This is producer/director William Castle’s second-best movie with the number 13 in its title. Its premise is that Candy (Kathy Dunn), an American diplomat’s daughter who attends an exclusive boarding school, becomes a spy. She’s 16 years old.
I point that out because not once, but twice, does Candy throw herself at older men, in an unsubtle sexual manner that would never pass muster today.
Like Nancy Drew with a multicultural cast, the bright, boisterous Girls pits Candy mostly against the ne’er-do-wells of “Red China.” The film has her scurrying up and down a dumbwaiter, tossing a guy off a balcony to his death, and saved from a booby-trapped car from that hunk known as Murray Hamilton. But nothing is as awesome as the prologue, which finds her driving her fellow students in a bus, and practically killing them all because of a spider dangling in front of her. She swerves all over the damn road; has she ever heard of brakes?
At a party sequence about 38 minutes in, a couple pops up who may remind you of our First Family in their late teens. It was during this scene, with all the boarding school girls being catty to one another (“Ooh, you man thief!”) that prompted my wife to comment, “Man, spies are bitches.” —Rod Lott
As expected, the script is stupid, the acting is atrocious, but the action scenes are kick-ass — gratuitous, over-the-top violence where bad guys can get sliced in two with the flick of a knife. In other words, when’s the freakin’ sequel? Next time, Sly, you need to throw in Blade, The Glimmer Man, Snake Plissken, The Marine, Bloodfist, American Ninja, The Perfect Weapon and — oh, what the hell — Lionheart. Certainly they can’t be all that busy. —Rod Lott
The French film is spooky, thanks mostly to Christiane’s mask, a blank stare that no doubt influenced Michael Myers’ emotionless cover. Franju aims for a marathon, not a sprint, with deliberate pacing that gets you involved with the characters. In other words, this is an intelligent film that just happens to appeal to base senses, with evocative photography and a memorable score, which sounds like the theme from 