Friday, May 2, 2014

Girls Town (1959)

aka The Innocent and the Damned

How bad is it? It's ludicrously out of date, as it was at the time of filming.
Should you see it? Yes, especially if you're a Mamie Van Doren fan.

With Mel Torme, Paul Anka and the Platters doing the music and making appearances. Also with Charles Chaplin Jr. and Jim Mitchum. That's a lot of men for Girls Town.

Two decades after Mickey Rooney made Boy's Town, Albert Zugsmith remade it as a vehicle for Mamie Van Doren, who the previous year he had put in "High School Confidential," one of my all-time favorite trash films [It's too good for this list, the sequel "College Confidential" wasn't interesting enough to list and I haven't decided yet on the third of the trilogy "Sex Kittens Go to College"]. This film has endlessly entertaining dumb things for Van Doren to say, as she plays a tough girl, who hadn't been a "girl" for quite some time, as made obvious by the clothing she wears throughout the film (I guess no uniforms fit her).

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