Juvenile Hell: Part 3

The Violent Years (William Morgan, 1956)

With the return of the summer heatwave, I need to keep my movies short and sweet, and what could be better than William Morgan's crimewave classic, The Violent Years? A wildly entertaining morality tale that ticks all the right boxes for this blog. Penned by the legendary king of exploitation cinema, Ed Wood Jr, this quintessential slice of melodramatic juvenile deliquency boasts an all girl squad of uncouth tearaways. This has absolutely nothing to do with that Oscar Isaacs starring snoozefest, A Most Violent Year (2014), which is a win for everyone.

Our gang is led by a spoilt brat of an ungrateful daughter, Paula Parkins (Paul, to her girlfriends), earnestly played by Jean Moorhead. Paul(a) has a taste for conducting sticks-ups at gas stations and sexually assualting blokes on Lover's Lane for wild kicks. You see, she's a thrill seeker, and it makes her feel alive being a negative blight on society. Our eighteen-year old bad seed and her pointy bra clique (Dada Debaser is a fan of the mean muggin' Phyllis, or Phil to her goon gals, because she looks strikingly like Debi Mazar and could very well be her mum given the age of this film) are looking for the next step in the thug life, and according to their fence, Sheila, there's a big market for trashing American schools by certain foreign nations. This leads to our undisciplined foursome breaking into their school and knocking over a few chairs and smashing a window before the cops arrive. A shootout ensues, bodies are caught and Paula's cramps might be a sign she's up the duff.

As mentioned earlier, The Violent Years is very much a rich dollop of morality that puts the fear of God into anyone tempted to walk the pathway to Hell, very much in a similar vein to good ol' Cecil B. DeMille; replete with an Old Testament style closing segment by the googly eye glasses wearing, Judge Clara. Paula's rampage of destruction has not only left the local morgue working over-time, but it's also left her parents with broken hearts and an uncertain life for her new born baby. This pot-boiler noir might play the right notes on the church organ, but it was definitely made for purely exploitative reasons. The Violent Years is an excellent example of how juvenile deliquency in film has always been a source for entertainment purposes over the many decades. Paula's spoilt yet neglected upbringing bears a strinking similarity to Gillian Hills' Jennifer Linden from Beat Girl (1959), only separated by a double-murder rap.

Despite it being unintentional, I personally find that it taps into the fears of society on a young and unruly post-war generation, and poses the question of what kind of mark they would leave upon society? Ultimately, these woes would pass on from one generation to the next, but what's especially fascinating about this particular era, is that a pulp film like The Violent Years exemplifies a new breed of juveniles, in this case young women, who would eventually signify the shifting moral compass of protagonists in both homegrown and world cinema a decade later. It's one of the reasons why Dada Debaser makes a conscious effort to be way more accommodating towards exploitation cinema, regardless of its reputation, since you'll eventually find a diamond in the rough like The Violent Years.

The Violent Years (AGFA Trailer)

(William Morgan, 1956)