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The Violent Years More at IMDbPro »

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29 reviews in total

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26 out of 32 people found the following review useful:
"So what!", 4 June 2000

Author: pan-10

The 1956 sociological study of the serious, but rarely spoken about, problem of armed robbery of gas stations perpetrated by affluent young women in tight sweaters during the mid 1950's is one that should surely receive further serious study. The footage of the "criminal attack" on the innocent young man on lovers lane by the beautiful, but depraved, bandits is one that I found highly disturbing. The expose became even more shocking as the pulchritudinous quartet were enlisted into the service of a foreign power, and during a particularly nefarious mission to overturn chairs and tables and knock over books in a classroom, they almost succeeded in doing something terrible to our flag. Also, during the latter mission, policemen, guards, and members of the evil gang were shot during a ferocious gunfight. At the end, the leader of the gang is finally sentenced to the state penitentiary where she gives birth to an out-of-wedlock baby. She dies and the baby is rightfully made to serve out the remainder of her sentence. Meanwhile, the affluent, but self-absorbed, parents of the wayward gangster are given several severe talkings to by the same judge who sentenced their daughter, and they are told to attend church more frequently in the future. This shocking expose was written by Mr. Edward D. Wood, Jr. I for one definitely intend to give a great deal of thought to the problem of bad girls in tight sweaters.

10 stars...or zero stars...? I don't know how to rate Ed Wood's anti-masterpieces. They're so freakin' bad that they go all the way around the dial and become great! Hilariously bad. Not as hilariously bad as Plan 9, but then what is?

Pan-10

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10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
1950's delinquent scare film, 8 June 2005

Author: rosscinema (rosscinema@comcast.net) from Oceanside, Ca.

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

You might think that this is going to be one of those films that's "so bad it's good" because Ed Wood is involved but the truth of the matter is that while it's undeniably silly it's still nowhere as bad as other efforts by Wood. Story is about a seemingly "good girl" named Paula Parkins (Jean Moorhead) who has nice parents and does well at school but the truth of the matter is that she's involved in an all girl teen gang that robs gas stations and assaults innocent couples necking at lovers lane.

*****SPOILER ALERT***** Paula along with Georgia (Theresa Hancock), Geraldine (Joanne Cangi), and Phyllis (Gloria Farr) commit these crimes and sell their loot to an older dame named Sheila (Lee Constant) who has connections(!) but the truth is that Paula enjoys her bad behavior for the thrill of it. They assault a man and his girlfriend and they end up dragging him into the woods where Paula rapes him! A few days later while ransacking the high school the cops show up and during a shootout both Phyllis and Geraldine are killed. Paula and Georgia are the only two left and they end up killing Sheila but they also crash their car into a plate glass window which kills Georgia. During the trial Paula learns that she's pregnant and her parents want to adopt her child but Judge Clara (I. Stanford Jolley) decides that they have proved themselves to be bad parents and the child will become a ward of the state.

This small "B" film was directed by William Morgan who was a very good film editor (Song of the South, Tarantula) but as a director he had modest success and I guess the best thing you can say about his talent in this field is that he was capable. Ed Wood wrote the script and while this may be thought of as one of his better efforts there are still enough funny lines to keep your expectations up like the detective who barks out "They're not kids, they're morons" but the most monotonous speech comes at the end of the film with the judge. After denying the parents wishes to adopt their granddaughter Judge Clara starts getting a glazed look in his eyes and starts this long and meandering speech about moral obligation and mutters things about families getting back to respecting the 10 commandments and taking care of matters by using the good old woodshed. I'm guessing that Wood was just trying to add padding to an already very short film! A couple of things also stand out for me like the Madonna torpedo bra's that are worn and the fact that Phyllis gets shot by a shotgun but acts like she was hit by an arrow instead! How about the guy who gets raped by Paula? What was he screaming for? Maybe he had never gotten to home plate with a girl before but I came away thinking that Paula must have been very horny! Because Wood's name is in the credits most will automatically think that this is one of Ed's bad films but the truth is that Morgan's direction is adequate and Wood's script has a good edge to it considering it was made in 1956. Sure it's laughably outdated but for me that's part of it's charm and appeal and those who are interested in scare films involving juvenile delinquency this effort probably deserves a peek.

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8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Girls gone somewhat askew., 26 February 2007

Author: JoshSpurling from Greenfield, IN USA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Four teenage girls, who are well into their twenties, disguise themselves as boys (they wear bandannas) and "run rampage" through the city by pushing their sexual advances on a weaselly boy on Lovers' Lane and hitting a gas station employee with a handgun, not killing him of course, but, as one policeman remarks, "Not for lack of trying."

After enduring a friend of her father's who shows up at their slumber party, trying to hold a conversation with the "teens" as they make out robotically, Paula leads the gang on their most heinous crime of all: breaking into their classroom in order to slightly disrupt the furniture and even erase the blackboard! Fortunately, the cops show up before they can finish the job, and a shoot-out ensues. One of the girls, after being blasted with a shotgun, announces, "It wasn't supposed to be like this," before lying down gently with no visible signs of damage whatsoever. The other three girls high-tail it out of the school but stop directly in front of the cops to chat long enough for another girl to be shot down as well. Day and night lose all meaning as the remaining two girls speed off at a snail's pace past the police.

After another shooting, the girls have a wonderfully ridiculous car crash into a plate glass window, killing one of them. Paula receives some cuts on her face, but manages to live just long enough to give birth to her illegitimate child. A judge refuses to grant Paula's parents custody of the child and further punishes them by reading a speech so long and pointless that even he seems to be dozing off by the end. In short, it's the fault of the parents that Paula turned to a hobby of crime because they didn't give her enough love or force religion upon her. Let this be a lesson to us all.

"The Violent Years" isn't nearly as inept as "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "Glen or Glenda?" (possibly because Ed Wood only wrote it, didn't direct it) but it's still terribly entertaining.

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10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Ed Wood, you've done it again!, 11 November 1999

Author: Brian Manville (Sterno-2) from Frederick, MD

Ed Wood, purveyor of class and dignity with a veneer of exploitation, gives us a great story about the consequences of parental neglect, albeit wrapped in nice, tight sweaters.

The movie deals with a newspaperman's daughter (who looks about the same age as her parents) who has become a wild child because her father is too busy at work to notice that he keeps giving her the same birthday present every year. In addition, her mom's continuously on the charity circuit, so she's never around for those heart-to-heart talks that young women need. So, left to her own devices, she has a gang of other females in need of thrills who rob gas stations and rape young men.

While this tragedy is at times overly done, the point is still well made that parents need to be involved in their children's lives. Sterno says give The Violent Years some time from your life.

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12 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Unique, 12 August 1999
Author: Quetzl from Detroit

This film is pretty steady and mediocre (you can tell Ed didn't direct it), lacking the weirdness and spastic nature of Wood's other films. But, it also happens to be the only film you'll ever see where a MAN IS RAPED BY A GANG OF GIRLS! A truly unique moment in film history.

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Proof You Don't Have To Be Ed Wood To Direct Badly, 4 November 2007

Author: HalRagland from United States

I was concerned when I saw that "The Violent Years" was only written by Ed Wood, but was directed by William Morgan. I was concerned that it might come off as something other than an Ed Wood movie. Yet if you had to guess who directed this one without know anything about the movie, then I'm sure most b-movie lovers would guess it was Ed Wood.

"The Violent Years" has everything you could want out of an Ed Wood directed and written movie. Bad dialogue, bad editing and ham acting plague "The Violent Years" as much as any other Ed Wood production.

"The Violent Years" follows the exploits of a gang of four school girls led by the daughter of the local newspaper publisher. The "girls" all look like actresses who are closer to 30 than 20, but nobody should care since this is an Ed Wood written production. The girls get their thrills by staging armed robberies of gas stations and unarmed lover's lane couples. Along the way we get to see hilariously bad shoot out and crash scenes, an even more hilarious scene where the girls "rape" a man they discover making out with his girlfriend at the local lover's lane, and arguably the most hilarious monologue by a judge in film history.

The aspect of an Ed Wood written film that provides me with the most amusement is the dialogue. Like the above mentioned monologue by the judge. No judge would write a decision in a court case like the one we hear in "The Violent Years", except if he were at least as drunk as Ed Wood was when he wrote it. People just don't talk like they do in an Ed Wood movie, and this has provided many an Ed Wood movie viewer with many laughs over the years.

"The Violent Years" is there for the Ed Wood fan. It doesn't have much to offer to people who like to see good film making when they see a movie. However, if you're looking for an exercise in film making ineptitude for laughs, then "The Violent Years" is your movie.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Simply a Classic, 6 October 2002

Author: awayfromthesun from Somewhere, Nowhere

Written by the legendary(that's right) Edward D. Wood Jr., this movie stands high above all of the crap that came out during that time. Possibly one of the best stories Ed Wood ever wrote. Who could ask for more than beautiful young girls going around robbing gas stations and causing mayhem? No one.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
A riot...almost., 18 August 2009

Author: monoceros4 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I think the real lesson of THE VIOLENT YEARS is that girls make really stupid criminals. Robert DeNiro's gang in HEAT is torn to pieces after the cops show up during a major-league bank heist; the same thing happens to spoiled rich girl Paula and her crew, only it's because the cops interrupt them while inflicting minor, easily reparable damage on a schoolroom. This action (sort of) set piece is a hoot to watch: the girls go wild, erasing the blackboard and ripping up the desktop blotter and turning over the chairs, but then as one girl contemplates desecrating the American flag the cops show up. Rather than face a juvenile hall stay for breaking windows, Paula and the gang do what any smart criminals would do: get out their irons and start blasting. Paula further demonstrates her criminal smarts by killing a cop, then demanding payment for the botched job from her boss--who, because she is also a female criminal in the world of THE VIOLENT YEARS, instead of playing it safe and playing for time, promptly turns her back on the desperately stupid brat brandishing a gun and an inflated ego.

You have to give Paula this, anyway; she's smarter than Jimmy Wilson in I ACCUSE MY PARENTS. But then he at least had genuinely bad parents. Paula's folks are kindly and ridiculously generous, plying her with new dresses and a new car *every year*. But her dad was always so busy at his job and her mom so engaged in her charity work (remember that, mothers: having an outside interest means your child will turn to crime) that attention-starved Paula was forced to take up petty theft. She's almost adorable with her affected snarl and tough-girl talk as she struggles valiantly to strike a fearsome pose. To make herself feel better she takes care to surround herself with only with pathetic lowlifes and third-raters; in one hilarious bit, a reporter visits her (very tame) birthday sleep-over and drops one of her male friends with a single punch. It all makes for an entertaining ride through the laughable career of one of the dumbest crooks ever to star in a movie.

Well, almost. The movie rolls along until the last act, when it suddenly freezes in its tracks to mete out poetic justice and endless lecturing from a judge who tells us that the only way to stamp out youthful crime is with corporal punishment in the "old fashioned woodshed" and with regular church-going. (As Mike Nelson summarizes, "Beat the love of Jesus into them!") Not content to punish Paula with a life sentence and death in childbirth, the movie then punishes both her parents *and* her baby daughter by refusing the parents custody and sentencing the daughter to life in a state home. Mike and the 'bots salvage some entertainment from the droning moralizing; I can scarcely imagine what it must have been like to watch in the movie theater. Ironically it might have been better in the hands of Ed Wood, who supplied the story but not the direction. THE VIOLENT YEARS is competently directed as Ed Wood could never have managed but at least Eddie had the sense to keep his pontificating short. Even the ridiculous "pornography is worse than dope peddling" scene from THE SINISTER URGE is over with in less time than it takes for the hectoring judge in THE VIOLENT YEARS to tell us what time of day it is.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
the girl gang with their big pointy bosoms, 16 February 2009

Author: christopher-underwood from Greenwich - London

A bit heavy handed and moralising but certainly has some feisty moments. I loved the girl gang with their big pointy bosoms and snarling expressions and guns. Holding up petrol stations for kicks and in the end wrecking schoolrooms and getting into a gunfight with the police. Actually they didn't do much more than push over the chairs and wipe the blackboard clean, even replacing the duster on the shelf afterwards. But they talked big, had those big bosoms and did seem keen on a bit more action than seemed to be promised elsewhere. Somewhere writer Ed Wood is trying to make some comment about all the juvenile delinquency being the fault of the parents, but there is a fine scene when a guy's girlfriend is made to take off her sweater (angora?) and skirt and then be bound in her shiny underwear whilst aforementioned guy is chased into the woods by the four bosom pals for some naughtiness. Our leading bad girl is removing her top in full frame as the picture fades and the young man protests.

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7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Silly, funny and very very BAD!, 22 July 2002

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

Incredibly dumb and utterly predictable story of a rich teen girl who, not given love by her parents, starts a girl gang. They rob gas stations, rape guys (!!!) and kill a policeman.

All the "teenagers" in this film are easily in their late 20s/early 30s, the acting is all horrible and the script has every cliche imaginable with hilarious dialogue--it comes as no surprise that it was written by the immortal Ed Wood Jr.!

Worth seeing for laughs. Best lines--"They're shooting back!" and "It ain't supposed to be like this."

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