A study in drug abuse like Reefer Madness, Girl Gang emphasizes the sleazy aspects associated with like-minded juveniles who find themselves corrupted by marijuana, and Heroin and delivers a mish mash of gratuitous exploitation.In an isolated apartment on the wrong side of the tracks June (Joanne Arnold) hangs out with her friends who come there to buy "weed" cigarettes, marijuana, from Joe (Timothy Farrell) who runs a business of selling Heroin to school kids and getting them addicted so they will pull crimes for him. Joe keeps a disbarred alcoholic physician Doc (Harry Keaton) on hand to help with assisting the school kids with clean injections. Joe secures a job for June with a local merchant in order to support her mounting heroin habit. June begins selling sexual favors, and when she is caught stealing money from a business Joe and Doc come forward to blackmail the man into silence. When Joe sends June and some others out to rob a local gas station, a girl gets shot and the police close in on the drug-infested apartment.It's too bad that, given the resources, the movie could not have been better. Judging by the mise-en-scene, the budget for the film looks to be about as good as it was for Detour nine years earlier. The major difference being that Detour has a strong central character and a strong story arc that carries the viewer from the opening through to the end, whereas Girl Gang never seems to focus on the right thing, first having a girl-gang robbery, which introduces us to drug dealer Joe, which leads us to June, but since June is our main character it only makes sense for us to learn about her and where she comes from and why she has ended up at Joe's apartment. Since we never know why June does what she does we have nothing to care about in the character and her downfall doesn't mean anything to us.Part of this is the charismatic screen persona of leads Tom Neal and Ann Savage in Detour. Not to take away from the relative merits of Joanne Arnold, and Timothy Farrell, but they were not A-listers nor were they strong actors, although Farrell did have a stronger presence than the eye-candy Arnold. To be honest Arnold was cast because they had a great body and this vehicle was to sell from the male gaze that was seeking cheap visual thrills from her presence on screen.Arnoldhad done the Playboy spread in 1954 and the producers must have thought they had a sure box-office with her in the movie. She's beautiful to look at but seeing her in motion in the movies it's clear she is not an actress. Her face never registers a glimmer of thought and the lack of her characters progression in the film makes it a flat gratuitous thing.

This is, without question, a bad film. The acting is often pretty crappy (with 'actors' who can't deliver their lines), the production values low and the emphasis is purely on exploitation! However, in a sleazy way, it's also very interesting and certainly will keep your attention! It definitely falls into the category of 'so bad, it's good'! This film is of some mild interest because one of the main characters, 'Doc', is Harry Keaton--Buster's real life brother. You can't tell this by looking at him or seeing him act--he's just another apparent no-talent in a vast sea of no-talents! Additionally, the film stars Timothy Farrell as 'Joe'--a sleazy sort much like the guys he played in other no-budget exploitation films as "Test Tube Babies", "Glen or Glenda" and "Jail Bait". He plays his usual greasy crooks--and in such roles, Farrell (a bailiff in real life) was pretty effective."Girl Gang" begins with a group of nasty women beating a guy up and stealing his car. It seems they are heroin addicts and have brought the car to Joe so they can get a fix. In fact, throughout the film LOTS of troubled people come to Joe for pot and heroin--and Joe is very obliging--giving them their first dose for free. Then, when they get hooked, Joe has them commit various crimes to pay for more. You see ladies prostitute themselves, blackmail, commit robberies and the like--all to get their beloved heroin. Eventually, as in all exploitation films of the era, these folks get what's coming to them. But in between, the film is very explicit for the time--with rather frank discussions of prostitution as well as how to shoot heroin. The latter was VERY realistic--and I wonder how many folks might have learned to use the drug simply by watching Joe give a step-by-step lesson to a newbie on using it! As I said, the film is pretty funny because it's so badly made. Look at the 'ladies' delivering their line when the gang meets up with Joe at his hangout or the cop and doctor talking outside in front of the Prison Ward sign. None of them delivered their lines with any conviction--just like some semi-literates reading cue cards. Also, look for the shootout. When one of the wicked ladies shoots the gas station attendant, she then tosses the gun to the attendant who is lying on the ground bleeding. And, he then shoots the gang members!! Huh?!? But my favorite is the ultra-lame cat fight near the end of the movie. Seeing Betty White and Bea Arthur doing this scene together would have been sexier--and a lot more convincing!! Overall, terribly bad...but a hoot to watch with other bad movie buffs. Enjoyable trash.

"Racket Girls" director Robert C. Dertano's thriller "Girl Gang" qualifies as a vintage exploitation movie about crime and narcotics. Mind you, this abysmally acted, 63-minute, black & white movie is strictly your standard dope-fiend film from fade-in to fade-out. Nevertheless, the casual use of marijuana and the extremely explicit depictions about both cooking heroin and injecting it respectively for men and women must have been controversial for its day. Producer George Weiss couldn't have received any dispensation from the Motion Picture Association of America because the still intact Production Code prohibited Hollywood from illustrating how to commit a crime, and using illegal narcotics very much constituted a crime in the 1950s. Otto Preminger didn't dare go as far out on the censorship limb as "Girl Gang" did in 1954 when he produced his own controversial Frank Sinatra epic "The Man with the Golden Arm" about heroin abuse in 1955 and altogether ignored the Production Code Seal of Approval. Otherwise, "Girl Gang" casts exploitation regular Timothy Farrell of "The Violent Years" and "The Devil's Sleep" as a two-bit crime boss who hooks teens on marijuana and/or heroin and dispatches them to crime crimes so they can fence him the goods and he can repay them with either pot or smack. "Girl Gang" does not entirely concern itself with distaff criminals. A quartet of devious dames hijacks a man's car on a lonely highway and leaves him sprawled unconscious on the pavement, but the bulk of the action follows the crime boss and his efforts to take advantage of women while they perform his dirty deeds. Eventually, the police catch up with him after the girl gang is shot-up by authorities and traced back to his hideout in an apartment complex. The subject matter contains greater historical relevance than the cinematic technique. There is a slackly staged gas station robbery toward the end of the action. Just about everything is run-of-the-mill, right down to William Thompson's cinematography.

Girl Gang is so bad it's good. The acting is sub-par, yes. The direction isn't great. But the plot is actually pretty well thought out: Drug dealer uses a couple of his regulars to recruit young 'greenhorns' to his 'candy'. Once they get hooked on weed, he moves them on to heroin and all of them eventually find that the heroin habit is more expensive, therefore they 'owe' the dealer more and more money. He then basically forces the girls into prostitution and 'rape' allegation shakedowns to get the money to pay him back. Time goes on and they get deeper in debt to him and get into worse and worse criminal activity to support their habit. This is certainly not a family night movie, what with all the sex and prostitution and blackmail. There is even a point where it shows step by step how to freebase heroin...you learn something new every day! If you have no sense of humour, or the slightest understanding of the time period in which this film was made, I don't suggest you waste your time. On the other hand, if you love 'Teenagers Going to Hell' delinquency films of the fifties and sixties as much as I do, you'll love this monstrosity! It's a campy cheese-fest worthy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 that actually holds up decently on it's own!