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Gun Girls (1957)

“Gun Girls” is a pretty sorry entry in the 50’s juvenile delinquent potboiler parade. The story is pretty typical: teens girls ignore their probation officer’s advice and pull burglaries and robberies, until they get in too far over their heads, and must pay the ultimate price. The acting, dialogue, sets, and even the editing are strictly amateurish (some scenes end too abruptly, others linger way past the point where the director should have yelled “cut!!”). But the film’s biggest problem (or highlight, if you’re into camp) are the gun girls themselves. To put it rather bluntly, these girls ain’t girls. There isn’t one of them who looks to be under 40. When the film opens with a shot of some pretty hard boiled looking gals in a police line-up, and the narrator starts talking about juvenile delinquency, you have to wonder who he’s talking about. These “teenagers” look old enough to be the parents of teenagers!!

All this, plus a death scene at the film’s end that goes on longer than Ali MacGraw’s in “Love Story”, make for pretty rough sledding, even for lovers of bad cinema.