St. Trinians - The Pure Hell Of St. Trinians [DVD] [1960]

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Oh, thank God for the girls of St. Trinians. These little hellions know how to make me laugh out loud. Their creator Ronald Searle was a satirist, and Pure Hell is one of the more satirical outings for the young ladies; thanks to the writing talents of Gilliat and Launder. There are plenty of asides and snide japes to keep you giggling, however, some of them are of the time and may fall flat with today's younger crowd. But the dancing civil servants always busts my gut. You have to love them. For a film as old as it is, it did still have a magic and, for the most part, it could be made today with very few changes. This is a repeat of Alastair Sim's line as Miss Fritton in The Belles of St. Trinian'sthat "I cannot afford to have continual arson about in my school!"

In 1990, Chris Claremont and Ron Wagner paid tribute to both Searle and St Trinian's in a story arc in the Marvel comic book Excalibur, in which Kitty Pryde became a student at "St Searle's School for Young Ladies". [15] Towards the end of the arc, Commandere Dai Thomas exclaims, "I took a look at the Special Branch records. Have you any notion what this school's done in the past? With them about, who needs the perishing SAS?" [16] It's a quaint British comedy and I'm feeling a trifle warm just thinking about. I should have taken the tablets. The comic high-points come early in the movie, with Raymond Huntley stealing the movie as a Judge distracted by the charms of a leggy Sixth-Former, while later the 'striptease' Hamlet provides the film's most memorable moment. Irene Handle is also on top form as a more than slightly batty teacher. It has some hilarious moments - particularly the opening trial sequence and the striptease to the soliloquy from "Hamlet" - but it's on the same level as the first two films. As I said yesterday, Alastair Sim's virtual absence from "Blue Murder at St. Trinian's" was a blow to the film while his complete absence from this one is a major blow to it. Considering the importance of Miss Fritton to the first film and the fact that the school burns down, it's bizarre that she isn't even mentioned. It's a bit repetitive for poor old Ruby too and she deserved so much better than the rogues she got caught up with and definitely didn't need that useless police officer fiancée.During her brief acting career she appeared in the films Hello London (1958), Operation Bullshine (1959), Dentist in the Chair (1960), The Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960), The Terror of the Tongs (1961) and A Matter of WHO (1961). [5] Late years and death [ edit ] I can't claim to be an expert on THE ST TRINIAN series . I have some vague notion that it's about some hellcat girl pupils which in today's political climate would probably never been considered as a film series The St Trinian's girls themselves come in two categories: the Fourth Form, most closely resembling Searle's original drawings of ink-stained, ungovernable pranksters, and the much older Sixth Form, sexually precocious to a degree that may have seemed alarming to some in 1954. [ citation needed] Webb, Kaye, ed. (1959). The St Trinian's Story. London; New York (respectively): Perpetua Books; London House & Maxwell. pp.44–45. OCLC 2898524. Goodwin, Stephen (October 22, 1998). "Revealed: belles of the real St Trinians". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-24 . Retrieved April 23, 2017.

During his BBC interview [8] Searle agreed that the cruelty depicted at St Trinian's derived partly from his captivity during World War II but stressed that he included it only because the ignoble aspect to warfare in general had become more widely known. The Belles of St. Trinian's, Blue Murder at St. Trinian'sand The Pure Hell of St. Trinian'sall have similar themes, interests and styles, as well as using a shared set of actors and characters, and sometimes even the same jokes. For the 2007 film, see St Trinian's (film). For the actual progressive school, see St Trinnean's School. Cover of a modern re-issue of St Trinian's drawings The Pure Hell of St. Trinian'sbegins with a joke recycled from the first film. As the school burns to the ground, the narrator tells us:There's just something utterly magical about the first three St. Trinian's films. Almost every character in them is played by an actor recognisable from over fifty other British films of the time, and they frequently have the best cast lists of comic talent ever seen in a British comedy. Quite often a film with a cast this distinguished can turn out to be a grave disappointment (such a fate befell efforts like "The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins", in which most of the effort on the part of the film-makers seemed to have been in actually recruiting the actors, rather than giving them anything worthwhile to perform). However, "Pure Hell", like "Belles" and "Blue Murder" before it, has a script and a story good enough to support the weight of these amassed comedy greats, most of whom you'll probably never have heard of. They're usually actors who appeared in loads of films of the period, and you'd never have thought of making a film at the time without them, but who never became stars in their own right - chaps like Raymond Huntley and Nicholas Phipps (most memorable in "Doctor in Love" as the frankly spiffing Dr. Cardew). Those actors who, if you're a vintage comedy connoisseur like me, you'll see and then go "Ahhh, yes!" There were some great actors involved and they all do well with the script. I might have come up with an alternative to the "Dance" idea, but actually it did grow on me. 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.

Oh, and as for the schoolgirls, though they don't appear that often (and when they do it's usually the fourth formers, played by child actors), there are a few "sixth formers" dotted about - the glamorous twenty-something year old actresses dressed in uniforms and the shortest skirts you're ever likely to see. The initial courtroom scene contains a slow pan up the most gorgeous of the lot, with her... legs, and everything, and my word, by jove, indeed. Ha ha. The school has no fixed motto but has had several suggested ones. The school's motto is depicted in the original movies from the 1950s and 1960s as In flagrante delicto ("Caught in the Act"). This can be seen on the trophy shelf, above the stairs in The Belles of St Trinian's (1954). The lyrics of the original theme song by Sidney Gilliat (c. 1954) imply that the school's motto is "Get your blow in first" [11] ( Semper debeatis percutis ictu primo). A poem in one of Searle's books called "St Trinian's Soccer Song", by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Johnny Dankworth, states that the motto is Floreat St Trinian's ("May St Trinian's Bloom/Flourish"), [12] a reference to the motto of Eton ( Floreat Etona—"May Eton Flourish"). Born in Fulham in London as Julia Yvonne Alexander, [1] on leaving school Alexander worked in an insurance office and then for an optician to pay for drama lessons. [2] Career [ edit ]Alexander was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1993 at the age of 55 and was admitted to the Meadbank Nursing Centre in Battersea in London in 1997. She died there aged 64 in January 2003. [1] [5] She was cremated in a non-religious ceremony at Putney Vale Cemetery. If it's not as fun as `Belles' or `Blue Murder', `Pure Hell' does have its good points. Cecil Parker's down-at-heel headmaster is a major asset to the movie, while it's nice to see the likes of Sid James, Denis Price and Liz Frazer make an appearance. Third, and third best, film in the St. Trinian's series. The decline in quality is gentle and, although it looks a bit tired, this one still offers a lot of entertainment largely due to some wonderful comedic performances. Webb, Kaye, ed. (1959). The St Trinian's Story. London; New York (respectively): Perpetua Books; London House & Maxwell. pp.46–48. OCLC 2898524. Launder does a near-perfect job of bringing the girls onto the silver screen. The film's tempo keeps to a fast trot and sometimes breaks into a gallop. His comedic timing is excellent. When the Civil Servants dance, he keeps his distance and films them in full, adding to the funniness of the sketch. But if somebody is whispering, he goes for a close-up, and you feel like you're sharing the joke - once again adding power to the humour.

The musical score for the St Trinian films was written by Malcolm Arnold and included the school song, with words accredited to Sidney Gilliat (1954). [13] In the 2007 film, a new school song, written by Girls Aloud, was called "Defenders of Anarchy". The school also has a fight song. Julie Alexander (9 May 1938 – 31 January 2003) was a British model and actress of the late 1950s and early 1960s known for playing glamorous roles including Rosalie Dawn in The Pure Hell of St Trinian's. 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. This section's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. ( December 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)The action gets more frantic and less amusing as it goes along and, by the end of the whole thing, I'd pretty much lost interest in it. The cast are reasonably good. The girls are in two camps – the young thugs and the sexy `girls' (albeit it they are happily in their 20's). The support cast includes good performances from George Cole (complete with cheeky chappy music in case you didn't get it). Parker and Grenfell are OK but their stuff on the island doesn't really wash. Barker and Walters are fine, as is a cameo from Le Mesurier, but Sid James is pretty wasted. The Terror of St Trinians or Angela's Prince Charming (1952; text by Timothy Shy, pen-name for D. B. Wyndham Lewis) The concept was very clever and although I still enjoyed it, I would have liked to have seen more jokes and perhaps, as with the last film, another 15-20 minutes to help the pace and give room for extra pranks and plots. St Trinian's is depicted as an unorthodox girls' school where the younger girls wreak havoc and the older girls express their femininity overtly, turning their shapeless schoolgirl dress into something sexy and risqué by the standards of the times. St Trinian's is often invoked in discussions about groups of schoolgirls running amok. [ citation needed]