Donna is a girl who got in with the wrong crowd; so much so that a car she was a passenger in kills an unlucky pedestrian. The driver, a young hoodlum acquaintance of hers, escapes justice and loyal Donna takes the rap, refusing to implicate him she is sent to a reformatory school.
Reform School Girl was released by the B-movie kings AIP in the high days of the drive-in, when the baby boomers were getting old enough to create a large market for teen exploitation schlock. This one was one of the movies that looked at the dangers that those teens faced if they pursued wayward directions in life. It's a juvenile delinquency melodrama that is an early example of a women in prison film. From the late 60's onwards, these types of pictures became staples of the sexploitation genre. Reform School Girl, obviously is considerably tamer than those given it was released in the more innocent 50's. All we get here are a few cat fights, implied lesbianism and a little bit of moderate violence such as an arm stabbed by scissors and a girl smacked on the head by flying baseball bat. But in the main, it's very understated by subsequent standards of the genre; although admittedly the heroine does have to put up with the borderline incestual advances of her aunt's boyfriend earlier on in the movie.
Once the plot-line kicks in, it focuses on the code of silence practiced in the school, with Donna being the victim of group bullying as a result of them wrongly thinking that she is a police informer. It's a pretty serviceable story-line with a reasonable amount of drama. It does end in a somewhat rushed manner though, with Donna escaping a beating by her antagonists on account of them merely being unable to find the right key! The film ties up the loose ends of the plot immediately afterwards in an abrupt and not especially impressive way. But hey ho, it was good while it lasted. The only actor on show that I recognised was Luana Anders, who played one of Donna's tormentors, she appeared a few years later to great effect in Francis Ford Coppola's debut feature Dementia 13.
