Teenage Devil Dolls

Plot summary

Pert and pretty high school teen Cassandra Leigh opts for the easy life of a pot-smoking biker in order to avoid the demands of her neurotic career mom. When Cassandra's grades slip and her college plans fall by the wayside, she marries a love-smitten high school swain. The devotion of her husband bores the young bride: she looks up her old thrill-seeking buddies and splits from home.

It isn't long before she's peddling dope on the streets in order to finance her growing list of addictions. A young Mexican takes the wayward girl under his wing and makes her not only his partner-in-crime but his woman.

With the police on their heels, Cassandra and her lover are forced to ditch a stolen car in the desert and take refuge in a shallow cave. With the posse closing in, the Mexican abandons Cassandra and the deputies nab the semi-conscious heroine. The court sends Cassandra to a Federal Narcotics Hospital.

Cast

Reviews

The New York Times, December 8, 1955: "... A case history of a young girl's descent into enslavement to the [drug] habit, this obviously serious attempt to illustrate and warn against the disastrous effects of the evil emerges largely as an unimaginative cops-and-robbers-type melodrama. Although its intentions are undoubtedly noble this latter-day parable is crude and without force. Turned out in quasi-documentary style — there is no dialogue, the story is related in "voice-of-doom" fashion by Kurt Martell, the off-screen narrator — [the film] affords its cast little opportunity to develop character ... Barbara Marks only occasionally rises to the emotional levels called for in the role of the disturbed lass who drifts from a broken home to an eventually broken marriage, to marijuana, sleeping pills and heroin."