The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The Violent Years, one of my favorite Ed Wood films, takes on the toughest problem of the fifties: violent girl gangs! The gang, led by pretty Paula Prentiss, vandalizes, robs, assaults, and kills to get what they want. The dialogue is clunky, the plot ludicrous, the acting wooden, but it is hilarious. What deep, dark trauma caused Paula to take up a life of crime? Her parents don't spend time with her, buy her everything she wants, and write her blanks checks. Her life is truly a "living hell". All this leads Paula to become a vandalizing thief, a sexual predator, and a cold-blooded double killer. Go figure. What is this feminine fiend's explanation of her crimes? Not "They were scum and they deserved what they got.", not "I did it, and I'd do again", but the callous-yet-laughable "So what?". If you want a dark comedy with awkward characters, mixed messages, and a coma-inducing summary, watch this movie.

Never let it be said that Ed Wood was afraid to tackle some burning social issues and he does so again here with his usual skill. The Violent Years talks about female delinquency as wealthy, but bored Jean Moorhead gathers around her some followers and they form a girl gang. These chicks are out for action and with them being masked, the law thinks that it's after your typical male holdup gang as the girls start going through all the local filling stations.But these brazen harlots don't stop there. Unmasked they terrorize couples in a frequented lover's lane and tie up the women and then force men to their sexual wills. I don't know about you, but that's normally the kind of thing that is not best done under pressure at the point of a gun. In the end Moorhead is pregnant and commits murder and the wages of sin are exacted by the long arm of the law in the person of noted character actor I. Stanford Jolley who looks like he's needing some laxative as he intones the sentence and his views on parents who do not give good supervision and values to their kids. Poor Jolley who is the only person in this cast who has a decent resume probably fired his agent after he signed him up for this.Ed Wood, they'll never be another like you.

Well, Ed Wood only wrote the screen play for this, which explains why "The Violent Years" isn't as spastic and incompetent as his own self-directed "masterpieces". But his tin ear for dialog and 6th grade level sense of plotting and character development come through perfectly, so anyone who enjoys EW movies will enjoy this one for all the usual reasons.There are so many "great" moments here: the moment when Paula commands her gang "We've all got guns, let's get 'em into action!!", rather than something simple and coherent such "Fire your guns at the cops!". Or the moment where the reporter drops Paula's creepy boyfriend with one punch, and the creep cartwheels onto the floor in a direction that is actually not possible for a person hit with a right cross from that angle. Or the amazingly stilted initial greetings between Paula and her charity-crazed mom. Or the rambling, droning lecture by the judge where he talks about the need for more time in the woodshed and the return to Bible based values with all the conviction of a shoe salesman at Payless. Bonus: even with a bunch of padding, the movie is actually pretty short, barely more than an hour. Another bonus (speaking of padding!): torpedo tits and tight sweaters standing in for character development.So pull on your favorite skin tight Angora sweater and your best pumps and sit down and watch this today.

I think the real lesson of THE VIOLENT YEARS is that girls make really stupid criminals. Robert DeNiro's gang in HEAT is torn to pieces after the cops show up during a major-league bank heist; the same thing happens to spoiled rich girl Paula and her crew, only it's because the cops interrupt them while inflicting minor, easily reparable damage on a schoolroom. This action (sort of) set piece is a hoot to watch: the girls go wild, erasing the blackboard and ripping up the desktop blotter and turning over the chairs, but then as one girl contemplates desecrating the American flag the cops show up. Rather than face a juvenile hall stay for breaking windows, Paula and the gang do what any smart criminals would do: get out their irons and start blasting. Paula further demonstrates her criminal smarts by killing a cop, then demanding payment for the botched job from her boss--who, because she is also a female criminal in the world of THE VIOLENT YEARS, instead of playing it safe and playing for time, promptly turns her back on the desperately stupid brat brandishing a gun and an inflated ego.You have to give Paula this, anyway; she's smarter than Jimmy Wilson in I ACCUSE MY PARENTS. But then he at least had genuinely bad parents. Paula's folks are kindly and ridiculously generous, plying her with new dresses and a new car *every year*. But her dad was always so busy at his job and her mom so engaged in her charity work (remember that, mothers: having an outside interest means your child will turn to crime) that attention-starved Paula was forced to take up petty theft. She's almost adorable with her affected snarl and tough-girl talk as she struggles valiantly to strike a fearsome pose. To make herself feel better she takes care to surround herself with only with pathetic lowlifes and third-raters; in one hilarious bit, a reporter visits her (very tame) birthday sleep-over and drops one of her male friends with a single punch. It all makes for an entertaining ride through the laughable career of one of the dumbest crooks ever to star in a movie.Well, almost. The movie rolls along until the last act, when it suddenly freezes in its tracks to mete out poetic justice and endless lecturing from a judge who tells us that the only way to stamp out youthful crime is with corporal punishment in the "old fashioned woodshed" and with regular church-going. (As Mike Nelson summarizes, "Beat the love of Jesus into them!") Not content to punish Paula with a life sentence and death in childbirth, the movie then punishes both her parents *and* her baby daughter by refusing the parents custody and sentencing the daughter to life in a state home. Mike and the 'bots salvage some entertainment from the droning moralizing; I can scarcely imagine what it must have been like to watch in the movie theater. Ironically it might have been better in the hands of Ed Wood, who supplied the story but not the direction. THE VIOLENT YEARS is competently directed as Ed Wood could never have managed but at least Eddie had the sense to keep his pontificating short. Even the ridiculous "pornography is worse than dope peddling" scene from THE SINISTER URGE is over with in less time than it takes for the hectoring judge in THE VIOLENT YEARS to tell us what time of day it is.