a house the girls have broken into) complete with booze and boys, Connie takes a fatal tumble down the basement steps. They leave her body to be discovered by the homeowners, and soon the cops come calling on the Hellcats. Crazy Dolly is sure that Connie was pushed down the steps and, thinking that Joyce has been too forthcoming to the cops, invites her to a private meeting in the theater with revenge on her mind.

Before the beach movie craze of the 1960s, American International made a number of teenage movies with a focus on juvenile delinquents (JDs). I haven't seen many of these, but this one seems to be a pretty representative entry in that genre. The heroine or hero, good and relatively innocent, is tempted to the bad side by some JDs, despite the advice of a clear-headed boyfriend or girlfriend. The parents are, at best, disconnected, and at worst, actively awful (Joyce's dad is a slapper and her mom is just oblivious). Substance abuse is not a present here; there's a little booze at the party, and a little lights-out petting but as illicit parties go, this one is kinda square. However, [Spoiler] murder is a plotpoint: Crazy Dolly gave Connie the fatal shove, wanting to take over as leader of the pack. Yvonne Lime (Joyce) does the best she can with the good girl role; more impressive are Jana Lund as Connie and Suzanne Sydney as Dolly; the climax with Dolly going murderously nuts in the theater balcony is memorable. Brett Halsey is fine as the boyfriend--his sleepy puppy eyes, which were irritating in THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE, are more suitable for this role. Pictured are Lime and Halsey. [TCM]