Girls in Chains (1943)

**SPOILERS**** Gangster Johnny Moon,Allan Byron, is seen in the beginning of the movie getting away with murder when he's found innocent by a jury despite all the evidence against him. It turns out that his sister in law Helen Martin played the very married,eight times, Arline Judge who lost her job as a teacher because of her connection to Johnny who later ends up putting an end to his criminal career. By pulling strings Helen get a job as an assistant supervisor at a womens'a correctional lock-up run by one of Johnny's stooges Marcus, Clancy Cooper, who runs the place like a Nazi concentration camp.It's after one of the inmates dies due to not getting any medical help that Helen goes over Marcus's head and reports him to the state governor. This has Helen put on Marcus's sh*t list who's in bed with the corrupt city Mayor McCarthy who is in fact controlled by Johnny Moon. It's when Johhny's girlfriend Rita Randall, Robin Raymond, is sent to the women's reformatory after being arrest for drunk & disorderly, as well as shoplifting, that she 's soon put under the wing of Helen who shows her that being a law abiding citizen is much better then being Johnny's gun-moll. That has Johnny who suspects, and is right, that Rita is going to turn against him and expose his crimes has her released from prison and bumped off by his driver and #1 hit-man Pinkhead played by Sid Melton who has the uncanny ability to remove and put back on his hat in a flash without anybody noticing it!****SPOILERS*** Johnny's luck runs out when he tries to have Pinkhead knock off the drunk as a skunk Lionel Cleeter, Emmett Lynn,who witnessed him killing Rita and was ready, when he sobered up, to go to the police and D.A's office with the damning information. With Cleeter somehow surviving the hit it was all over for Johnny and his partner Pinkhead with the police closing in on them. Helen who in fact started the ball rolling ended up being supervisor of the girls reformatory, after Marcus was put behind bars, and taught the girls there to respect the law as well as themselves which not only turned their lives around but made them able to face the outside world.P.S I noticed that some of the L.A street scenes filmed at night were later inserted as well as colorized in the 1975 Robert Mitchum film noir classic "Fearwell my Lovely".

I agree with most of the criticisms of the first 11 reviewers and agree that Edgar G. Ulmer has not worked his magic and made a shoestring budget into a masterpiece. However there are two things that I think the film deserves credit for. The first is the genre. This is one of the earliest women in a bad prison pictures. I know there were a bunch of men in bad prison movie before this, and of course "Fugitive From a Chain Gang" was ten years earlier. Still this is the earliest or one of the earliest females in prison movies. It kind of sets up the basic formula for the bad girls in prison films. Here the prison staff are more criminal than the women prisoners.In fact, Ulmer seems to be making some kind of anti-Nazi statement with the film. It does develop a lot of tension and you really root for the female inmates. Yes, it was shot in five days and lots of things are ridiculous, especially the actor and character of lead gangster Johnny Moon. Yes, the playing of Johnny Comes Marching Home Again when he's on-screen is ridiculous, but the film is fun and watchable nevertheless. The second thing is the hairstyles. They are unique. When was the last time you saw a film and wanted to look up the credit for who did the hairstyles? They are outrageous and ridiculous. Still they are fascinating. I had to watch another film with Arlene Judge to make sure that her hair wasn't styled this way permanently. (I saw her in Baby Bride (1932) and her hairstyle was normal in that one. Judge is actually a fine actress. You can actually believe that she does have a Masters Degree in psychology. She does seem to be compassionate and thoughtful towards the girls she must protect. It is not her fault that we are always mesmerized by the absurd hairstyle and we watch it instead of listening to her dialogue.Anyways, I'm giving the film five stars because Ulmer did make a watchable early women in prison movie in just five days with on a shoestring budget. I'm giving the film two extra stars for the wild and unusual hairstyle. I'm pretty sure that the hairstylist, no matter who s/he was, never worked again on another picture.

Girls in Chains (1943) 1/2 (out of 4) Incredibly bad drama from PRC has a school teacher (Arline Judge) being fired from her job because her sister is dating a gangster. The teacher then gets a job in a home for delinquent girls where she tries to clean up the abuse, which might lead back to the gangster. This is an incredibly bad film that really goes beyond badness on all levels. Orgy of the Dead still gets my vote for the worst film ever made but this one here takes the honor for the worst performances I've ever seen. I really never thought acting could get as bad as it does here but the only reason I don't give this thing a BOMB is because of the bad acting, which leads to several laughs throughout the film. I've never really understood all the praise thrown at Ulmer, although I'm a big fan of a couple of his films. His direction here is decent at best but why in the hell didn't he try and get better actors? Yes, this is an ultra-low-budget flick but I've never seen acting this bad. The editing is also quite terrible but that's to be expected. If you're a fan of really bad movies then you might get a few laughs out of this thing but others should stay far away.

This is a very low budget film about women who were put behind bars in a young woman's correction facility which is controlled by a mobster named Johnny Moon, (Addison Randall). Johnney Moon controls the city government and has given his right hand hood the position as warden of this correction facility. The girls are treated like they were in a federal prison, with hard work in a laundry and solitary confinement. There is no hope for these women to rehabilitate themselves in order to obtain training for job positions on the outside in order to adjust to society. Helen Martin, (Arlene Judge) has a sister who is married to Johnney Moon and Helen has lost her job because of the bad reputation of her brother-in-law and has been advised to become a social worker at the prison. As soon as Helen walks into the prison, the story becomes interesting.