classicsoncall So I'm watching the flick, and I start thinking to myself - Good grief, did people actually pay good money to watch stuff like this back in the Forties? Yeah, I know, admission was probably only about a quarter at best, but still, you could have had a couple sodas at the malt shop. Straight out of the exploitation/educational film camp, "Delinquent Daughters" attempts to instruct and admonish parents for the 'Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency' as touted in a newspaper headline quote from J. Edgar Hoover. I have a pretty good idea that none of the genre's films had much impact regarding their intended mission, other than the covert one of titillation and cheap thrills.As far as this one goes, it's pretty uneven in both the acting and production values. The print I viewed from the Mill Creek Entertainment set of 'Cult Classics' was of questionable quality; it was easy to pick out the night time scenes because they all looked like they were filmed completely in the dark. The story follows the off screen set up of a high school girl suicide, and goes on to explore the antics of various teenagers, none of whom seem to feel any remorse for the dead teen, who one describes as 'a nice girl but no angel'. It would have seemed more appropriate if the picture explored the angst these high schoolers felt over the death of a friend, but it seems she didn't have one.Hey, how about that Jerry (Jimmy Zahner), all worked up over the gun point robbery he pulled at the grocery store. He got away with $2.80!!! Who wrote this? And you can't beat old Rocky's (Johnny Duncan) logic in trying to convince June (June Carlson) to marry him - Martha Washington was only sixteen when she got married, and she wound up with a president! I guess the highlight, as a number of other reviewers have pointed out, was old Judge Craig's (Frank McGlynn) speech to gathered teens and parents alike noting that the proper attention and discipline might have prevented all the bad things from happening in their kids' lives. More simplistic than compelling, one comes away with a feeling of 'Yeah, right', just as the scene dissolves into a decade early preview of American Bandstand to provide a happy ending. Not one of the better flicks in the 'Cult Classics' collection, you might want to check out one of their drug, sex or alcohol treatments instead.

Michael_Elliott Delinquent Daughters (1944) ** (out of 4) PRC cheapie has a cafe owner turning a bunch of local kids into juvenile delinquents. Thankfully there's a caring judge and a loving cop to try and teach the kids to be good and drink soda instead of whiskey. Seeing that this quickie is from PRC should tell you not too take it too seriously. The film, like so many others of its day, is incredibly poorly made, features bad acting and an even worse script but all of this adds to its charm and if you enjoy movies that are so bad they're laughable then this is a film for me. There are countless stupid scenes with all the typical preaching moments where the judge pleads for peace while the teenagers talk about their bad home lives. The highlight of the film is when one of the cops takes two of the bad kids to see the judge in the middle of the morning and we get a ten minute scene with the judge preaching to everyone in the room. An even dumber scene is when one of the girls comes home late and her freak father slaps her and then tries to go after her with a cane. It's silly moments like this that keeps the film moving throughout its 71-minute running time. If you're looking for art then go watch a Bergman film but if you want silly trash then this film delivers.

sol (Some Spoilers) Straight out of todays-Summer of 1944-newspaper headlines the film "Delinquent Daughters" focus on the epidemic of juvenile crime that's was sweeping the country during the war years in the early and mid 1940's.We have this local hood and his moll Nick Gordon & Mimi, Jon Dawson & Fifi D'Orsay, running this teenage watering hole, supposedly serving soda pop and milkshakes to its under aged customers, the Merry-Go-Round Cafe. The Merry-Go-Round is instead getting the teenagers both juiced up, on hard liqueur, and doing Nick's and Mimi's dirty work. It's when local high school girl Lucille Dillerton is found drowned and boozed up after she jumped off a pier that the police headed by J.Edger Hoover look-alike Det. Hanahan, Joe Devlin, start to put the screws on Nick & Mimi's joint.With Nick just too slick to get caught with the goods on him all Det. Hanahan could do is wait for him to make a mistake. That's exactly what happens when Nick starts to make eyes on pretty and well stacked high school girl Sally Higgins, Teala Loring. It's Sally's boyfriend Jerry Syker, Jimmy Zahner,who's been knocking off bars gas stations and groceries for Nick who split the take, 90% for Nick and 10% for Jimmy, with him. Jimmy got the sh*t end of the stick, in the money he robbed, even though he was the one who put his a** on the line doing the robberies and at the same taking an eager, looking for both action and excitement, Sally along with him on his crime spree.It's when Mimi is brought into police headquarters for questioning that Let. Hanahan drops a bombshell about her cheating boyfriend Nick Gordon planning to drop her for the much younger and sexier Sally Higgins. Sally's boyfriend Jerry had earlier participated in a payroll robbery with Nick where he and a security guard were shot and killed. Now seeing that there's a future, in crime, for her with Nick Sally willingly replaced Mimi as Nick's new squeeze. Mad as hell Mimi not only implicates Nick in the string of robberies including a number of murders, one of a cop, in and around town but confronts her ex-lover Nick and her replacement, Sally, at the Merry-Go-Round-Cafe.After getting into a vicious eye scratching and hair pulling cat fight with Sally Mimi ends up getting belted by Nick who then together with Sally take off in his car away from the perusing, and now on to Nick & Sally, police headed by Let. Hanahan. The movie ends with teenagers June Tompson and her boyfriend and soon to be husband Rocky Webster, June Carlson & Johnny Duncan, forcing Nick off the road. Nick and his new love Sally end up at the bottom of a cliff crushed and burned to a crisp.Unlike Jerry and Sally June and Rocky didn't fall for Nick's boastful promises of making them rich and famous, or better yet infamous. The two youngsters not only stayed away from Nick's criminal activities but did what they could to both prevent and put an end to them.Besides the hooky dialog and bad acting the movie had some of the worst lighting you'll ever see, or not see, in a motion picture! Even in an extremely low budgeted turkey like "Delinquent Daughters". There were a number of scenes in the movie that looked like they were filmed in the bottom of a two mile mine shaft with the miners helmet-lights batteries having gone dead!

Jay Raskin This was on the compilation DVD, Cult Classics. The transfered print was awful. There was a big scratch running through print for about fifteen minutes. About fifteen minutes of the night material was so dark that you might as well be listening to the radio.What can be seen is quite poorly written. We are talking Ed Wood bad here. A woman pulls a gun on a man. The man says, "What have you got there." She answers, "Something that goes boom, boom, boom!" Teara Loring is interesting as a real sociopath. She really enjoys lying and stealing. Mary Boward gives a cute performance as a blond airhead, more blond and more airhead than anything in movies until Marilyn Monroe's comic performances.Fifi D'Orsay is funny as a French woman.Other than a few interesting performances, the bad dialogue and inane plot make the film difficult to take seriously. It is only redeemable for a few camp moments.