Our nifty little potboiler begins in the little girl’s room at the local high school. There’s a new girl starting today, and Connie (Jana Lund), the leader of the all girl-gang The Hellcats, wants to initiate her into the fold by using the dreaded "slacks" test, to see if she’s Hellcat material. As Dolly (Susanne Sidney), her second in command, throws her switchblade at the wall, where it sticks, this triggers the opening credits with a typical American International Pictures spazzed-out jazz riff wailing on the soundtrack. (A riff we’ll be hearing again and again and again…) The class bell rings, and much to the girl’s delight, they have a substitute teacher filling in today. Better yet, a male substitute -- teaching home economics no less. The new girl, Joyce (Yvonne Lime), makes her way to an empty desk, and the overwhelmed teacher asks the rest to take their seats, too, so Connie replies with the tried and true "Where shall we take ‘em teach?" (Bwahaahaahha, man that joke cracks me up every time.)

And it quickly degenerates from there, with the girls raising a big enough ruckus that it sends the sub crying to the principal. Telling one of her stooges to watch the door, Connie and the others circle around Joyce. If Joyce wants to survive and be popular in school, she had best join the Hellcats. Joyce fearfully agrees, but Connie says it isn’t that easy and she’ll have to pass a few tests first. As the party breaks up, she tells Joyce to be sure and wear slacks to class tomorrow. (Finally, the dreaded slacks test.) The next morning, we meet Joyce’s parents, Roger and Linda (Don Shelton and Viola Harris). He’s a hard working lawyer who thinks his daughter shouldn’t wear so much make-up, or those tight fitting sweaters -- kid’s need more discipline is his constant mantra. And Mom is so involved with her bridge club, she doesn’t have a clue what her daughter’s is ever up to. Just another typical day as dad has a conniption with Joyce’s choice of slacks, and grumpily drives her to school. But when Joyce waltzes into her health and physical wellness class (you know, when all the guys had to go to the gym while the girls had to go to the library to see the *ahem* "special" film), she discovers she’s been had. None of the other girls wore slacks. Ms. Davis (Rhoda Williams) is one of the few teachers The Hellcats don’t give trouble to. (She explains later that it’s because she respects the kids.) She decides to have an open forum, and the topic of the day is boys and the mating habits of the American teen. Davis soon discovers Joyce’s attire and asks if anyone put her up to breaking the school’s dress code. (I believe she’s seen this type of hazing before.) Joyce doesn’t rat Connie out, but is so upset and embarrassed, she runs out of the class -- and right off the school grounds.

Finding her way to a coffee shop, Mike (Brett Halsey), the young owner, sees she’s upset and tries to get her to talk about it. Joyce tells him what happened, and he too knows of these hooligan Hellcats. Warning her to stay away from them, she tells him to butt out and leaves. Going home to an empty house, Joyce's parents eventually show up but pay no attention to the obviously troubled teen. Later, she receives a phone call from Connie with an invite to a party. When Joyce arrives at the abandoned movie theater, she's escorted up to the balcony -- The Hellcats home away from home. Informing the newbie that by not ratting them out, she's passed the first of three tests, making her a probationary member. Even for the probies, there are a few ground rules: You can’t be an egghead, a show-off, or a teacher’s pet. And one must never -- EVER reveal the location of their secret fort. The next test is to steal something, and while Connie and Dolly run interference, Joyce steals a pair of earrings. Later, they wind up at the coffee shop. Pretending to give him the cold shoulder while the other girls are around, Joyce secretly arranges to meet Mike later -- alone.

After they linkup, they head for the beach and Joyce confesses to Mike about her experiences so far with The Hellcats. She also reveals that she technically didn’t steal the earrings because she left some money for them. Unable to understand why she would want to join the group, Joyce echoes Connie’s statement of a need for a "home away from home" and says she "has to belong to something." Not buying it, Mike says to consider herself lucky because she has good parents and a place to live. He's right, and Joyce just wishes her parents would show some kind of interest in what she’s doing. They embrace, the waves crash, and they kiss. (You figure it out!)

The next day at school, Connie has come up with last test. Joyce has to ask Riff for a date while he’s talking to his girlfriend Teri. (At this point, we notice that Dolly isn’t very happy with all the attention Connie’s been giving to Joyce.) Joyce passes, as Riff dumps Teri on the spot for a chance to go out with a Hellcat on Saturday night.

Saturday afternoon, Mike and Joyce have a fight over the party she’s being forced into. Ending badly, Mike drives off in a huff while Joyce glumly gets ready for her other date. Downstairs, her parents are bickering again. Mom thinks they need a private vacation, but dad won’t let his daughter stay home by herself. Before Joyce can leave, her dad gets in a few shots on her make up and dress. And after Joyce leaves, the bickering continues unabated.

When Joyce, Riff, Connie and her date, Freddy, arrive at the rocking party, almost immediately, Riff tries to get Joyce drunk, and when she refuses to dance, he dumps her for another girl. Later on, Freddy announces it’s time to play a game of Sardines where the person who draws the lowest card has to run around in the dark and identify as many people as he/she can. (What does this have to do with sardines? Let me get back to you on that.) When the lights go out and all the girls squeal, and as Joyce fights off a phantom groper, a blood-curdling scream drowns everything else out. The lights come back on revealing Connie’s dead body at the bottom of a staircase. Swearing everybody to secrecy before kicking them out, Riff and Freddy start cleaning up the place. The real owners are out of town, so not only are there murderers afoot, they’re all trespassers as well. (Darn kids!) They drive the shell-shocked Joyce home where Mike is waiting, wanting to apologize. Thinking he’s a cop, a fight breaks out but Mike makes quick work of Riff and Freddy. After they're run off, Joyce convinces him not to call the cops. They head to Mike’s place so she can treat his wounds. Visibly upset about something besides the fight, she refuses tell Mike what happened.

Monday at school, The Hellcats meet. Dolly takes charge. Convinced that someone pushed Connie down the stairs, she swears if she ever finds out whodunit, she’ll kill them. Dolly punctuates this threat by turning a wrathful accusing-eye on Joyce. Later, Ms. Davis is called to the principals office to meet with Lt. Manners (Robert Anderson). He’s there investigating Connie’s disappearance and asks her to identify who Connie’s friends were, and then send them in, one at a time, for a little interrogation. Eventually, it’s Joyce’s turn, but she doesn’t crack or confess anything. (Party? What party?) She fingers Dolly as Connie’s best friend (Connie? Connie who?), so Manners asks to see her next. Dolly slips up by referring to Connie in the past tense (the cops only think she's missing), but clams up and refuses to cooperate after that. (You’ll never break me copper!) The interrogations complete, Manners can’t quite decide if the girls are telling the truth, or if it’s all one big organized lie. He talks to Ms. Davis again, since the girls seem to trust her, and asks to be kept in the loop if they confide anything to her about Connie.

The end

So we have yet another solid effort from American International Pictures. Solid is the best word I can come up with when I think about AIP films. No frills. No bells. No whistles. Just a workman like effort that always manages to entertain. As with most AIP films, though, the posters prove a lot more entertaining than the film itself. Hellcats is no different. The poster promises one thing, but delivers something completely different. (See illustration.) But also as usual with an AIP picture, there is more going on here than the titular title lets on. You could easily write this off as another low-budget exploitation quickie, but it is much more than that. 

All of this comes to a boil when Joyce talks to Mike about why she wants to join The Hellcats. It’s because it gives her the feeling of belonging. (Sound familiar?) She feels her parents aren’t really interested in her but the Hellcats are. Which leads us back to the "home away from home" quote. Which should be interpreted literally as a physical safe home away from her real home.

As usual, AIP sides with the younger generation -- much to the delight of its target audience. When her father grounds her, Joyce bites back that children have rights as well as responsibilities. Sam Arkoff used to screen the movies to his own kids to get a feel if they got it right. He disagreed with Walt Disney’s view of teenagers and felt AIP movies needed to be more realistic.

You have to hand it to Arkoff and Nicholson for taking a stand. While everyone else was blaming juvenile delinquency on rock-n-roll, comic books and the movies they we’re making, they answered with a film saying the problem lies not in these things but in the growing dysfunctional family. 

Has anyone else noticed that this is the 1950s we’re talking about, and we’re still arguing the same causes and effects 50 years later?

More J.D.'s and Rocket-Bras!

Posted: 09/29/00. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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