The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (3 Stars)

This is the third St. Trinian's film, made in 1960. It starts with the school being burnt down.When the fire brigade arrives the fourth form girls attach the water hoses to a petrol truck, creating an even bigger fire. The whole of the school is put on trial, and there's a prolonged courtroom scene.

For the fourth form girls it's just a joke. They sit crowded into the dock laughing and jeering at everything the lawyers say.

The sixth form girl Rosalie, played by Julie Alexander, takes the proceedings more seriously. She might only be 17, but she knows how to use the weapons of a woman. She stands smiling at the judge to gain his attention. She slips him a note with her phone number. We don't hear what she whispers to him on the phone, but by the time the trial is over he'll do anything to let the girls off. The jury gives a guilty verdict, but he agrees to a mitigation plea for leniency and puts them in the care of a Philosophy Professor from the University of Baghdad who claims he can help them reform. Rosalie is happy.

One of the film's faults is that apart from Rosalie we see very little of the sixth form girls. This brief scene with Harry shows that the other girls have a lot of promise. That's Rosalie on the left clutching the ball in the gym.

In the first two films we only get to know Harry by his nickname, Flash Harry. In court we find out that his full name is Harry Cuthbert Edwards. That's very posh.

The Professor takes the sixth form on a trip to Greece to give them deeper knowledge of foreign culture. That's what he says, anyway. He's been bribed by a man called Alphonse O'Reilly to sell them to an Emir in Saudi Arabia. Radio messages are sent to the fourth form back in England. The army wants to rescue the sixth form girls, but the fourth form takes over the operation, hijacking a plane, then stealing the army's tanks to mount an assault.

There was a subplot in the first two films that I didn't consider important enough to mention, but in this film it becomes a major plot. Sergeant Ruby Gates and Superintendent Samuel Kemp-Bird have been engaged for 16 years. She wants to get married, but he keeps putting it off, using St. Trinian's as an excuse. In all three films he sends Ruby as an undercover agent to gain information about illegal activities in the school. Harry recognises her immediately, of course, even if she's a new face to the girls who come and go from year to year. Whenever she solves a case she thinks the wedding can take place, but then something else happens at St. Trinian's and Samuel says he's too busy to take time off work to get married.

Sid James appeared in "The Belles of St. Trinian's" as a racing expert called Benny. In this film he plays he people trafficker Alphonse O'Reilly. I don't like it when an actor plays different roles in a film series. Except for Bruce Campbell, of course. I can never get enough of Bruce.

On that note, here's a gratuitous photo of Bruce Campbell. No, he wasn't in this film, he was only two years old when it was made. If you don't like me posting irrelevant photos, go read another blog.

As mentioned above, this film's weakness is that we don't see enough of the sixth form girls. In the first half hour we hardly see any sixth form girls apart from Rosalie, and in the rest of the film we don't even see much of her. In the later scenes we see the fourth form girls, but they're just a rampaging horde, we don't get to know any of them personally. The relationship between Samuel and Ruby is amusing, but the other adults, whether they're the Ministry of Education, army officers or sailors, are boring. I wanted to see more of the girls, especially the older girls.