Nine Girls

Nine girls go to a mountain retreat as part of a college initiation trip but only eight of them arrive. Paula (Anita Louise) never shows up because she has been murdered. The eight girls and their teacher, Miss Thornton (Ann Harding), are visited by police Captain Brooks (Willard Robertson) and his side-kick Walter (William Demarest) investigating the murder. The killer is amongst them......who dunnit?....

This is a short film with moments of good dialogue, eg, "No-one liked Paula more than me...and I hated her" William Demarest is pointlessly slapstick and plays his part badly. We needed a serious policeman not a clown. He is involved in most of the bad scenes in the film, eg, the scene where Butch (Jeff Donnell) brings him breakfast and then engages him in a conversation about poison to which he gets suspicious and asks Butch to sample every option on his tray. She ends up eating the whole breakfast. We can see this coming from a mile off, it drags on and it's not funny. His attempts at humour are also not needed because the characters of the girls bring their own humour to the proceedings, although Eve's (Lynne Merrick) Katherine Hepburn impression gets tiresome. It's good entertainment with some snappy dialogue but let-down by an unnecessary William Demarest.