If I were to go back in time and make a bad kids movie, I would put all of my budget into getting Mamie Van Doren, who is to this genre what Sean Connery is to the Eurospy film.
Mamie and Lori Nelson (Hot Rod Girl) play Penny and Jane Lowe, two sisters who have been arrested for hitchhiking and skinny dipping. This sends them to a Texas work farm owned by Russ Tropp (John Russell, TV’s Lawman). He’s got a great scam going, because he’s dating a judge (Lurene Tuttle, the “First Lady of Radio”) who he’s using to get any teen who commits a minor crime sent to his business as cheap labor.
Eddie Cochran plays Bong, another prison worker, and Mamie does four songs. I love every single one of them and really wish that I hadn’t seen nearly every one of her movies, because then I could see them all over again and get the charge I had when I saw them for the first time.
Howard W. Koch, who directed this, also made Frankenstein 1970 and went on to produce the Airplane! movies.
You can see the Mystery Science Theater version of this on Tubi.
