PodBill Just what I expected

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Console best movie i've ever seen.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

gizmomogwai Proving Ed Wood can write just as well as he can direct, his script The Violent Years is brought to life by another director, and the result is still not good. The Violent Years comes out of an age-old theme that people mistakenly think is recent- "Today's kids are out of control and it wasn't like that when I was that age!" Except, people have been saying that forever. Check the date of the film- 1956, remembered now as a golden, Leave It to Beaver age. Like the later A Clockwork Orange, this has a gang of four teens robbing and raping- intriguingly, these four are all girls, which makes it harder to sympathize for the man who is raped- this is more male fantasy than horror.The film starts with the girl's parents up in front of a judge, who speaks about how hard it is to try a good friend. This is indeed hard, because judges can't do it at all- they have to recuse themselves. And since when can bad parenting be punished by the law? Much of what follows is ham-handed exploration of the kind of parenting that breeds delinquency- a mom who says her daughter's issues can't be all that important. And, skipping your kid's birthdays causes crime. The girls attempting to be bad leads to leaden dialogue and acting and cheesy lines. One woman needs to be told by the man that the girls are pointing guns at them, at which point the girls compliment him for being observant. The worst the woman who gives the gang its jobs can call the girls is "jerks." Of course, it all ends with more "If only I had..." mourning from the parents, reflecting a morality play with all the subtlety of being hit over the head with a hammer.

spelvini This clear "message" movie begins with a hep jazzy score and a blackboard with inspiring socially-concerned words written across it as lead actress Jean Moorland and other women enter and make dismissive gestures as to the value of the epithets.When the film shifts to a court room with character actor as Judge handing down a lesson sentence to the parents we know we're in that fuzzy land of Ed Wood whose flat-footed aesthetic has now become legend and imitated for its value in what it can say about its subject as well as what it says about the source of the story it tells.Rich kid Paula Parkins (Jean Moorhead) and her gang of tough high school women friends spend their days and nights committing crimes, and getting away with it because she uses her parents car and fences stolen goods though and underground source. When not stealing they terrorize the citizenry with extremes like raping young men, and indulge in heavy petting parties at their parents house. When a local closet communist hires the girls to vandalize a high school police are tipped off and guns are fired. Paula finds herself in jail, pregnant from a one-night stand and her parents are left with the blame.The film was a modest money maker on the B circuit and one can only owe this to the titillating title and all-women cast involved in dastardly deeds against society. This may have been the closest Ed Wood came to monetary success, having written the script for the film.Many of the subversive ideas and themes can be ascertained in how the lead women refer to each other with men's names, making their rape of a young man all the more subversive. Writer Ed Wood was no dummy when it came to reusing successful formats. He later retooled the screenplay for Fugitive Girls which morphed into Five Loose Women in 1974.

bkoganbing Never let it be said that Ed Wood was afraid to tackle some burning social issues and he does so again here with his usual skill. The Violent Years talks about female delinquency as wealthy, but bored Jean Moorhead gathers around her some followers and they form a girl gang. These chicks are out for action and with them being masked, the law thinks that it's after your typical male holdup gang as the girls start going through all the local filling stations.But these brazen harlots don't stop there. Unmasked they terrorize couples in a frequented lover's lane and tie up the women and then force men to their sexual wills. I don't know about you, but that's normally the kind of thing that is not best done under pressure at the point of a gun. In the end Moorhead is pregnant and commits murder and the wages of sin are exacted by the long arm of the law in the person of noted character actor I. Stanford Jolley who looks like he's needing some laxative as he intones the sentence and his views on parents who do not give good supervision and values to their kids. Poor Jolley who is the only person in this cast who has a decent resume probably fired his agent after he signed him up for this.Ed Wood, they'll never be another like you.

artpf A newspaper publisher's daughter suffers from neglect by her parents. She and her friends turn to crime by dressing up like men, holding up gas stations, raping young men at gunpoint, and having make out parties when her parents are away. Their "fence" gets them to trash the school on request of sinister un- American clients, and they run afoul of the law, apple pie, and God himself.Oddly, this rather boring film was the most successful of films touched by Ed Wood.Perhaps cuz it stars a Playboy centerfold. Who knows? Some of the film seems to be shot in silent mode with only SFX and music dubbed in. It also seems way too well written to be Ed Wood. Not saying it's good, BTW.