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 "One take and you're a goner!" exclaims the back of the box, leaving you
wondering if maybe it shouldn't be "one toke", but who cares because this is "the toughest teen tragedy ever made". "One
day she was a cheerleader , the next day a drug dealer." She was actually
never a cheerleader and there were several days before she became a drug
dealer. If I gotta watch this, the idiots selling it should, too! 1952, 61 minutes, VHS
As this thing began and I saw that we were opening up with one of those wide
shots of the City and then we moved around the City, I knew we were about to
hear some jackass seriously describing all those boring stories that Naked
Cities always seem to have and that movies always seem prone to telling in
spite of the fact that I never recall asking anyone to tell them. Here's the
deal: I'm watching a movie called Teenage Devil Dolls. I'm guessing that it's
about one of two things. You've either got yourself a gang of chicks in their
motorcycle leathers, chomping gum, knocking over beauty shops, blowing smoke in
the good girl's face and knifing each other over their hood boyfriends while
some cop from Squaresville is trying to take down this group of dirty broads or
it's about some high school kids that get shrunk down into little people by some
crazed inventor and go on a rampage. Naturally, we all would like to see the
later, but I don't think that it's stretching things to expect the former. As
it is in this movie, you get virtually nothing that is promised by either the
title or the copy on one of the editions put out by Rhino Home Video (something
about "jailbait junkies looking for cheap thrills" - well, yeah - you and me
both, skank). What you get instead is something that wouldn't qualify as a
movie even way back when Thomas Alva Edison was the guy churning out the
blockbusters of 1899-1901. See, I was right about the narrator business, but
sometimes in life you can be too right, too smart. I was confidently sitting
there, watching with a smug look on my face as this guy began spinning a yarn
about some dumb chick that went wrong and ended up in the wrong crowd and that
it all started back in '49 when girls joining motorcycle gangs were tearing
postwar America apart at its very seams! This guy explained that he was the cop from Squaresville who would be guiding
us into the fish-white underbelly of this dame named Cassandra who ended up
all messed up (and by that we mean that she ended up with a Mexican car thief
or something). For some reason this cop has assumed the pornish sounding name
David
Jason (say "hi" to Tom Byron at the office Christmas party for me, Dave) and he
is reminiscing about all the good times he had bringing Cassie to
justice as he escorts her to the train station where she's off to the Federal
Narcotics Hospital or at least somewhere out of his jurisdiction so that he
can write it up as another case cracked by "Lt. David Jason: Pornstar Cop", at
the end of the year and make his quota of teenage devil dolls reformed. At
this point, I figured the screen would get all wavy and we would all travel
back in time with D.J. so that we could see how it all began. And I guess it
kind of went down like that, but I had guessed that David Jason would shut his
hole and let the story unfold on its own terms. Nope. He keeps narrating this
blasted thing for the entire freaking movie! This is basically a silent movie
with a soundtrack laid over all the ugly shots that one-bomb wonder Bamlet
Lawrence Price, Jr. managed to get in the can. Regular readers will know that
this is the point where I usually talk about what an embarrassment to his family
this Price guy is (though with a name like Bamlet, you probably didn't need to
be told that anyway), but in scouring the credits in an effort to see if any of
these dolts violated their probation and got within a country mile of a camera
again, I noticed that in the very demanding role of "Cassandra's Current
Step-Father" was a dude named Bamlet Lawrence Price, Sr. I guess we could
still be embarrassed for their Prices' neighbors or something. Did I also
mention that Little Bamlet cast himself as Cholo, who might be the Mexican car
thief? Only a guy named Bamlet would write himself (oh, I didn't mention that
he wrote this, too?) a role named Cholo. To show how low Bamlet (either one
probably) went in this one, you'll also note that Lucille Price (I'm guessing
she's Junior's by now disgruntled mother) was forced to play the part of
"Cassandra's Mother". That's pretty cool considering that Cassandra's mother
is a hooch that's been married many times and is the cause of Cassandra's own
burgeoning hoochness. Hey, he wrote that his mom was a slut, not me!  Cassie is on the road to ruin and David Jason (or was it Jason David? Or Ron
Jeremy?) tells us that it all started simply enough with Cassie working at her
mom's store or restaurant or whorehouse or whatever demented business Bamlet
put his sainted mother in (You're killing her putting her in this filth,
Bamlet!) and Cassie is hanging out in the alley with her motorcycle gang
buddies when her mother comes out the back door and yells at her about
something. I didn't know exactly what since this movie felt that special
effects like dialogue were beyond its capabilities. For awhile, Cassie rides
around with the gang, but she is never really accepted into their club since
she has declined their offers of free pot. (Shoot, she could be in my club
anytime - I'm tired of all my so-called friends bumming joints off of me.)
Finally she gives into peer pressure and smokes a joint at the old abandoned
sports stadium even though all the really cool pot smokers could be found at
the local NBA arena down the street. You know, peer pressure sure gets a bad
wrap in movies like this. I don't see what's necessarily wrong about
exercising or submitting to some well-placed peer pressure. Why if it wasn't
for peer pressure I would have missed out on things like my pog collection, my
Sega Dreamcast, and breaking out the car windows of this high school teacher I
didn't like. (I was only giving her a pop quiz on her insurance coverage.)
Without peer pressure, you're never going to break out of your shell or try
anything new. What kind of life is that? I think anyone will tell you that
you need to get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself, whether its
stealing CDs from the record store on a dare, getting your nads pierced, or
some recreational drug use. Besides you can count on your friends to look out
for you when you end up all passed out at a frat party that one time back in the
eighties, right? Once Cassie gets a whiff of the whacky-tobacky her grades start to go downhill
and she starts to ignore her suitor/stalker who could have been the guy named
Johnny. Johnny is the guy that she runs to whenever the heat gets to be too
much and Johnny is going places in life, though it seemed like he did little
other than to get a job after high school. (To be fair, this does put him ahead
of my cousin Pookie.) Somehow or other he ends up marrying this hussy, even
though she sometimes gets busted by the Man for being a druggie or hoochie or
whatever this society deemed wrong back when this country still had a couple of
strong Christian values. Personally, I found the ten minutes of the movie where
Johnny and Cassie were married to be the most entertaining. They should make
all these
young girls that fantasize about playing house with their safe high school
boyfriend watch at least this part of the movie. (Making them watch anymore
would violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.) We see Cassie
going crazy from being a bored housewife and this manifests itself by her
tearing the clothes off the clothesline in a rage and leaving them all over the
ground! The horrors of a housewife gone mad! Why, those clothes will have to
be washed again before then can be Downey fresh, or at the very least, they'll
need to be dried again! Johnny thinks that something is wrong, what with his
clothes having grass stains on them after they've been washed (This can't be
right!) and gets his wife a puppy so that she won't be so bored when he's out
pumping his secretary at the office all day long. As great as it is cleaning
up puppy feces and stepping in dog urine all day, Cassie still gets a bunch of
prescription pills and ends up crawling around in her yard one day when Johnny
comes home. While he's looking up 911 in the phone book, she takes the car and
crashes it into some other car. She also has gone and rejoined her old
motorcycle gang. To me, all this ain't something a little Days Of Our Lives and Guiding Light can't fix. Johnny needs to be investing in a nice TV and a
satellite dish instead of some mangy mutt. I pretty much quit paying attention after the marriage angle had played out and
Cassie went on to become one half of an all-woman dope selling operation that
got
crossways with some guy who sold heroin and eventually killed her partner and
got Cassie strung out on the stuff. Somehow this all leads into Cassie leaving
town for awhile, but returning months later as the anglo-female part of an
all-male Mexican car theft ring. (Ain't life crazy sometimes?) And wouldn't
you know it, but this causes her to end up on the lam in the desert needing a
fix? And I think it goes without saying that everything ends up with me
wondering how in the world a movie I paid two bucks for could have so
thoroughly gotten the better of me. This may be one of those classic drug
scare films from the fifties that everyone salivates over, but it certainly
isn't one of those classic drug scare films from the fifties that you would
ever want to actually sit through. (Even with its 61 minute running time - a
fairly light sentence, but one that still hurts like a shower in the stir when
you forget to leave the soap laying on the floor.) The lack of any dialogue
only
serves to deprive the movie of what could have been its saving grace -
laughable dialogue. Listening to David Jason drone on and on like Joe Friday's
younger and more pornish cousin and playing armchair psychologist (he uses
words like "insecurities" and "foment") only made me cash more bowls than I
planned
while watching this movie. (Rule of thumb - most movies you want to cash about
two to three bowls, but anti-drug movies usually require at least four bowls,
just to make sure I don't accidentally get their message when I'm not looking.)
You may also be surprised that Bamlet's only film doesn't exactly have what we
would call "style". It's made in as forgettable a fashion as its unnecessarily
busy story is and only makes you want to head over to Ed Wood or H.G. Lewis
territory where a guy without any talent knew how to use that to his
advantage. Bamlet (and the rest of his family) prove that good intentions and
opposite film making ability usually result in a real bad trip that leaves you
reaching for your one hitter pipe to soften the landing. An hour of fatiguing
tedium that will make you want to try reefer just to spite this movie.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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