Teenage Devil Dolls (1955) (aka: One Way Ticket to Hell) starring Barbara Marks, Kurt Martell, Robert A. Sherry, Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. directed by Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. Movie Review

Teenage Devil Dolls (1955)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Barbara Marks in Teenage Devil Dolls (1955) (aka: One Way Ticket to Hell)

Cassandra's a Devil Woman

Pretty high school teen Cassandra Leigh (Barbara Marks) doesn't see eye to eye with her mum (Lucille Price) and after her mum moans at her again she rebels and rides of with a motorbike gang where she resists the gang's insistence that she tries reefer till after a few weeks she gibes it a go. But reefer causes her personality to change and all her school friends start to avoid her, all but Johnny (Robert Norman) who is sweet on her and refuses to give up on her. When Cassandra flunks out of school she realises that Johnny was a safe bet as he already has a job and so goes running to him and they get married. But the love of a good guy is not enough for the mentally unbalanced Cassandra who starts hanging out with the old gang as she seeks excitement and the hit of drugs again heading down a very dangerous path of sleeping pills and heroin.

I am going to make a stand for the curiously named "Teenage Devil Dolls" or "One Way Ticket to Hell" as it is also known as whilst not a great movie it is worth bearing in mind that Bamlet L. Price, Jr. wrote and made this movie for $14,000 as part of his thesis at film school and when you put it into context of being a 1950s film school project it is not terrible. Yes at times it is terribly funny, watching the over the top reactions of Barbara Marks as Cassandra as she takes a toke on a reefer is hilarious but in a strange way "Teenage Devil Dolls" is interesting and entertaining in a bit of a bad movie way.

Now "Teenage Devil Dolls" is one of those movies which says drugs are bad, we learn all about how Cassandra changes when she starts smoking Reefer and then we get the slippery slope of addicts as she then becomes addicted to sleeping pills which she forges prescriptions to get and her spiral into drug abuse gets progressively worse till she ends up on heroin and committed to hospital. It also gets progressively more over the top as one drug leads to another and so on till the movie actually gets to where it starts as the majority of the movie is told in a sort of flashback. There is no denying that watched now "Teenage Devil Dolls" is hilariously over the top even though you have to say that Price's intentions were good.

And also in fairness Price looks to try and provide some depth to all this rather than giving us purely a hilarious take on 1950s drug addiction. Price tries to suggest that Cassandra's issues started due to her pushy mother and who was married more than once. But at the same time trying to turn all this into a cop story with a narration from a cop who becomes aware of Cassandra and her connections, tailing her and trying to bring down a drug ring just doesn't work. But it does allow Price to do something different and what we have is a 60 minute movie which along side some stock music and a few sound effects consists only of the cop's narration, no character dialogue what so ever. It is an interesting idea but one which doesn't quite come off.

What this all boils down to is that "Teenage Devil Dolls" is an experience and one when watched now is quite amusing because of the old fashioned way it goes about detailing drugs are bad and all drugs addicts are on a one way trip to hell let alone how bad drug withdrawal is. But for a film school project it is interesting if highly flawed.


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