Sorority Girl (1957)

Roger Corman's Sorority Girl (1957) is easily among the strangest movies that he ever made, as an exploitation movie with a serious psychological underlying theme. Some of what's here was lifted from Calder Willingham's End As a Man and its screen adaptation that same year as The Strange One, and given the distaff treatment, moved to a sorority house at a small college. It's all almost too good for the script as it stands and most of the acting and Corman's directing -- at least, as it's represented here, on a shoot of less than two weeks and with a cast that was mostly unsuited to the roles they were asked to portray. Susan Cabot, in one of her best performances, is also bit outsized in talent for the surroundings here as the troubled Sabra, who is both tormented and sadistic. The rest of the cast seems like they're in a different movie, and they obviously come from very different acting worlds from the method-trained Cabot. It doesn't all work, and some of it is a hoot -- Dick Miller as the hero of the piece, just doesn't fit into a collegiate setting -- but some of it is, in its fragmentary way, quite haunting; strangely enough, some of the best moments come over the opening credits, in the graphics depicting an artist's conception of Sabra's tormented personality, melded with Ronald Stein's excellent score. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide