Label: Umbrella Entertainment
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: M
Duration: 95 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.77:1)
Director: Tom DeSimone
Cast: Linda Carol, Sybil Danning, Wendy O. Williams, Pat Ast, Sherri Stoner, Darcy DeMoss, Tiffany Helm
Reform School Girls (1986) was directed by Tom DeSimone who not only brought us the cult-classic revenger Savage Streets (1984) (The Exorcist) and the co-ed night slasher Hell Night (1981), both starring Linda Blair (The Exorcist), but also the talking-vagina xxx-film Chatterbox (1977)! This film offers a teen detention variation on the women-in-prison genre. The film is set inside the Pridemore Juvenile Facility, a soul-breaking facility for troubled teens run by Warden Sutter (Sybil Danning, Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf), a stern militant woman with fondness for biblical quotes and slapping a riding crop into the palm of her as she asserts herself. Sadly Danning is not in the film all that much, with the warden leaving the daily operations of the reform school to the sadistic big-girl Edna (Pat Ast, Foul Play), a ruthless woman who gives leniency to those who play nice with her, treating everyone else with scorn, cruelty and contempt.
The newest arrival at the facility s first-time offender Jenny (Linda Carol, School Spirit), she's sort of good girl who got caught up in the crime-life after joining her boyfriend during a small-time robbery turned deadly. Inside Pridemore she befriends another newbie, shy-girl Lisa (Sherri Stoner, the voice of Slappy Squirrel in the Animaniacs TV series), a young girl with an unhealthy childhood attachment to a stuffed animal, who is woefully under-prepared for the harsh life on the inside of Pridemore.
The pair of young ladies end up on the wrong side bad-girl Charlie - played with piss and vinegar by the late shock-rocker Wendy O. Williams of punkers the Plasmatics - who turns her legion of lingerie-wearing bad-girls, among them Knox (Darcy DeMoss, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) and Fish (Tiffany Helm, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning), against the newbies when they turn out to not play so nice with the lady-loving bad-girls. Williams was clearly in her late-30's when she made this, so buying her as a crime-hardened teenager is a bit of a hurdle, but it makes about as much sense as the Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie sponsorship that this reform school seems to have going on!
The film has all the seedy women-in-prison tropes lovers of this brand of exploitation cinema have come to expect, including lots of gratuitous nudity in the shower scenes, solitary confinement, lesbian-tinged naughtiness, sex-for-favors, a protection racket, attempts to escape, and plenty of in-fighting among the inmates, we even get cruel Edna stomping a poor kitten to death! All this sleaze and seediness aside DeSimone manages to wrap all the WIP filth and grit up inside a sour-candy veneer of camp that renders it all rather palatable and fun, which makes for an entertaining watch from start to finish, with Edna winning the day for me with her sour-faced cruelness, really coming off as a kindred spirit to Ms. Balbricker (Nancy Parson, Motel Hell) from teen-comedy classic Porky's (1981), but way more sadistic and only slightly more unhinged.
Not sure why but Sybill Danning doesn't get all that much to do here, even the do-gooder psychologist Dr. Norton (Charlotte McGinnis, Hardcore) get more screen time, with all the best wickedness coming by way of Edna with bad-girl Charlie coming a close second. Punk Goddess Wendy O. Williams as Charlie is the defacto third in command at the detention facility, with her menacing growl and snarling attitude keeping a smile on my face for the whole film. Despite her alliance with Edna she eventually turns against her following the death of Lisa, resulting in a chaotic prison riot with Charlie riding atop a driverless school bus into spotlight tower where a shotgun-toting Edna is holed-up, providing a truly satisfying finale to this ridiculous and often over-the-top 80's teen delinquency film.
Audio/Video: Reform School Girls (1986) arrives on region-free DVD from Umbrella Entertainment framed in 1.77:1 widescreen, slightly cropped from the original 1.85:1. The image is solid enough, a bit soft in places but the source looks clean and the colors are generally well saturated throughout. It's a damn good looking standard-definition transfer, now for the love of Wendy O. would someone please give this film a new 2K scan on Blu-ray?
Audio comes by way of English Dolby Digital Mono 2.0 with no subtitle options with everything coming through clean and free of hiss, the songs from Wendy O. Williams, Girlschool and Etta James sound terrific. The disc is bare-bones without even a start-up menu, it's too bad Umbrella do not - or were not able - to carry over the audio commentary from director Tom DeSimone and humorist Martin Lewis from the out-of-print Anchor Bay release from 2001.
The single-disc release comes housed in a standard looking DVD keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork,wisely using the gorgeous original movie poster illustration on the wrap, not sure who did this one but it looks terrific, giving it some nice shelf appeal, and the disc itself featuring an excerpt of Edna from the artwork.
Reform School Girls (1986) is a late-entry in the WIP-tinged troubled-teen genre, an entertaining slice of 80's exploitation that is so campy and fun that it sort of comes off as a send-up, and I totally dig it, a highly recommended piece teens-in-detention trash.
