13FrightenedGirls

13 Frightened Girls! (1963)

This has got to be the strangest William Castle directed movie that I’ve ever checked out. The story revolves around a young girl named Candy (thus the alternate unused title The Candy Web which makes much more sense) who is a diplomat’s daughter. When we first meet her she and some of her friends at an exclusive girl’s school are heading home for an undefined holiday. It seems that all of her friends are the children of diplomats from various countries and that they all are based in London. After returning home Candy uses her friendships and access to other embassies (no one pays attention to a young girl!) to become a spy named the Kitten. Things are going really well until she crosses the Chinese ambassador, who puts a price on her head.

I’m not sure what to make of this movie. From the beginning it has a strange “Disney” feel to it. It is really hard for me to define it any better than that because it feels like a kids movie. You have Candy running around professing her love for a much older spy and idolizing him for all of his “adventures”. You get a bunch of scenes of Candy hanging out with her friends, talking about boys and what I would suppose is girl stuff (or at least what the screenplay thinks is girl stuff). Then all of a sudden Candy kills a Russian spy, as he is about to kill her. From there on out the tone of the movie changes for a while and gets kind of serious. A hit is put out on Candy, the Chinese find out who she is, there is some kidnapping and gunplay. Finally after everyone thinks it has blown over and Candy goes back to school the violence follows here there. More killing follows as the secret agents continue to knock each other off. Then the movie goes back to a very light Disney ending and tries to play it for laughs. But how does everyone forgive Candy for setting events into motion that have such a high body count (okay really just 2), including at least one innocent person!

You know I just don’t feel like I’m doing this movie justice. I know I keep saying this, but it is really just so odd. Unlike most of his other movies I just don’t know if I have any interest in ever checking this one out again. That said I think that anyone who is a fan of William Castle flicks should take the time to watch 13 Frightened Girls at least once. If for nothing else the glorified and un-credited cameo of Emil Sitka (from the 3 Stooges shorts) as the girl’s bus driver.

Special features on this movie are a bit light. Basically you get a set of alternate openings to the movie that tie into it’s gimmick. Contest winners from each of 12 countries were cast as the diplomat’s daughters and then they did the intro monologue to set up the movie. Other than that there isn’t much her. But like I said it is worth it to all Castle fans to check this out at least one time.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer