User Reviews

GIRL GANG 1956 This is one of those has to be seen to be believed films. It is a low rent exploitation quickie about juveniles getting mixed up with various drugs.

This one starts with several bobby-sox types standing on the side of road with their thumbs out. A man pulls up and offers them a ride. The girls pile in and are soon whispering sweet nothings in his ear. Another car pulls up and two more girls jump out. They stick a gun in the man's face and drag him out of the car. It is a gun butt to the back of the head first, then, his wallet and car are stolen.

The girls drive into the seedy end of town and drop the car off at the back of a rundown apartment. Inside is drug dealer, Timothy Farrell, who buys the hot car off the girls for a couple of hundred bucks. He then has his man drive the car over to a garage for a new paint job etc.

Farrell gets most of the cash back from the girls by selling them some marijuana. Farrell is making a nice living selling drugs and buying stolen goods etc. He then shows one of his girls how to shoot up heroin. (This bit is surprisingly detailed considering the year) Farrell even has an old Doctor, Harry Keaton on the payroll. Keaton has lost his licence and literally works for a bottle of booze.

Farrell has one of the girls go to work at a local business. She bats her lashes at the manager and soon has the man chomping at the bit for a bit of horizontal mambo. This is all a part of Farrell's plot. Now Farrell steps up and threatens the man with the Police if he does not pay. The girl will of course scream rape if the man does not play ball.

There is another bit where all the girls need to sleep with 5 different boys before they can join the gang. The new girl tokes up and heads for the "private business" room to get the deed done.

Next we have a bunch of the kids pulling a gas station hold-up for drug cash. Needless to say this enterprise goes sideways with several dead and one of the girls seriously wounded. It is back to Farrell's place so the defrocked doctor can save the girl. The Police though are soon on the trail. Farrell's apartment door is soon kicked in and Farrell and his bunch grabbed up. The doc, Keaton, makes a dash for safety but collects several ounces of un-needed lead in his back for his troubles.

Even with the terrible acting, and rather static camera work, the film draws a viewer in, if only to see where the tale is going. The girls in the film spend most of their time pointing their upper-works at the camera, while showing as much leg and thigh as possible. Among said women folk, is former Playboy Playmate of the Month for May 1954, Joanne Arnold.

The director of this "masterpiece" is Robert C. Dertano. Dertano's other films include, RACKET GIRLS, GUN GIRL'S and Paris AFTER MIDNIGHT. The cinematography was by William Thompson. Thompson was the Ed Wood's director of photography on JAIL BAIT, BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE etc.

If you are a fan of bottom dweller cinema then give this one a look see. You might be surprised.

"Girl Gang" (1954). Movies come in four species. First of all, there is the class "A" movie, the major attraction at a cinema, made on a large budget with well-known stars and popular supporting actors. Then there is a "B" movie, made on a considerably less budget, but suitable for playing at cinemas during the first half of the program. All us oldies know that an "A" movie is the major attraction, and the "B" is the supporting feature that you can often come late for, and not usually miss anything of importance or something that was actually vastly entertaining.

There was also the "C" movie for the super cheap, and the "D" movie for the made-on-a-shoe-string. "Girl Gang" is a "D" movie, but despite its small budget, it's a surprisingly entertaining one with its bevy of sleazy if sexy sluts, headed by Joanne "Girl in a Bathtub" Arnold in her only starring role, and Mary Lou O'Connor in her only movie appearance.

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.

"Racket Girls" director Robert C. Dertano's thriller "Girl Gang" qualifies as a vintage exploitation movie about crime and narcotics. Mind you, this abysmally acted, 63-minute, black & white movie is strictly your standard dope-fiend film from fade-in to fade-out. Nevertheless, the casual use of marijuana and the extremely explicit depictions about both cooking heroin and injecting it respectively for men and women must have been controversial for its day. Producer George Weiss couldn't have received any dispensation from the Motion Picture Association of America because the still intact Production Code prohibited Hollywood from illustrating how to commit a crime, and using illegal narcotics very much constituted a crime in the 1950s. Otto Preminger didn't dare go as far out on the censorship limb as "Girl Gang" did in 1954 when he produced his own controversial Frank Sinatra epic "The Man with the Golden Arm" about heroin abuse in 1955 and altogether ignored the Production Code Seal of Approval. Otherwise, "Girl Gang" casts exploitation regular Timothy Farrell of "The Violent Years" and "The Devil's Sleep" as a two-bit crime boss who hooks teens on marijuana and/or heroin and dispatches them to crime crimes so they can fence him the goods and he can repay them with either pot or smack. "Girl Gang" does not entirely concern itself with distaff criminals. A quartet of devious dames hijacks a man's car on a lonely highway and leaves him sprawled unconscious on the pavement, but the bulk of the action follows the crime boss and his efforts to take advantage of women while they perform his dirty deeds. Eventually, the police catch up with him after the girl gang is shot-up by authorities and traced back to his hideout in an apartment complex. The subject matter contains greater historical relevance than the cinematic technique. There is a slackly staged gas station robbery toward the end of the action. Just about everything is run-of-the-mill, right down to William Thompson's cinematography.

And those two are Joanne Arnold (a former Playboy Playmate) and Timothy Farrell, who is turning into my king of exploitation flicks. Here, he plays a scumbag (at which he excels) who gets kids hooked on grass, and then heroin. He has several girls in his employ; they commit thefts to support their escalating drug habits. In the opening scene, the girl gang steals a car from some poor sucker. This guy is so pathetic he falls to the ground while they are stealing his wallet. Then again, maybe it was a clever ploy on his part to look up their skirts. The babes return to Farrell's fleabag of a hangout, where Arnold is getting ready to take her first joy pop (that's heroin, for you squares). Farrell charges six bucks a shot. Even if I adjust for inflation, this means my dealer has been ripping me off. Farrell tells us how to prepare the horse, and then injects it into Arnold's leg. When she is not getting hopped up, she and Farrell play so much tonsil hockey that I kept expecting NHL announcer Doc Emrick to yell SCORE!!

Arnold brings in a young dimwit couple who want to get high, so Farrell supplies the weed. We are treated to a harp glissando every time somebody gets loaded. To get initiated into the gang, the new girl has to have "relations" with 5 boys. This could get expensive. A few minutes later, Arnold drags a guy into a back room, claiming she wants to get initiated. From behind the door, we hear the guy moaning "oh, nooooooo." Just a wild guess, but if this guy can resist Arnold, then maybe it's Timothy Farrell he's really interested in.

Halfway through the film, we are treated to a 5-minute interlude in which a guy plays boogie-woogie on the piano, and the girls and guys act like they are at a sock hop.

Arnold goes to work for some geezer named Mr. Brown, then goes to work on Mr. Brown, offering up her body in exchange for fifty bucks. I give Mr. Brown credit; he may be the only guy in the history of cinema who can keep his suit on while doing you-know-what.

In the exciting climax, the gang knocks over a gas station. Arnold keeps the attendant busy, if you get my drift, while the new girl cleans out the cash register. She is shot, and the entire cast ends up at Farrell's dump, where an old drunken quack attempts an operation. The cops break in and charge them with "removing a bullet without notifying a doctor." A few minutes later, the cops gun down the faux doctor; apparently they got tired of chasing the 65-year-old guy around the set.

Most of the acting is hopelessly inept. The members of the girl gang are atrociously untalented, but, in fairness, that's what marijuana will do to you. The male actors are uniformly bad, except for Farrell, who manages to make himself an interesting sleazeball. Top honors go to Arnold, for her great looks and borderline acting ability. The filmmakers at least had the good sense to throw her into as many make-out scenes as possible, often in various states of undress.

All in all, it's probably better to skip this movie, and instead, google images of Joanne Arnold.

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.

If there is indeed an underworld, Hollywood executives who are sent there will be forced to spend eternity watching these hideous exploitation movies.

There there a long periods of silence in this ultra boring garbage about heroin-addicted teenagers in their late 20's who use their womenly wiles to rob lustful men on the road simply so they can get another fix. The rule of thumb in making these movies what is make it fast, make it cheap and find whoever was available at whatever Hollywood dive Bar you could locate them in. It attempts to show the dangers of drug abuse but ends up being instantly forgettable because it is obviously not sincere in trying to provide a moral message. Nobody in the film is worth singling out for any of their performances because they are just all equally bland and quickly forgettable.

The use of extreme sexuality in its narrative shows that there really is no moral conscience behind this and the trouble is that it isn't even funny. None of the women really are attractive, overly made-up and wearing clothing far too tight, while the men that they are involved with are beyond deplorable. The film is also very inconsistent in its plot and also looks like it was filmed in a bunch of cardboard boxes assembled to look like a huge building. Film historians will be interested in this or others like it simply for the genre of exploitation but there is nothing to recommend outside of being grateful that these types of films simply just are not made anymore.

An archetypal fifties roadshow flick – which, if you don't know, means that it showcases material too strong for regular bookings. The credits proudly announce that it was "Produced Under Personal Supervision" of exploitation maestro George Weiss, and it stars two of the genre's most recognizable veterans, Timothy Farrell and Harry Keaton. But in spite of this sterling pedigree, Girl Gang might not otherwise be very watchable. It's weighed down by long sequences in which the principals demonstrate the mechanics of shooting up heroin in dreary, drawn-out detail. Even for a 1954 audience the shock value of this dismal process must have worn off quickly, given the static presentation.

But GG's lame execution is offset by its one splendid asset – the completely fabulous Joanne Arnold. Although she had face, form, and figure to spare, Miss Arnold's real appeal is the deliciously cool, laid-back vibe she brings to her character of June. You remember all those film noir leading ladies in the fifties, busy emoting all over the place? Well, Miss Arnold never allows her thesping to be tainted by any high-culture pathos. No matter how sleazy the business at hand, her bad-girl persona remains unflappably natural and unforced. She makes depravity look as easy as falling off a log – or in her case, as easy as falling into bed with the boss she's going to blackmail.

There's a further aspect of GG that will endear it to gents of a certain age (geezers as old as the nostalgiste, in other words). Several of the "gang" members were actually popular pin-up models of the era: marvelous Mary Metier, prim Peggy Winters, and likable Thelma Montgomery. Now, fans may not recognize them right away in their movie get-ups. They're wearing long pencil skirts, loafers, and even bobby socks - quite a contrast to their normal working attire. Which would have been, ah, nothing at all. But this is apparently their only feature film – don't pass up this chance to see them with their clothes on!

Scattered throughout the running time are some additional redemptive bits that can generate chuckles. There's the incidental music; there's Timothy Farrell's kissing technique; and best of all, there's the sex club initiation room with its flashing "occupied" light (no, I can't explain this, you've got to see it). But the real filling in this cheesecake is Joanne Arnold. And what a tasty booze, bullet, and dope-laced filling it is!

Joe's a regular guy, and all the cool kids dig him the most. Stop by Joe's pad and you can blow a reefer, fire up in the mainline, or get an abortion on the kitchen table at the hands of a liquored-up quack that owes ol' Joe lotsa favors. After you're thoroughly strung-out on the hard stuff, Joe'll steer you into a life of prostitution, blackmail, and armed robbery. And oh yeah - if you're a girl and you wanna "join the club," you gotta have sex with five of the hardcore male members, or else no jitterbuggin' and boogie-woogie and dope and good times for you! I was a little surprised to see how graphic this was for 1954, but director Robert C. Dertano pulls out all the stops for GIRL GANG, a pulpy piece of anti-drug propaganda that manages to fail altogether in delivering its political message. Fact is, life at Joe's pad is a gas. What's more fun than a place where you can dance and hook up and get high and never worry about tomorrow? Where all you've got to think about is how much of mommy and daddy's money you can blow on heroin and lipstick and garter belts? Tie me off and let that piano player find his groove, 'cuz we gonna blow the roof off this muther!

This was the cheap exploitation film of the 1950's, where a lot of things were implied but never actually said, such as prostitution, abortion and drug addiction.

The film centers around a drug dealer named Joe who has a gang of girls who steal cars for him. but they are pretty much forgotten after the first act of the movie. The rest of the film involves clean cut white kids who get involved in various acts of depravity while become addicted to drugs.

This is Poverty Row schlock, which was no doubt intended for... well, honestly, I'm not sure who the audience for this was. But it got made, and you can't unsee it once you've seen it...

Girl Gang is really about Joe (Timothy Farrell), who leads the titular group of young ladies. He hooks them on drugs, then gets willing participants in the crimes of robbery and prostitution. Farrell would play pretty much the same role, under the same name, in 1957's Gun Girls. His main girl June is played by Joanne Arnold, who was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for May 1954.

This is the kind of movie I find myself loving when I'm not watching Italian splatter or Mexican lucha movies: too old to be teenagers getting in trouble and dragging down everyone else with them.

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.