For those curious about the bad behaviour of these high school hellcats, one need look no further than the prison movies of the film noir era, or some further back into the male rebellions of the 1930s, and 1940s, with sullen and cynical rebellious behaviour, it actually as if the teens did learn from the noirs how to tear it all down.
Our calamity within modernity is however the fact these are just children, and have had nothing done to them, in the way that noir heroes had World War 2, and the justice system, and fate, and the prison system and the great depression, and mob and political violence, all done to them.
When the teens of the late 50s got to class however and started misbehavin daddio, it was truly hard as it was best express in The Wild One, to see what they were rebelling against. It appeared in fact that they rebelled against Willy Loman, against The Dream, and perhaps on the most grand way of narrating possible, they were rebelling against the CIA who had quite a hand in the management of the new New World, and provided its Order.
It is for these reasons that a film like High School Hellcats (1958) is included in the world of noir, because it is out of noir that its drama rolled, and as the teenage class were empowered with money, and vehicles, and a modern education system, so they needed their own media, as they became a consumer class to be valued and impressed.
In High School Hellcats (1958) there is a nasty nagging dad, who can't stand his wife's bridge club, and doesn't seem to like anything about his daughter, and so High School Hellcats (1958) does take down the dads and the patriarchs, as this type of cinema always does.
There is no sense of doom or danger as the drama divests, just a new girl at school, naively prey to the bullies and the the invitation here is for us to see the worldview of these teens, and the stark fact of their arrival as a moral force of their own with radically different needs. Eighteen minutes in and dad exhibits sexual violence against his daughter when he sees her in her underwear, and even though this is 1958, there appears to be little explanation needed nor offered as to why this incestuous abusive misogyny, smack in the middle of what must be an even newer form yet, the girl film.
The Hellcats is the school gang, and it is a girl gang. Simultaneously the film provides horror for parents and hopeful excitement for children. The children smoke like film noir gangsters, and they have have their gang too. The gang does not carry out criminal activity, like a film noir gang, and so the gang life relies on other bonding, largely around cigarettes and alcohol, some shoplifting and a constant threat of bullying.
The shoplifting is however quite large scale, and takes place in a jewellery store. The primary form of difference with the old world, is the rebellious strain of the music, somewhere between rock and roll and jazz, with a bumping two step and an electric guitar, still framed with the power of Glenn Miller style horns, updating the effect.
New girl at school, the exciting inciting trope of High School Hellcats (1958) is still used weekly today, in film and television the world over. And many of the tropes of film noir are self evident here, such as the sucker, the peer pressure, the violent male, the sassy woman, the inter gang rivalry, and the fact of true love emerging from dangerous and criminal setups.
The security of the individual, man and woman, and the shock meanness of those around us is expressed too, especially when Joyce's boyfriend gets jealous too, and she finds herself as the female James Dean, absolutely sick of people around her telling her what to do. One of the best bits is when Joyce's dad asks her if she is going to the party with a boy, and she replies: "no, with a man!"
The moral flavour of noir does prevail in the teenage exploitation film. We find the party scenes, and the grooving, almost funny in this day, but it is a subversion, and it is not the use that suburbia was meant to be for. Joyce is coy and not prepared for the wild scenes, including the party game of sardines, which turns tragically violent. It's not every teenage house party at which some poor girl dies during a game of sardines.
Worse comes when the teenagers decide to try and clean up the evidence, and then it is revealed that they break into houses and have the parties in these houses, which is wilder than we might have imagined the fifties to be, but then Joyce does give her dad a heard time about her rights and responsibilities, the rights and responsibilities of children marvellously becoming a thing at last.
High School Hellcats (1958) offers a unique glimpse into the rebellious teen culture of the late 1950s, showcasing a gang of high school tomboys whose defiance of social norms leads to chaos. The plot centers around Joyce Martin, a new girl who falls in with the Hellcats, a group of girls who flaunt their rebellious nature by dressing in slacks, stealing boyfriends, and shoplifting.
Under the influence of their closeted and manipulative leader, Connie Harris, Joyce adopts their ways in an attempt to fit in. However, what begins as mere delinquency soon takes a darker turn when a party at a deserted house ends in tragedy. Connie’s accidental death, the result of a fall down the stairs, marks the beginning of a cover-up that spirals out of control.
High School Hellcats (1958) stands as a curious artifact of mid-century teen rebellion, steeped in both nostalgia and humor. The film follows the story of Joyce Martin, a naïve new girl lured into the world of high school "bad girls," led by the Hellcats' tomboyish leader Connie Harris. From their antics—smoking, shoplifting, and daring sartorial choices like wearing slacks—the Hellcats are portrayed as a symbol of teenage rebellion, albeit in a remarkably tame manner by today’s standards. Their leader Connie, alongside her second-in-command Dolly Crane, provides an exaggerated vision of girl gang culture, rooted more in posturing than true delinquency.
The initiation Joyce undergoes—a "slacks test" that sets her apart as the only girl breaking the dress code—is emblematic of the kind of harmless rebelliousness that the film insists is dangerous. Joyce’s boyfriend, Mike, watches helplessly as she falls deeper into the Hellcats’ influence, concerned for her well-being, though his role remains largely passive and unimportant in the plot, a commentary perhaps on the film’s unintentional portrayal of female independence.
However, the Hellcats' superficial rebellion takes a dark turn when a game of Sardines at a party ends in Connie's accidental death. Dolly, driven by jealousy and a desire to assert control over the Hellcats, hides the truth of the fatal incident. This power struggle introduces a queer-coded subplot, with Dolly's jealousy over Joyce's closeness to Connie subtly suggesting more than mere friendship. This adds a layer of intrigue, as Dolly’s attempts to silence Joyce spiral into a final confrontation at an abandoned movie theater, where Dolly meets her demise.
While the film was deemed controversial and even banned by some PTA groups at the time, its innocence is striking today. The Hellcats, in their paper cups of booze and playful exchanges, feel like caricatures of rebellion, a far cry from the gritty delinquent portrayals of later films like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The contrast between the film’s desire to lecture teenagers and its actual content is a source of much of its unintentional humor, with overwrought dialogue and exaggerated stakes lending it an enduring camp value.
Despite its lack of "edge" compared to modern standards, High School Hellcats offers a surprisingly progressive take on gender dynamics. The Hellcats are an autonomous group, beholden to no men, and Mike is depicted as ineffectual, while Joyce navigates her own moral decisions. This subtle subversion, combined with the film’s campy melodrama, ensures that High School Hellcats remains an entertaining, if not overly profound, reflection of 1950s youth culture.
The Hellcats, led now by second-in-command Dolly Crane, attempt to keep Connie’s death a secret, blaming Joyce for wanting to seize control of the gang. Joyce’s secret romance with Mike Landers, the earnest soda jerk at the local diner, offers her a way out, but not before things unravel further.
When Connie's body is discovered, the police investigate, and tensions rise as the truth about Connie’s death emerges. It is revealed that Dolly, driven by jealousy and a desire to take over the gang, was responsible for Connie’s death, fearing that she would be replaced by Joyce as Connie’s "squeeze." In a fittingly dramatic climax, Dolly attempts to kill Joyce at the Hellcats’ hideout, an empty movie theatre, but her plan backfires when she falls to her own death.
The FACTS about the taboo sororities that give them what they want!
...what must a good girl say to "belong"?
Eventually, this turns out to be a gangland style of movie, with the murder / accident / cover-up story, and the vicious second-in-command of the gang, Dolly, who sees Connie's death as an opportunity to grab power.
The film touches on themes of teenage rebellion, hidden sexuality, and the darker consequences of peer pressure. It has been compared to a proto-Mean Girls, with the Hellcats embodying the toxic hierarchy of a clique led by a manipulative queen bee.
Though controversial at the time and banned by PTA groups, High School Hellcats seems tame by modern standards. Released alongside Hot Rod Gang, it reflects the era's fascination with teenage subversion. Interestingly, Yvonne Lime, who played Joyce, later co-founded the charity Childhelp and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, highlighting the stark contrast between her screen persona and her real-life achievements. The movie, while seen as transgressive in 1958, has since become a fascinating artefact of mid-century youth culture.
The mean girl vibe is almost a surprise, not having been a feature of mainstream cinema before. Perhaps this picture is comparable to Women's Prison (1955), although for attitude this offers far less hope, far less sympathy, and full on murderous cynicism.
Susanne Sidney as Dolly may be the hardcore star of the show, and the cop uses the oldest trick in the whole noir and police procedural kit bag, asking why Dolly used the past tense to describe her friend. Always a give away, bub. Either way, they fool the cops, who don't know if what they are saying is the truth or a well-organised lie. It's the latter, and the organisation is great.
Great hilarity and inner fury is expressed through health and well-being education in the school, what you might later call sex education, enough to see even monogamy and heterosexuality challenged, and after all, the first action of the movie is the ritual humiliation of the male substitute, the sub teacher.
The next huge drama comes when Joyce, the new girl, is tricked into wearing slacks to class, one of the great girl-school bullying melodramas, and |Dolly does enact one of the great film noir psychopath "don't ever call me crazy!" trope, and turns from school girl to psycho killer, something of a leap, but all is fair in love and noir.
She comes to a rather stupid ending in an abandoned cinema, and the abandoned cinema is of course a metaphor for the fact that this film and its ilk, as well as its audience, will have a future only in television. Finally and boringly, the boyfriend, you know that jealous nonentity from the cafe, he is entrusted with healing her, in nuclear family monogamy-white-knight kind of reunite me with my parents and all is forgiven type of ending.
High School Hellcats (1958)
Directed by Edward L. Bernds | Written by Mark Lowell, Jan Englund | Produced by Charles "Buddy" Rogers | Starring: Yvonne Lime, Bret Halsey, Jana Lund | Cinematography: Gilbert Warrenton | Music by Ronald Stein | Distributed by American International Pictures | Release date: June 1958 | Running time 69 minutes
