Another day, another juvenile delinquency film courtesy of poverty-row American producers. This one concerns a couple of girls who get caught up with some low rent criminal types and end up going on something of a crime spree. It's a little like a low key BONNIE AND CLYDE except made without any discernible scripting, characterisation, or narrative drive.Indeed, this is poverty-row filmmaking at its nadir, and there's little here to tempt fans of the genre. The dialogue has been written by somebody with a tin ear and the acting is hardly up to scratch. These films always seem to have some boring reporter guy who goes undercover to bring down the criminals at large. But the worst thing about DELINQUENT DAUGHTERS is the quality of the public domain print in circulation; half the scenes have a massive scratch running down the middle of the screen, while the rest are so dark you're staring at a black screen.

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.

This is a bad movie that purports to be an educational film designed to warn America about the menace of teenagers running amok thanks to uninvolved parents. However, like almost all the so-called "educational" films of the 30s and 40s, it was really a shabby little film designed to be snuck past the censors of the Hays Office. In 1934, the major studios all agreed to abide by the dictates of a stronger Production Code--eliminating sex, nudity, cursing and "inappropriate" plots in films (these had actually been relatively common in films in the early 30s). However, in an effort to sneak in smut, small studios created films to shock adults when they learn about terrible social ills, though they were REALLY intended to titillate and slip adult themes past the censors! Such films as MARIJUANA, MAD YOUTH, REEFER MADNESS and SEX MADNESS were all schlocky trash that skirted past the boards because they were supposedly educational. Even though they were laughably bad, they also made money due to low production costs and because they often offered nudity, violence and sordid story lines--all in the name of education! Unlike many of these films, DELINQUENT DAUGHTERS didn't have nudity, but it sure had lots of sleazy story elements that were sure to titillate. In this film, teens drank, used drugs, committed pointless robberies and assaults and drove like maniacs--all apparently the result of poor parental guidance. And as a result, kids died in this movie--and in the most spectacular ways! The acting and writing were almost universally bad, though the sequence where the judge tells off the parents of these punks actually was amazingly good--too bad everything else was pretty lousy. In fact, one character was so bad, so annoying and so gosh-darn awful, I nominate the ditsy blonde as the most annoying character of the 1940s--she was THAT bad!! Her voice was more grating than Olive Oyl's and she was practically sub-human in her stupidity!

1st watched 1/22/2007 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Albert Herman): Mediocre, at best, juvenile teenager drama which starts at the onset of a high school girl killing herself with the authorities trying to find out why. Of course, the kids remaining aren't much help as they were all out partying together the night before and don't want their parents to find out. None of the kids show much sympathy, which appears to be the point of the movie -- if you're a bad girl and party you lose all your sensitivity. Although later in the movie, the tables turn and the parents are shown to blame -- which was a nice turn(with a good scene with the judge helping the parents understand where they were going wrong), but it comes too late in the movie(about ¾ of the way thru). For the most part the acting is pretty bad and the lighting on some scenes is so horrible that you can barely tell what's going on(this may have just been the age of the movie, though). Besides this, the movie tries hard from a story perspective, but turns out to be pretty much a snoozer that you're just waiting on to end.