| DIE, SISTER, DIE! : Roger Corman's 'Sorority Girl' (1957) [5/10] |
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| Wednesday, 19 April 2006 | |
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Fear and loathing on campus, distaff and 50s-style, in gleaming nightmarish monochrome: it's only a short hop from here to Corman's Poe-inspired tales of delirium and sociopathic madness. Instead of Vincent Price we have Susan Cabot (looks from certain angles like Liz Taylor; met a truly astonishing - and sad - real-life end) as spoilt-little-rich-girl Sabra, who delights in annoying, humiliating and exploiting her "sisters" at the University of Southern California. Sabra's bitchy/fiendish machinations bring her only further and further unhappiness: a grim spiral into mental illness which her haughty mama (Fay Baker) observes from afar with patrician disdain... Ed Waters' script is rather bracing in its unflinching, first-person-narration-heavy examination of a tormented, tormenting mind - but is presented in somewhat drab, inert fashion by still-learning-the-ropes director Corman. Keen to stretch his flimsy material out as much as possible (i.e. to the hour-ish mark) Corman almost invariably has his actresses pause for a second before delivering their lines: the result is an inert drabness that's also rather unsettling. Even more disturbing are Bill Martin's (wildly prolonged) opening credits - a series of very mid-fifties chalk-and-charcoal sketches which wouldn't look out of place introducing a gothic chiller in the Horror Hotel vein. They're the most memorable and vivid feature of a cheap-and-not-so-cheerful picture that's worth a look, without being no means anything out of the ordinary. Neil Young 18th/19th April, 2006 SORORITY GIRL : [5/10] : USA 1957 : Roger CORMAN : 61 mins (IMDb timing) seen on DVD at home in Sunderland (UK), 17th April 2006 |
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