(a.k.a. Teenage Devil Dolls)

Hi, everyone!

Well, down here in Richardson, Texas, today was the first day of school!  That’s right, all the kids are going to be back to school and movie theaters are about to become a lot more pleasant.  Now, you may remember that, two years ago, I observed the first day of school by launching a series of Back To School reviews!  I reviewed 80 films about being a teenager and high school life.  I had a lot of fun doing it and our readers seemed to enjoy it!

So, I figured — why not do it again!?

Now, as much as I’d like to, I’m not going to do 80 films this time.  Instead, I have decided to limit myself to reviewing 56 films over the next 14 days.  If I maintain a schedule of reviewing 4 Back to School films a day, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Can I do it?

Well, we’re about to find out!

I decided to start things off by reviewing a melodrama from 1955!  I have to admit that, when I decided to review Teenage Devil Dolls, I didn’t know anything about the film.  I just saw the title and I assumed that the whole film would basically be tight sweaters and juvenile delinquents.  I figured it would be good and campy fun, something along the lines of Ed Wood’s The Violent Years.

Well, it turned out that Teenage Devil Dolls does feature some juvenile delinquents and a few tight sweaters but otherwise, it really wasn’t what I was expecting.  For one thing, it turned out that the film didn’t have much to do with high school.  And though the main character was described as being 19, she was played by an actress who appeared to be in her 30s so it really didn’t matter.

It also turned out that Teenage Devil Dolls featured absolutely zero dialogue!  This is one of those films that was specifically made to be the second part of a double feature and, apparently, it was made without much of a budget.  On-set sound recording was apparently a luxury that could not be afforded and, as such, the entire movie is narrated by a hard-boiled cop.

The cop tells us the story of Cassandra Leigh (Barbara Marks), who was an innocent 17 year-old until she started hanging out with the wrong crowd.  We know that her new friends are the wrong crowd because they ride motorcycles and some of them wear leather jackets.  They also smoke weed (or “reefer cigarettes,” as the cop calls them).  At first, Cassandra turns down their persistent offers of marijuana but eventually, the peer pressure get to be too much.  Cassandra doesn’t want to be a big ol’ four-sided square so she starts smoking the weed and her life quickly falls apart.

Not only do her grades suffer to such an extent that she barely graduates high school and loses any chance she ever had to attend college but Cassandra also ends up frequently running away from home and getting hooked on heroin.  (If all this seems a little bit extreme, it should be remembered that Cassandra was previously seen smoking one of the biggest joints to ever appear in a movie.  Though, in all honesty, she didn’t appear to be inhaling.)  Cassandra marries a boring guy but the boring life is not for her!  Not when she can make so much more money by becoming a drug dealer…

You know, it’s easy to be dismissive of a film like Teenage Devil Dolls, what with the low-budget, the hard-boiled narration, and the alarmist portrayal of marijuana as literally being the root of all evil.  But honestly — whether intentional or not — there’s an intensity to Teenage Devil Dolls that makes it oddly hypnotic.  Perhaps because they were filmed without sound, almost all of the actors give the type of over-expressive performances that one would typical expect to see in a silent movie.  The contrast between the laconic narration and the theatrics on-screen creates a surrealistic and dream-like atmosphere.

Along with the narration, there’s also a few sound effects on the soundtrack but none of the effects really seem to sync up with the action on screen.  A dog shows up and opens its mouth but the barking sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else.  When a police car drives, the jarring siren doesn’t seem to fit the image.  Most hauntingly of all, a chilling ringing sound is heard whenever a junkie starts to go through withdraw.  At times, the film almost feels like a fever dream.

Teenage Devil Dolls (or One Way Ticket To Hell as it is also known) is an unexpectedly odd film.  And you watch it below!