Wonderful character development!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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.

This movie is bad on practically every level -- the wooden acting, the unbelievable plot, the miscast actors, the cheesy sets.Even Arline Judge's hair-dos and hats manage to be annoying, and that's saying something.How can "Girls in Chains' not include any chains? Or, for that matter, any actresses under age 30? This is my second Edgar Ulmer film -- the other was "Jive Junction" -- and I can't see what his reputation is based upon. To be fair, both films were very low-budget affairs, and they look drab and poorly-lit. If nothing else, they help you appreciate how much good sets and costumes add to a picture.

I guess if I wanted to I could wax philosophic at some length in order to praise Edger Ulmer, a legitimate auteur, in order to prove something or other but, frankly, stylization be damned, this picture is nearly totally incoherent. If this had been made ten years earlier the surrealists would have raved. Ten years later and it would have been an avant guard masterpiece. As it is, truly, in a way, its as delirious as an Ed Wood picture, with only the professional skills of Ulmer to distract from the perfunctory nature of the cinematic goings on (a hotel mentioned in passing is called "The Downtown Hotel"). Not one ounce more than necessary is expended.There is no real logic to the film except one is watching it. If no one ever saw this film would it exist? Its like George's idea for a TV show about nothing. Why, the network exec asks him, if its about nothing, why would anybody watch it? Because its on TV replies George. Why does this picture exist? Because someone had it made. There was a budget, no matter how small, and it needed to be spent. There are just so many 'privileged' moments. The music, most of which seems to be generic, (from a stock disk) also includes, whenever the villain named Johnny is being discussed, variations on When Johnny Comes Marching Home (PD of course). At other times its just brutally mismatched snatches. The effect reminds me of the phony mentalist act from The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, where the pianist gives the front man hints via the background noodling on the piano which seems to be merely there for mood music. In the climax gunshots are missing from the soundtrack. One ten second montage of an automobile speeding along the road has footage of three different cars. The plot, which has frequent references to the legal and judicial system, seems to be divorced from any sort of even the barest notion of reality. Early on Johnny the gangster takes someone for a one way ride and then cuts to a trial verdict with Johnny going free, much to the Judge's outspoken disgust. Arline Judge is a school teacher/psychologist who is fired from the school system because her sister is married to Johnny. An action which she doesn't legally challenge because... The only job available to her is teaching at the local girls reformatory. She almost isn't appointed because of the snobbery of the mayor's wife who heads the board and whose corrupt husband is the mayor who runs Johnny's operation. I don't understand why the sister-in-law of the town's gangster would find it difficult to retain her job under a corrupt mayor, no less there be any question about her getting a crap job at a reformatory. She gets the job however and the 'girls' at the reformatory are all overweight veteran actresses in their thirties and graduates from the Iris Adrian School of Acting. There are about 15 of them with the usual reformatory scams in evidence, strictly by-the-numbers. One girl complains about being sick, is ignored and winds up dead of a burst appendix etc. Just the barest minimum of sketchy dramatic action makes a scene. The lunch scene with the girls refusing to eat that slop is played out with a minimum of fuss and sets and props. Somehow this all ties in back to the town's gangster. Judge gets her job when a worm on the board turns to defy the imperious mayor's wife and has a drink to celebrate and turns out to be an alcoholic. He does this really annoying drunk turn for the rest of the picture, with the fidelity of a high school student who does everything but actually say "hic", and which becomes exceedingly tedious but is used as a plot twist in the end. There is a guy, a cop, who is paired up with Judge so I guess that passes for romance. They first meet at Johnny's place (is it his apt. or club or what?) He's on Johnny's case but the next time he meets Judge he has been reassigned to capturing juveniles and putting them in the reformatory. To make their case, Judge steals some papers (yeah, they'll hold up in court) which will be backed by the gangsters girlfriend who is in, wait for it, the reformatory (young enough for a youth reformatory, young enough for a statutory rape charge?). Johnny the connected gangster couldn't keep her out of the reformatory even though she doesn't seem to be accused, tried or convicted of anything. No papers ever change hands during all the legal stuff in Girls in Chains. She is persuaded to testify by getting a visit from her old boyfriend a 23 year old going on 49 movie ticket seller who kisses her between the wires of the grill.The denouement comes soon enough. Note to self: if I ever try to escape the cops out a window, remember to run down the fire-escape, not up it. Or better yet, call a good lawyer (Scooter Libby?). The cop shoots Johnny in the back.Then again, every once in a while, Ulmer surprises with a neat little camera movement (like when the judge is admonishing the jury in the courtroom scene) or some added chiaroscuro or shadows during an otherwise nothing scene. All on a five day budget. The short shooting schedules and minuscule budgets have given Ulmer films like this their Dr. Johnson's dancing dog reputation but with Detour Ulmer showed it is possible to really make something great out of nothing. This is barely anything shaped from nothing. As it is this is merely the assemblage of some arbitrary scenes which roughly approximate a story but would far better serve as the basis for a pompous academic paper to prove something or other.P.S. Hairstyles are a reference standard for future period set films.

I don't normally post for films I haven't seen, but the comment here from 1999 caught my eye. It mentions that director Edgar G. Ulmer snitched to HUAC. I had never heard this before, nor could I find any confirmation of it. I assume the poster confused Ulmer with one of his contemporaries, Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten who did indeed cooperate with the committee. At any rate, 8 years is long enough for that comment to go unchallenged. I'd hate to think that Ulmer's reputation could be tarnished by this apparent error, especially among viewers of these posts who may have no other knowledge of the man or his career.