Girls Beware (1961) User Reviews

Beware of Creepy Men at Movie Theaters!

[Michael_Elliott · 30 June 2015]

Girls Beware (1961)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This here is one of the more popular Sid Davis educational shorts as it tries to warn teenage girls about the evils that men will do to them. As you'd expect, several examples are given including guys picking up girls in theaters and driving to a lover's lane afterwards, there's the warning dealing with that older guy who likes to hang out at the malt shop to meet younger girls and then there's the terror of girls going riding with men they don't know. GIRLS BEWARE is actually a fairly well-made picture that does a nice job at getting its point across without becoming too preachy. I'm sure a lot of things could be said about Davis but he was certainly the best filmmaker when it came time to make these types of movies and I think on a technical level this thing is fairly good even though no one should be expecting the work of Orson Welles. The stories are all entertaining enough to help keep the short running time moving at a nice pace.

Girls Beware

[a_baron · 11 August 2014]

This 1961 public information film is complementary to "Boys Beware". Curiously, it does not seem to cause the same outrage, though it remains to be seen how it can be considered "homophobic" to warn teenage boys about plausible perverts yet common sense to warn girls about the same. Half a century and more ago, girls did not walk around with mobile phones in their pockets, there were not CCTV cameras everywhere, and girls did not mature so fast, so the warnings about sexual predators and simply slightly older youths who had lustful intentions seem a bit quaint nowadays. Nevertheless, it was and is still sound advice not to open the door to strangers, and for girls to let someone know where they are going, especially their parents.

There have been many similar warning films, videos and advertisements since; though nowadays they may concentrate on the cyberworld, the message is the same.