Another personal favorite of comedy series, St Trinians movies were based off a British cartoon drawn by Ronald Searle. 

The basis of the story was a shocking all girls posh boarding school with the exception that its pupils were wicked to the core, very often toting weapons and just generally causing mayhem and destruction where ever they went.  Even though it sounds violent it was in fact fashioned in a comical way, mainly taking a shot at the British stiff upper lip and restrictive British school system of its time.

The school was run by the mistresses (nothing salacious, it’s a term used for female teachers) each mistress was almost as bad as the students.

In the cartoons pictures were often depicted of murdered dead bodies and the school girls standing over them with pitchforks, another often portrayal was the girls behaving violently against a competing schools sports team.  Even though it sounds awful, it was actually done in fun and the St Trinian movies were not so violent.  The girls drank, made their own liquor, they gambled and the sixth form (last year of high school) girls were often very sexual and provocatively dressed and were often called upon in some scheme to distract a noisy school inspector or official.  The students that attended St Trinians were often the daughters of crooks and shady characters with the occasional Arabian prince.

There were four original films, The Belles of St Trinians (1954), Blue Murder at St Trinians (1957), The Pure Hell of St Trinians (1960) and The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery (1956).  There were a couple of remakes one in the 1980, The Wildcats of St Trinians and most recently St Trinians (2007).  The early four are my favorite and will always be the classic epitome of the original cartoons.

In the original four St Trinians films there were many famous well known British actors that played outlandish characters, Alastair Sim was fantastic in drag playing the headmistress, and he also played her brother, a shifty character always visiting when he needed money.  George Cole played ‘Flash Harry’ who lived somewhere in the grounds, we never actually never saw were, when he was whistled he would appear out of the bushes, he often acted as the bookie for the girls and other money making endevours such as the sale of alcohol from the still that was located in the bedrooms. 

On the other side was the School District who often sent inspectors to investigate claims of wrongdoing at the school but often went missing only to turn up later on living in the conservatory where they were pandered to by the sixth form girls, and the beleaguered policewoman Sgt. Ruby Gates played by Joyce Grenfell who was sent in once or twice undercover to investigate.
The main basis of all four films was a portrayal of an unorthodox school, whose headmistress philosophy was “In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it’s the merciless world which has to be prepared”. 

  When the school was in peril the girls would band together, but for the most part it was split into two groups, there was the older girls who had the knack of turning their frumpy school uniforms in something sexy by its standards of the day and they used their womanly wiles to manipulate men.  Then there was the fourth formers, these girls were ferocious and often used the lacrosse or hockey stick as her weapon of choice.

By the descriptions here you may be wondering what kind of film I am recommending, but trust me these movies are harmless and as a student of a reserved British school, it is often fun to watch the fantasy of how it could have been if we too had been allowed to throw the strict rules out of the window.  These movies are funny and extremely entertaining, if you get a chance to watch one, don’t pass up an evening with the girls of St Trinians.