Sorority Girl

I expected this story (about a female sociopath in college) to be bad-good. Surprisingly it was just good! Susan Cabot gives a very strong performance in the lead. She shows the pain of the lead character who ruins people's lives but can't understand why. It's very short (60 minutes) and moves quickly. Not a hard-hitting expose on sociopaths--just an interesting little film about them. Worth watching.

This is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's a masterpiece. I think Susan Cabot is right up there with Faye Dunaway in "Mommie Dearest," and Lili Taylor in "I Shot Andy Warhol" in her role as Sabra. I think anyone with any damned sense can see him/herself in this young woman. Call me disturbed, or twisted, but that's just the way it is. The scenes with Sabra & her mother are priceless, as are the interactions (and altercations!) between Sabra & Rita, her roommate. It's hard to believe Corman made this film in 1956; it holds up so well. If you miss this, you are missing out on life itself.

Whether playing Charles Bronson's tough moll in MACHINE GUN KELLEY or a beauty queen mogul turned monstrous WASP WOMAN, Susan Cabot was b-movie director Roger Corman's greatest leading lady, combining a raw, formidable prowess with brooding melancholy, often within the same character...

With dark hair and full lips, she was pretty, even beautiful, but only when she needed to be... until morphing into a bitter scowl as intense as any comparably well-known character actress...

But in Corman's SORORITY GIRL, she's simply too old for the title poor-rich-girl role, manipulating her college roommates who are actually the correct age... overall seeming more like a jealous young den mother...

Initially her most bullied victim (both emotionally and physically) is stacked ugly duckling Barbara Cowan: yet their scenes needed to be amplified and progressed... they would have probably shared homoerotic/top/bottom aspects had this been a 1970's exploitation...

Also starring regular Corman good-girl Barboura Morris, underused as a moral compass, Cabot's most vulnerable victim is Corman and fellow b-auteur Bert I. Gordon's lithe blonde-beauty June Kenney, secretly pregnant while working at Dick Miller's campus beer-hall, shown only in the first and final act...

Which has her 11th hour suicide attempt injecting suspenseful melodrama that SORORITY GIRL, the movie and the character, needed more of - to make this more of an intense thriller, which the moodily energetic Cabot seems otherwise primed for.

This is another of those young people who go wrong movies that were so popular from the mid-fifties to mid-sixties, all trying in their own way to be another "Rebel Without a Cause", and few succeeding.

This one didn't succeed either, but it can still hold your interest, as you find yourself alternating between wanting to throttle the main character and feeling sorry for her.

The movie could have been titled "Lost Cause", as she seems doomed from the start, a girl rich in material things but poverty stricken when it comes to love and affection, none of which her widowed socialite mother is willing or able to give her. She takes her unhappiness out on the girls in her college sorority, and all her cruelty, scheming, and blackmailing backfire on her.

If you're looking for a happy ending, you won't find it here.

If you're looking for a great movie, you won't find that either.

If you're looking for something to kill time, you've come to the right place (I guess).

I didn't know what to expect before watching this movie. But with Susan Cabot's great performance as the main character Sabra Tanner I really enjoyed this old Roger Corman classic.

Sabra is well...not a nice person at all. She is spoiled rotten and rich and is being cut off from the family's money after her mother (Fay Baker) advises her of this. She is in a sorority, but tries to get the better in every situation she is in including blackmail, attempting to be romantically involved with roommate Rita's (Barboura Morris) man Mort played by Dick Miller and yes even spanking with a paddle one of the other sorority girls. It comes down to Cabot's performance though. She keeps things interesting and Corman keeps things at a brisk pace as the movie only runs just over an hour.