Four high school babes are trigger-happy criminals by night in the remarkedly awful 1956 crime drama The Violent Years. Boasting a screenplay by an uncredited Ed Wood, the film has a prologue of the girls–ringleader Paula, Georgia, Phyliss, and Geraldine–scowling as they walk by the words Good Citizenship, Self Restraint, Politeness, and Loyalty written on a chalkboard. “This is a story of violence,” the narrator tell us, and these teens are juvenile delinquents! They also wear tight sweaters that recall what Bob Seger was singing about in his classic song “Night Moves”: “And points all her own sitting way up high, Way up firm and high.”
Paula Parkins (played by 1955 Playboy Playmate Jean Morehead) comes from a rich family, a charity-addicted neglectful mother (Barbara Weeks) and a too-busy newspaper editor father (Arthur Millan). They just don’t have the time for her. So, she gets her thrills from robbing gas stations with her crew using her mom’s sedan. They also rob a couple at gunpoint at a Lover’s Lane spot, and when the loot (including the girl’s fuzzy sweater; thanks, Ed Wood) isn’t enough, they take the guy in the woods to do who-knows-what to him.
We also meet a saucy older dame named Sheila (Lee Constant) who acts as a fence for them. Sheila offers them a job to trash a local school and even desecrate some American flags as part of a “well-organized foreign plan” (Cold War message delivered). The gang enjoys destroying the classrooms, until the cops show up. There’s a gun showdown and Paula kills one of the policemen. Geraldine and Phyliss are subsequently gunned down.
Georgia and Paula escape and go to Sheila’s to report that the job is done, but they tell her the law is on their trail. Sheila says she’s going to call the cops on them and Paula shoots and kills her (Don’t cross Paula!). They change into different clothes (cocktail dresses, no less, stolen from Sheila’s closet) and drive off in her car. The pair are spotted by a patrolman and take off, but crash into a store window. Georgia is killed and Paula is hospitalized.
Because she is a minor, Paula is sentenced to life in prison. But wait, she’s pregnant. We don’t know who the father is. Could it be her Lover’s Lane captive? Or that guy from her “pajama party”? She gives birth to a little girl but dies in childbirth. Her parents try to adopt the baby, hoping for a second chance to be good caring parents, but the judge denies their request…and then admonishes them for their lack of parenting skills.
The acting in the film is awful, as in awfully fun to watch. They give lurid a good name. Actors say their lines in a monotone, especially Paula’s mother. Puppet movies have less wooden acting. And their main mantra, repeated many times in the movie, is “So what?” The courtroom set is cheap looking. People are shot, but there’s no blood. But, as the girls say, so what? It’s 65 minutes of bad cinema that’s like a car accident. You can’t look away.