1957 was a big year for Roger Corman. He directed Naked Paradise, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Not of This Earth, The Undead, Rock All Night, Teenage Doll, Carnival Rock and The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent. Playing with Edward L. Cahn's Motorcycle Gang - a remake of Cahn's earlier film Drag Strip Girl - this was distributed by those masters of teen drive-in films, American-International Pictures.

Susan Cabot was a contract actress for Universal that appreciated getting to play roles she'd never get to play otherwise thanks to Roger Corman. She's also in The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Carnival Rock, War of the Satellites, Machine-Gun Kelly and The Wasp Woman. She had a rough life, as she was raised in eight different foster homes - and abused in several of them - which led to late life PTSD. Her mother was also institutionalized and she may have inherited some of her mental illness. She married her first husband before she was 18, just to escape, and eventually came to Hollywood where she would act in many a Western and date King Hussein of Jordan. Later in life, as she fell in mental illness and hoarding, even her psychologist would say their sessions were emotionally draining. One night, she woke her son - who had dwarfism and suffered pituitary gland problems - and attacked him with a scalpel and a weight lifting bar. Confused, he took the bar from her and beat her to death. He originally told police she was attacked by a man in a ninja mask as no one understood mental problems in 1986. Eventually, he was put on probation after being in jail for two and a half years.

Back to happier things.

Written by Leo Lieberman and Ed Waters for AIP - Corman didn't like the script - it has Cabot as Sabra Tanner, a rich girl who feels like her mother doesn't care about her. She can't help herself as she hurts everyone around her, like trying to steal her friend Rita's (Barboura Morris') boyfriend Mort (Dick Miller) and forcing a heavier pledge named Ellie (Barbara Cowan) to do situps in order to be thin. When Tina doesn't listen, she paddles her and yeah, this is exploitation so not only does Sabra love it, Tina just may as well. And when Mort won't give in, she finds a pregnant waitress named Tine (June Kenney) to blackmail him.

None of it ends well, as must happen in so many teen movies. Sabra is a psychopath - as if the opening credits didn't spoil this - and at the end, all she can do is walk into the ocean and drown. Today, she'd probably get over all this and be a CEO or something.

There's nothing I love more than a woman destroying people. I've had it done to me more than a few times. Now, I just watch it in movies.

Threats, blackmail, violence, crocodile tears. All from one sorority sister, the truly vile Susan Cabot. Bike towards those she pledged with, vile to the plane Jane, desperately seeking attention. All because she has a wretched harpy of a mother, all an excuse to treat everyone around her like crap. Thus exploitation film from American International is supposed to be a shocking expose of what goes on behind the scenes of the doors to the women's dorm, and supposed to be serious, not laughable.

In the period of only an hour, there are multiple subplots that take away from the necessary explanations of why sororities or fraternities like this need to exist in the first place. A good majority of the so-called college girls look like they should be long graduated, if not way past the age of worrying of what everybody else would think about that. Forget this one and find the comedy video, "Sorority Girls from hell" by Lois Bromfield.

Having recognized the almost Dante's Inferno style credits, I was instantly reminded that I had suffered through it once before. Evenvthe confrontation at the end is a let down, and Fay Baker, as Cabot's mother, has to be one of the worst actors I've seen on film, her ineptness obvious when she played Bette Davis's money grubbing sister in "The Star". There's far more plot in that than this vulture of a movie. I use vulture, because I really don't want to insult a turkey.

"Sorority Girl" is a film directed by Roger Corman, and like so many of Corman's films from this era, its budget is small and its plot is directed at young folks to go to drive-ins. It is a ridiculously broad story about a bad girl, Sabar, and her amazing ability to alienate everyone around her.

The film is set at some sorority and Sabra is an upper class person there. In reality, the actress playing her (Susan Cabot) was 30...which is pretty typical of films of the era where RARELY were teens or young adults were played by actors that actual age.

Early in the film, Sabra's mother comes to visit and it's obvious that although rich, Sabra is miserable and has a terrible mother. The mother is cold and detached and seems to care little for her daughter. The film tries to say that as a result of that, Sabra hates mankind and she spends the rest of the film tormenting EVERYONE around her. First, she beats an insecure younger girl and when she's caught, she attacks Rita and knocks her out! While Rita is unconscious, Sabra goes through Rita's purse and finds an article about the girl's father...who is in prison! So, she blackmails Rita to keep her mouth shut about her physical assaults OR she'll tell everyone her dad is a crook. Not too much later, Sabra discovers that Tina is pregnant and concocts a scheme to extort money out of Mort...a guy who is definitely NOT the father, though they threaten to tell everyone he is! Truly, Sabra is a complete creep and you hope that she gets her comeuppance...and soon.

Apart from really neat opening credits, this is a cheesy film...not terrible but also not especially good. Had Sabra been a bit more subtle and her extortions, blackmails and assaults occurred over a longer period, it would have worked better. That being said, it IS entertaining in a goofy exploitation way...fun but also dumb at the same time.