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Sorority
Girl
(1957) |
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The film opens with one of the most stunning title sequences indicating that the late 50's and early 60's was an era of the best such sequences (Vertigo springs to mind instantly). Here the credits are accompanied by some wonderfully bizarre artwork which perfectly sets the tone for the tale that is about to be unraveled. Sorority Girl stands tall as one of the finest Cult Classics and has the cult stamp of quality as it is made by one of the masters of the genre, Roger Corman. In this movie Corman has cast the brilliant Susan Cabot as Sabra, the girl who is beautiful, vivacious and evil to the bone - a rotten egg if ever there was one. While the rest of the sorority girls socialize, go to the beach, party, play sports and have boyfriends, Sabra's only pleasure in life is in causing other people maximum strife with minimum effort.
She lives solely to torment her peers with her nasty scheming, blackmailing ways. She has one poor impressionable and gullible pledge Ellie (Barbara Crane) at her beck and call and uses her as an object of ridicule and torture. Ellie is forced to perform a rigid exercise regimen, constantly being reminded about how dowdy and unattractive she is - when once she excitedly holds up a pretty dress to herself and asks Sabra how she looks the retort is typically snide "It looks fine, but you…". Ellie tolerates all the abuse because secretly she fancies Sabra to death, but the latter wont have anything to do with it "Keep your hands off me!" preferring to use the moronic girl to wash her smelly stockings for exercise.
Sabra also despises her mother - a feeling that appears to be quite mutual as mother spouts "darling I knew you were a rat the day you were born" to which Sabra replies "So, its hereditary then" referring to her own condition. In fact Sabra despises simply everyone and maybe even herself, but all she lives for is to cause grief and suffering though inside she yearns to be "normal" - "I would trade places with anyone of them" says her inner voice, but she just can't help her twisted nature. She tortures Ellie, blackmails Rita, tries to extort money from Mort (who dared to reject her) and threatens Tina with dire consequences unless she follows her evil schemes, all without the slightest shred of remorse. However sadly her evil doing starts to backfire on her and she is left to rue her nastiness and face the horrible consequences.
Corman has constructed one of the epic teen angst cult classics ever. Susan Cabot who was once romantically linked to Jordan's King Hussein, does magnificently as the rotten egg Sabra. It comes as an awful shock to discover that this brilliant Queen of Cult met with an end worse than any horror film she acted in. He "dwarf" son (aged 22 at the time) bludgeoned her to death in a fit of rage with a weight lifting dumbbell at their Encino,California home when Cabot was 59. She has done enough however to immortalize herself in the annals of Cult Moviedom with her fabulous performance as Sabra in this classic as well as her career defining, Oscar-deserving portrayal in and as The Wasp Woman in Corman's masterwork from 1960.
Sorority
Girl deserves every accolade that has been showered upon
it and is yet another example (as if we needed any more) of
Roger Corman's unrestrained genius. The show - stopping moment
in the movie which clearly illustrates the directors genius
is when Sabra takes a wooden paddle to Ellie's behind, thrashing
her black and blue with a gleeful smirk of sadistic satisfaction
etched all over her pretty face! "All I did was spank
her a little…..she's a pledge and had to be disciplined!"
Sorority Girl is every bit as good as its reputation suggests,
perhaps even better!
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