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the leading man is my tpye

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

It's not as funny as the first film but it's still hilarious. The virtual absence of Alastair Sim - who appears in two scenes and has five lines - is certainly a blow to the film but it has a great cast including George Cole (who has a much bigger role than in the first film), Terry-Thomas (who, despite being billed first, does not appear until halfway through the film), Lionel Jeffries, Joyce Grenfell, Michael Ripper, Thorley Walters and Richard Wattis. Sadly, however, this was Sim's last involvement with the "St. Trinian's" films.In spite of Sim's limited screen time, the joke of a man in drag is continued as Jeffries' character Joe Mangan - who shares his name with my mother's first cousin, who is not a diamond thief, thankfully - disguises himself as the new headmistress Dame Maud Hackshaw. While this is obviously an old joke, it is done very well. However, it does not work as well as Sim playing Miss Fritton as I found the idea of a male actor playing a female character much more fun than a male character pretending to be a woman. I imagine that the storyline, which concerns Flash Harry trying to marry off one of the sixth formers to a European prince, was meant as a parody of the marriage of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco the previous year, particularly since one of his other potential brides is a Hollywood actress. The first film focused primarily on the fourth formers' pranks, violence, gambling and general mayhem while this one focuses on the sexual promiscuity of the sixth formers. I have to say that I found the former funnier as schoolgirls blowing up labs with nitroglycerin and attempting to decapitate people is far more unusual! Though the latter was quite daring for a family comedy film in 1957.

This, the second film in the series, opens with Flash Harry in Rome; he is running the 'St. Trinian's Marriage Bureau' and trying to set a wealthy Italian prince up with one of the school's sixth form; the problem is he can't decide which he likes most so tells Harry to bring them all to Rome. This may present a problem as nobody in their right mind would allow the girls of St. Trinian's to travel abroad! Back in England the school is waiting for the new headmistress to arrive from Australia; in the meantime the school is being run by the army… inevitably it is the army that are taking casualties! After some thinking they come up with a plan; they arrange to 'win' a UNESCO school's competition which has a trip round Europe as its prize. Of course things get complicated further; in this case by a diamond robber who tries to take shelter from the police in the school. He ends up going on the trip in a very unlikely role; along with a policewoman who is masquerading as the interpreter.After the opening 'Belles of St. Trinian's' this was a little bit disappointing but still had a decent number of laughs. The main weakness is that for the most part the story focuses on the adults and their schemes rather than the children; and when it does focus on the children it mainly focuses on the clearly twenty something sixth-formers rather than the feral forth formers who are far funnier thanks to their anarchic behaviour. The cast do a solid job and there are a good range of jokes meaning that it can be enjoyed by people of all ages… it is just a shame that we didn't get to see the La Crosse match… just its aftermath, nor do we see what they are shooting out with a stolen Bren gun! If you enjoyed the first St. Trinian's film I'd certainly recommend watching this one too.

By sheer accident I recently saw the worst of this generally well-regarded British series (the 1980 "Wildcats of St. Trinian's"), so I thought to be fair I'd check out the best. Well, this is A LOT better. This is a genuinely hilarious film, not just in the jokes but in the absurd situations. It starts with the notorious title girls' school under military occupation, resulting in heavy casualties (for the military). The older "sixth form" girls decide they want to travel to Rome to meet a wealthy Italian count so they work with the younger "fourth form" hellions to break into the Ministry of Education and rig the results of a UNESCO exam. But when no respectable tour bus company will take this collection of monsters and minxes to the continent, they hire a shady operator (famed British comedian Terry-Thomas). Their "chaperone" meanwhile is the fugitive diamond-thief father of one of the girl's who is disguised as the new headmistress (they "disappear" the real headmistress), which turns the whole thing into a hilarious comedy caper film.It is a little disconcerting, as other reviewers have noted, that this film mixes the family-friendly scenes of the "fourth-form" ragamuffins with the scenes of the sexualized and sexually-predatory "sixth formers". But let's be honest--the first females most men sexually experienced or fantasized about were probably 16-18 years old, and those who claim to have no lingering attraction to girls that age are either lying or senile. Moreover, the "sixth formers" here are obviously played by somewhat older actresses, who are naturally pretty sexy. The most recognizable actress, for instance, is Italian sex bomb Lisa Gastoni. Now if you're sexually attracted to the "fourth formers", I'd say you have problems, but otherwise. . .But I digress. These British comedies would get a lot more racy moving into the 70's, but they were rarely as funny as this one. This ranks with the best of the "Carry on" series (i.e. "Carry on Camping", "Carry on Spying") and should be a must-see for any British comedy fan.

In the days before political correctness reared its ugly head, boys were boys and girls and girls, and ne'er the twain should meet - except for St. Trinian's where small girls were boys, at least in their behaviour, and large girls were rather pretty, in Sabrina's case voluptuous. The main characters were all well drawn with a splendid supporting cast and all very British. Alastair Sim was perfect as the headmistress, George Cole was the Cockney geezer, Joyce Grenfell the ever spurned policewoman while Eric Barker as Culpepper Brown and Richard Wattis as Bassett were truly superb archetypal education ministers. As for Terry-Thomas - well? Even a coach driver could be posh in those days! Stiff upper lip what, even with St. Trinian's on board. All good clean fun which had family audiences flocking to the local cinema. What a pity they don't show films like this any more on television because they beat the modern rubbish hollow for entertainment value.