Teenage Doll

"Teenage Doll is a very low-rent, distaff version of Rebel Without a Cause, without James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Nicholas Ray, or any of the other elements that made that movie memorable. It does have Roger Corman directing and producing, and a hard-hitting screenplay by Charles B. Griffith, however, and within the context of low-budget teen exploitation, it's a pretty effective little film, and not without its moments of unintended humor. Teenage Doll plays more like a television show, without enough plot for a full-length movie -- as a girl street gang pursues a teenage girl through a small city at night, we learn about a ""nice girl"" who started running with the leader of a local gang, the Vandals, and got into a fight with a rival from the girl gang, who fell off a roof. Along the way, viewers get glimpses of child abuse, juvenile crime, dysfunctional parents, and social ills from alcoholism to nymphomania and satyriasis. Corman was actually making a cautionary tale every bit as serious as Rebel Without a Cause, but in trying so hard on such a low budget, he let some lines pass that no filmmaker except perhaps Edward D. Wood Jr. would have allowed -- such as when the girl, explaining the blood on her dress, tells her mother that a side of beef fell off a meat truck and hit her. Fortunately, most of the other dialogue is better than that, and overlooking a few over-the-top performances, there's a lot to appreciate here, either as '50s camp or sincere filmmaking on the cheap. Additionally, the film-to-video transfer is excellent, bringing out the sharp lighting of Floyd Crosby's cinematography in exceptionally good details, and the sound is about the best heard so far on any DVD release from the Wade Williams Collection, from whence this release comes. The movie is broken down into a dozen chapters and has the original trailer included as an bonus -- the latter (especially its narration) is funnier than the movie, which tries hard to make some points with its audience, which presumably included a lot of teenagers. The price is a bit high considering the short running time, but it is a fascinating artifact of its time."