The Violent Years Reviews

From the contorted mind of Ed Wood (PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE) comes this amazing story of debutantes gone bad, starring Jean Moorhead as the spoiled daughter of a newspaper publisher and his society-conscious wife. This depraved young woman uses mom's car to hold up gas stations with her gang of vicious, rampaging sweater girls; the gang also likes to prowl Lover's Lane, where they tie up a young girl and kidnap her beau, presumably having their wicked way with him in the park. They throw scandalous pajama parties, where completely clothed girls dance with suited men and even actually kiss. But as if that weren't bad enough, they fall into the evil snares of Communism when nameless subversives offer them big bucks to trash a schoolroom, "and if a few flags get destroyed, well, that's just how it goes." While tossing globes through windows and breaking the chalk, they're surrounded by the cops, who kill two of the girls in a shootout and then tail Moorhead in a low-speed pursuit. She crashes the car, killing the last of her pals and landing her in a prison hospital, where she dies in childbirth. The film is framed by hysterically overripe speeches by a Judge who is denying a petition by Moorhead's parents to adopt their bastard grandchild. The coda is an onslaught of moralistic rantings about society's need for stronger, more disciplined parents who will "bring back the old reliable woodshed" and whip a little sense into their uncontrollable offspring. It's a high point in Wood's career as unwitting self-parodist, and provides an appropriately uproarious conclusion to this thoroughly silly film.