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Review

Set in an oppressive boarding school (is there any other?) for girls, veteran filmmaker John Irvin’s hyperventilating melodrama is packed with beautiful, sexually inquisitive young ladies, stern supervisors who take sadistic delight in keeping the girls in line and the always beautiful Jacqueline Bisset as a headmistress with a closetful of suppression and secrets. The vast walled-in compound is the only world the girls have known since birth. This world is left undisturbed until one day when three teens, Hidalla (Mary Nighy), Irene (Hannah Taylor-Gordon) and Vera (Natalia Tena) venture into a locked library in a forbidden area of the sprawling estate. With a key stolen from one of the lesbian workers, they discover a hidden chamber with the complete files of all of the students. After an alarm sounds and doors are slammed shut, Vera is left behind where she is soon held captive by the furious headmistress, intent to teach all a lesson. But word of the school’s missing children (oh, Vera’s not the only one!) brings in police, threatening the headmistress’ tightly controlled world. Be warned: this is not just a tender love story between innocent young girls (like Mädchen in Uniform), but a lesbian potboiler filled with lascivious servants, intense teenage love, sexual hysteria, murder and pent-up passions of the demented kind. Have fun!

 -- Raymond Murray