13 Frightened Girls

I had wanted to see this movie for a long time, since I had found William Castle's other movies to be offbeat in each of their own way, and because the Leonard Maltin movie guide said that this movie was a camp classic waiting rediscovery.

To be sure, the movie does have its share of unintended laughs. Take the title for one thing - it's wrong! There are actually FIFTEEN girls in the movie! And only one of them ever gets into a state that would be considered "frightened". There's other stuff like the hysterical scene when a cat jumps into the frame... despite the scene taking place inside of a dumb waiter! Then there's the fact that the sixteen year-old heroine at one point tries to seduce a man more than twice her age (you wouldn't see that in a movie made today.)

But I found most of the movie to be quite a bore. It takes forever for the story to seriously start, and there are plenty of breaks in the "action" along the way. There's not much for the actors to do, which may explain why almost all of the thirteen - oops, I mean fifteen! - girls are forgotten about for almost all of the running time. It's no wonder that this Castle movie has been mostly forgotten and only just recently been released on DVD. I can imagine that because of that, in the near future there will be more disappointed user comments from people who have wanted to see this for a long time.