"John Page" (Ross Elliott) happens to be a psychiatrist who has just returned from World War 2 and is looking for a job long enough for his credentials to be validated by the state of California. He is hired to work as a psychologist for the "Manning School for Girls" which is essentially a reform school for mentally disturbed girls from wealthy families. But the students aren't his only problem as he also has to contend with several sadistic members of the faculty as well. Along with that, he accidentally stumbles upon a bizarre mystery that the faculty wants to keep hidden at all costs. The more he uncovers the more hostile the faculty gets. At any rate, rather than reveal any more of the plot I will just say that this was a decent film for the most part. Although the acting seemed a bit sterile there were enough surprises to keep my attention. It's not a long movie (only 71 minutes) but the director (Ewald André Dupont) manages to make the most of it all the same. In short, this was an average movie from the 50's which might be worth a look if you're interested in films from this time period or have a little time to kill.
8 Reviews
No problem here...
da prof20 September 2007
Just a sharp, compact little B-picture partly written by Jack (Indestructible Man) Pollexfen. Unlike a lot of the "girls dormitory" pictures of the 40s and 50s-- largely a boring lot, save for GIRLS TOWN-- this one is lively and in some cases, very funny. Check out actor Anthony Jochim as a weird old doctor at the girls school, who despite having murdered his wife in days of yore proves to be of invaluable help to the sterling young hero investigating corruption at the school. The Mephisto Waltz sequence is a howl! Also lots of familiar faces from the B's: Beverly Garland, Mara Corday, Joyce Jameson... if TCM shows it again check it out!
Nurse Ratched's school
bkoganbing19 September 2016
Problem Girls is a really bad film. Shot on a dental floss type budget with pedestrian direction it has one saving grace. The incredibly florid and campy performance of Helen Walker as the hard bitten, hardhearted mistress of a school for Problem Girls.
Walker whose best career years were behind her knew this was a turkey and she gobbled through her role like Thanksgiving was coming up. Nurse Ratched had nothing on this woman who runs a school like a prison with generous doses of sadism and a corrupt staff of whom she has something on each one.
But our story here concerns Walker planning something truly sinister for amnesia patient Susan Morrow and in the process getting her hands on a fortune.
To find out what you watch the film for. But fans of bad Ed Wood or Arch Hall films will love Walker in the lead. Even us more discerning fans will appreciate what she does to save a turkey.
Walker whose best career years were behind her knew this was a turkey and she gobbled through her role like Thanksgiving was coming up. Nurse Ratched had nothing on this woman who runs a school like a prison with generous doses of sadism and a corrupt staff of whom she has something on each one.
But our story here concerns Walker planning something truly sinister for amnesia patient Susan Morrow and in the process getting her hands on a fortune.
To find out what you watch the film for. But fans of bad Ed Wood or Arch Hall films will love Walker in the lead. Even us more discerning fans will appreciate what she does to save a turkey.
Campy fun in the Ed Wood tradition
abchulett19 September 2007
Happened to catch this one on TCM today, and it's truly bad. So bad that it's kinda fun to watch. Hardly a moment goes by that the viewer's willing suspension of disbelief doesn't work at all. Picture an alleged schoolfor wayward girls of extremely rich families in the City of Angels. Imagine a faculty made up of castoffs and ne'er-do-wells desperate for work and willing to therefore place themselves under the thumb of an evil couple with a plot to steal the fortune of a billionaire oil man. Now imagine clumsy dialogue, wooden acting, melodramatics galore, and a few catfights between women in their 20s attempting to pass as teenagers. Loads of fun! Catch it if you can.
As fun as campy bad is, it's still bad.
mark.waltz6 February 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Deliciously one-dimensional characters, cliched riding, and outrageously bad acting make this one a pleasure and a must-see for bad film connoisseurs. It's one of those films that you can't believe actually got released during the alleged golden era of Hollywood, especially by one of the a Studios of the 1950s, Columbia. I have just added Helen Walker to my list of the great evil women of movie history with her performance as the headmistress of this troubled rich girls school where it seems that wealthy parents who can't do anything with their troubled daughters send them simply to get them out of their hair. There, they fall into the hands of Walker's Miss Dixon, a hideous combination of Mrs. Danvers, Nurse Ratched, Nurse Diesel the Wicked Witch of the West, and the role of the hideous matriarch that Mary Morris played in the first period melodrama "Double Door". as we learn, she pretty much schemed and blackmailed her way into her current position, using the school owner's addiction and murder of his wife against him.
Her days appear to be numbered the moment she hires Dr. Ross Elliott to come in even though he has apparently lost his medical license. She feels she can use that as a way to get her wayon anyting and everything going on in the school which includes apparently hiding the heiress to a fortune which Elliott suspect has led to foul play. The sweet looking Susan Morrow plays the subject of Walker's evil schemes, said to have amnesia but swearing that she is not the alleged wealthy heiress. There are insinuations that anybody who does not do Walker's bidding end up tortured, and many of the aggressive students appear to be more than happy to oblige to be the ones doing the abusing.
Also among the students and recognizable are Beverly Garland, Mara Corday and Joyce Jameson, with Garland standing out in a highly campy performance as an aggressive hateful students who seems to despise all men. There are times when this goes totally off-center, becoming convoluted and messy, and the ending is not at all what I hoped for concerning the evil character that Walker played. But it's a film that I will certainly watch over when I need some great laughs especially with some of the outrageous lines that are written in the script.
Her days appear to be numbered the moment she hires Dr. Ross Elliott to come in even though he has apparently lost his medical license. She feels she can use that as a way to get her wayon anyting and everything going on in the school which includes apparently hiding the heiress to a fortune which Elliott suspect has led to foul play. The sweet looking Susan Morrow plays the subject of Walker's evil schemes, said to have amnesia but swearing that she is not the alleged wealthy heiress. There are insinuations that anybody who does not do Walker's bidding end up tortured, and many of the aggressive students appear to be more than happy to oblige to be the ones doing the abusing.
Also among the students and recognizable are Beverly Garland, Mara Corday and Joyce Jameson, with Garland standing out in a highly campy performance as an aggressive hateful students who seems to despise all men. There are times when this goes totally off-center, becoming convoluted and messy, and the ending is not at all what I hoped for concerning the evil character that Walker played. But it's a film that I will certainly watch over when I need some great laughs especially with some of the outrageous lines that are written in the script.
I think this school might just have some difficulties getting accreditation...
planktonrules21 September 2016
As the tagline for the film say, "Nothing can tame them, scandal can't shame them!". This and the scandalous posted currently linked to this IMDb page pretty much say it all for this movie...or is there more? Could this film, marketed as an exploitation flick, actually be any good?!
Dr. John Page has just been hired out of graduate school...and on the surface his job would seem like a great one. After all, he's been hired to work at an exclusive girls school. However, this is not your typical, ordinary girls school. Despite their coming from rich families, many of the residents seem more like head cases-- schizophrenics, nymphomaniacs, pyros and the like--all young ladies their rich families would rather just forget! But it is much worse...one of the girls is part of a very strange and elaborate plot. But any time the doctor tries to do his job and behave like a professional, the headmistress seems to get in the way--like there's something she's hiding. But what?!
This is in some ways an exploitation film--with the ladies undergoing torture and mistreatment by employees of the 'school' that seem more like matrons from the prison film "Caged"! But the plot is much more complex and interesting...making it a truly unusual film. While the plot has a few minor problems, the overall film is surprisingly good despite all the icky aspects of the picture.
Dr. John Page has just been hired out of graduate school...and on the surface his job would seem like a great one. After all, he's been hired to work at an exclusive girls school. However, this is not your typical, ordinary girls school. Despite their coming from rich families, many of the residents seem more like head cases-- schizophrenics, nymphomaniacs, pyros and the like--all young ladies their rich families would rather just forget! But it is much worse...one of the girls is part of a very strange and elaborate plot. But any time the doctor tries to do his job and behave like a professional, the headmistress seems to get in the way--like there's something she's hiding. But what?!
This is in some ways an exploitation film--with the ladies undergoing torture and mistreatment by employees of the 'school' that seem more like matrons from the prison film "Caged"! But the plot is much more complex and interesting...making it a truly unusual film. While the plot has a few minor problems, the overall film is surprisingly good despite all the icky aspects of the picture.
Dumb but Fun
Michael_Elliott27 February 2008
Problem Girls (1953)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Incredibly stupid mystery from Columbia about a new teacher (Ross Elliott) at a school for rich, troubled girls who comes across what could be a murder case. It seems his co-teachers might have several secrets about the identity of a certain student. The dialogue in this thing is so incredibly bad that I'd almost recommend the movie just so people could hear it. This film falls in the range of stuff like Reefer Madness with the exception that this film seems to have had a pretty good budget. Being a studio film the production is a tad bit higher than you'd expect for this type of film but the performances are so bad, so over the top and campy that it's impossible to take anything here serious.
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Incredibly stupid mystery from Columbia about a new teacher (Ross Elliott) at a school for rich, troubled girls who comes across what could be a murder case. It seems his co-teachers might have several secrets about the identity of a certain student. The dialogue in this thing is so incredibly bad that I'd almost recommend the movie just so people could hear it. This film falls in the range of stuff like Reefer Madness with the exception that this film seems to have had a pretty good budget. Being a studio film the production is a tad bit higher than you'd expect for this type of film but the performances are so bad, so over the top and campy that it's impossible to take anything here serious.
Sloppy Concoction
dougdoepke24 September 2016
Looks like Columbia Pictures was reaching for an exploitation version of Caged (1950), replete with troubled patients, a reformer, and sadistic matrons. What Columbia got instead was a bumbling exploitation flick, replete with chorus-girl patients, wooden dialog, and over-the-top complications. Oh yes, for us guys, it seems all the girls, weird or not, are unusually fetching, straight from Hollywood and Vine.
Plot-wise it seems that straight-arrow Dr. Page (Elliott) takes a job at a girls reform institution, but soon finds the place is more like a Nazi prison camp, run by scheming witch Dixon (Walker). Despite believability, I guess the girls' wealthy parents don't care. Then too, the faculty features such professional types as an elderly professor who gleefully chopped up his wife with a meat cleaver, while discipline takes the form of hanging the girls by wrists under a stream of running water. The sheer steadfastness of the movie makers' approach comes close to camp, but somehow I couldn't even chuckle.
Too bad the tragic Helen Walker had to settle for this mess. She was so good at scheming, e.g. Nightmare Alley (1947). On the downgrade, she still shows her stuff in a thankless role. Meanwhile, that familiar utility actor, Ross Elliott, gets a colorless lead role, but still does his best. Also, can't help noticing that the queen of scream, Beverly Garland (Nancy) gets to unload a real lung blaster. And catch that abrupt ending, like they suddenly ran out of film. Anyway, the screenplay's a mess so unless you're a Helen Walker fan like me, skip it.
Plot-wise it seems that straight-arrow Dr. Page (Elliott) takes a job at a girls reform institution, but soon finds the place is more like a Nazi prison camp, run by scheming witch Dixon (Walker). Despite believability, I guess the girls' wealthy parents don't care. Then too, the faculty features such professional types as an elderly professor who gleefully chopped up his wife with a meat cleaver, while discipline takes the form of hanging the girls by wrists under a stream of running water. The sheer steadfastness of the movie makers' approach comes close to camp, but somehow I couldn't even chuckle.
Too bad the tragic Helen Walker had to settle for this mess. She was so good at scheming, e.g. Nightmare Alley (1947). On the downgrade, she still shows her stuff in a thankless role. Meanwhile, that familiar utility actor, Ross Elliott, gets a colorless lead role, but still does his best. Also, can't help noticing that the queen of scream, Beverly Garland (Nancy) gets to unload a real lung blaster. And catch that abrupt ending, like they suddenly ran out of film. Anyway, the screenplay's a mess so unless you're a Helen Walker fan like me, skip it.
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