It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

TEENAGE GANG DEBS is another old indie thriller put out by Something Weird when they used to release double bills of rare old-time exploitation flicks. This one's an example of the juvenile delinquency drama, shot in New York in black and white and looking at the bad behaviour of gangs during the era. The main character is a ruthless female protagonist determined to get to the top in a bid for power and fortune. Expect cat fights, sex, lots of hanging around in seedy bars, and partying. It's very cheap and scuzzy looking, and the plot is a bit too unfocused for my liking.

Raven-tressed Diane Conti (who, like most of the cast, has at most only one or two other movie credits in IMDb) comes sashaying into the Brooklyn clubhouse of a clean-cut mostly Italian "gang" whose chief activities seem to be talking and dancing (if you call what Elaine on "Seinfeld" did "dancing"). She announces she's from Manhattan, which may as well be Mars for these local yokels. The "prez" of the club takes a shine to her, promptly dumps his current girlfriend and our Terry's off to the races, manipulating a subordinate clubster Nino into usurping the boss and then using Nino as a front for her own power grab. Eventually she "goes too far" and gets her comeuppance--from the other members' girlfriends, of course. That's pretty much it."Well then," you may be wondering, "should anything attract me to this opposed to umpteen others like it?" It depends how one reacts to Ms Conti, who carries it, and I for one liked her a lot. She "inhabits" the part very nicely, never seems to be capital-A Acting. Her line readings are neither zombie-like nor melodramatic. Her emotional displays are convincing, such as when she's lying in bed vowing that nobody's going to carve his initials into her, or at the end shrieking at the latter-day Furies to stay away from her. And yeah, she's pretty hot, especially considering that in the mid-1960's there seemed to be this cinematic conspiracy to make women as unattractive as possible (it took the "Hippie chicks" a few years later to break out of that mold). The other cast members pull their weight, and a few scenes actually aspire towards dramatic resonance, as when Nino (at the urging of Terry, of course) instigates a knife fight with a hapless member who just wants to quit and get married. ("It was never a big deal before Terry came along when somebody wanted to quit," a clubster complains. Really? Members could just stroll away taking all those secrets with them? Some bunch of desperadoes.) Some of the outdoors scenes are unfortunately hard to follow, being poorly lit and jumpily edited. There's a lot of "filler," mostly involving "dancing." White people trying to dance (especially back then) remind one of Samuel Johnson's notorious remark about female preachers: "It is like a dog walking on his hind legs: it is not done well, but one is surprised to see it done at all..." I'm white myself, just for the record. Outside the Philly Mummers parade, we should just leave it alone...

Let's face it. This movie sucks. It doesn't even fit in the "so bad it's good" category. Low low budget, horribly staged fight and rumble scenes-c'mon guys, somebody take a punch! This is another one of those movies where you can be shot or stabbed and there is never any blood. How this can be called exploitation is beyond me. Just because it's from the early 60's, is shot in black and white and has "teenage" in the title does not make it an undiscovered classic. Something Weird has so many better titles along this same ilk. Nothing happens in this film. The sex and violence and even the language are all rated G. Pass on this timekiller. Even the soundtrack music leaves much to be desired and you've heard it a million times. Every 60's porno loop lifted the same music and it was put to better use!

Surprisingly well directed considering its ephemeral trashcan image. I liked the photography of the fight scenes, almost worthy of Kurosawa. I liked the Jacobean amorality and black humour. And in its genre it was quite dramatic. No doubt hundreds of minor films like this are ignored by the critics and banned by the authorities, only to be resurrected on C4 Eurotrash-cum-Exploitica slots. Of course the nasty heroine had to have her come-uppance in the end, but there was enough action and atmosphere of a non-prurient satanic sex'n'violence to make the ending a pure palinode.