The WILDCATS of ST. TRINIAN'S (Sheila Hancock, Michael Hordern)

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This movie starts out with a group of younger "fourth-form" girls from the titular "St. Trinian's" girls' school singing a surly rendition of their school song, which is strangely intercut with shots of the more mature "sixth-form" girls doing a sexy dance in unfeasibly short skirts. This strange opening scene is very typical of the strange movie to follow. Not being British, I'm not really familiar with the earlier 50's and 60's "St. Trinian's" films. I know they featured rebellious, cigarette-smoking, working-glass schoolgirls and were not quite as innocuous and family-friendly as something like "The Trouble with Angels". Still they really couldn't have hoped to compete with the saucy, sex-obsessed fare that dominated home-grown British cinema by 1980, and they really shouldn't have tried to. Rosalind Knight also makes her third appearance in aSt. Trinian's film and also plays, as far as can be ascertained, her third different character. Knight was one of the distinctly over-aged schoolgirls in Blue Murder at St. Trinian'sand had a small part as a seamstress in The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's. Twenty years later, in The Wildcats of St. Trinian's, she plays one of the school's frazzled teachers. The film was not a critical or commercial success. [3] It has yet to be released on DVD except in the US. [ citation needed] Plot [ edit ] Well, well, well... St Trinians as political comment. Other reviewers have mentioned this, but it is little wonder that this film flopped in 1980 when it was released upon a trade-union obsessed UK public. The film sends up the trade union movement and strongly critiques any attempt to compromise with the "workers" and meet their demands... a lesson that the 1980's UK government took to heart after the appeasement tactics of the 1970's. Unlike most other reviewers I liked this film: it is a clear and obvious continuation of the original franchise with many character touches lifted directly from the first four films, much more-so than the remakes (updated versions) in 2007 and 2009.

In the first two films, St Trinian's is presided over by the genial Miss Millicent Fritton (Sim in drag), whose philosophy is summed up as: "In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared." Later other headmistresses included Dora Bryan in The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery. I would say the only actress shown that is wearing what she wore in the film was the little punk lady. Please everyone leave Bunster alone.He's obviously very nice man with big town concerns for all and likes to protect innocents with big fluffy embrace make various attempts to break the strike at St. Trinian's and recover the princess, including hiring a private detective (Maureen Lipman) to go undercover at the school as a new chemistry teacher.

Hop well bunny buddy and spread you words like talcum scattered from a very high balcony falling and spreading wisdom on fools below.

In the films the school became embroiled in various shady enterprises, thanks mainly to Flash, and, as a result, was always threatened with closure by the Ministry. (In the last of the original four, this became the "Ministry of Schools", possibly because of fears of a libel action from a real Minister of Education.) The first four films form a chronological quartet, and were produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. They had earlier produced The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), a stylistically similar school comedy, starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Richard Wattis, Guy Middleton, and Bernadette O'Farrell, all of whom later appeared in the St Trinian's series, often playing similar characters. Joe Melia replaces George Cole as Flash Harry, Cole having wisely decided to pass on this one. George Cole had just taken on his most famous role, as Arthur Daley in the long running TV series Minder, and so probably thought that he didn't need to do this kind of thing anymore. In his autobiography, Cole says that he was offered the part, but couldn't accept due to other commitments. How very convenient. He must have read the script.It had been fourteen years since the previous St Trinians film. "I didn't want to do another St Trinians unless it could top the previous one," said Launder during filming. "I think this one does." [4] Sidney Gilliat was a production consultant.