Twilight and Screen's Troubled Teenage Girls

I love the drama of teenagers. Even the over the top, bad apple, Ritalin popping insanity of them  -- sometimes especially for this (I can relate, I wasn't exactly an angel). And lately it's been hard to not think about teenagers with all of these hysterical girls lining up for the newest teen sensation, Twilight. I haven't seen the movie yet, but so far I'm staunchly defending the hype simply for the fact that teenage girls are wandering the streets, not paunchy fan boys. Teen girls were the original fans after all (Frank Sinatra bobby-sockers, Elvis, The Beatles) and I am both in awe of and a bit terrified by their primal screams of ear-splitting rapture (but at least they let it go). And though it's safe and nice that girls are reading novels and nutting out over a vampire movie, I do hope they get their noses out of the books and bodies out of the theater to at least experience a little bit of trouble (only a little). So, with that, here's a few of my favorite troubled teen girls on screen -- a genre that as every teen wishes, never gets old.

Pretty Poison (1968)

I will never, ever stop talking about Tuesday Weld. I love her so much, that as I've said numerous times, it almost hurts. Lord Love a Duck, Wild in the Country, The Cincinnati Kid, Play it as it Lays, Thief and on and on... But my favorite Weld performance? As Sue Ann Stepanek in Pretty Poison. Pretty Poison is the definitive Tuesday Weld movie. Playing the beautiful but deadly high-school majorette to Anthony Perkins twitchy, creepy fire-starter, she is the deliciously deviant underbelly of America's heartland. Where blondes are supposed to be good girls but, in her case, are most definitely not. Made in 1968 and directed by Noel Black, the picture was something of a dud upon release (too sexually disturbing? too strange?) and has achieved cult status ever since. And deservedly so. With its violence, pitch black comedy and sexy viciousness (watch Tuesday commit murder and immediately want to have sex after) the picture is wonderfully subversive and deeply strange. And Weld... she is charming, scary, beautiful and sickly erotic. Need I explain the plot? The manipulation of Perkins (who thought he was doing the manipulating)?  The killing of her mother? The crazy, beautiful, psycho intensity of Weld? No. You really should watch it for yourself. Again, Tuesday, Tuesday. As Tiny Tim sang, "If only Tuesday Weld would be my wife."

Foxes (1980) 

And we think young girls today are over-sexed, coked up and wild. Please. Take a look at Adrian Lyne's entertaining yet telling and I think incredibly realistic debut film Foxes, an intriguing picture for having such a sympathetic take on female rebellion. Starring Jodie Foster, Marilyn Kagan, Kandice Stroh, and Cherie Currie (appropriately famous for helming the great all-girl rock band The Runaways), the movie follows four San Fernando Valley girls as they venture into the mean streets of Hollywood for parties, boys and concerts. Some, like Foster, have a pretty good head on their shoulders while others, Currie, are on the road to ruin. It's a sexy movie (remember, it's Adrian Lyne of 91/2 Weeks, the underrated Lolita and Fatal Attraction fame), but again, quite sensitive towards these troubled girls --  they are never depicted as a bunch of airheads and are restless for a reason. Maybe they're just too smart. And truly, Cheri Currie was the (cherry) bomb.

Freeway (1996)

Reese Witherspoon has become one of the most popular, revered and highest-paid actresses working today  -- and I guess for good reason. She's a wonderfully versatile performer who can skillfully move from fluffy dumb comedies like Legally Blonde to pointed satires like Election to serious, full-bodied biopics like Walk the Line. But there was a time when Witherspoon was extra daring, extra subversive (and I miss this part of her).  Take her role in this little blast of comic pulp craziness, Freeway, in which she plays the trashy daughter of a prostitute who hitchhikes her way to grandma's house. Based on the The Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, Reese encounters all sorts of dubious characters and situations along the way, chiefly a Big Bad Wolf type played by a wonderfully deviant Kiefer Sutherland. What's so powerful about Freeway (directed by talented Matthew Bright who really ought to make more movies) is that while we're laughing at many of her darkly comical situations, we also grow to care about this girl, no matter how much a rotten apple she may be. Also, how can you not find the girl adorable when, shocked that Sutherland isn't dead after popping him with a gun, she proclaims: "Mister, I shot you a whole lot of times!"

thirteen (2003)

thirteen is the perfect title for this jagged little pill (sorry for that very teen girl reference) of a movie since it works, in many ways like a horror movie -- a Friday the 13th for parents. Directed by Twilight's (ever heard of Twilight?) Catherine Hardwicke with gritty, melodramatic weight the picture finds thirteen-year-old friends Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Evie (Nikki Reed) becoming way too out of control for their own good. They buy sexy clothes, experiment with drugs, get piercings, hang with bad boys, shoplift -- you name it these girls are doing it. Some parents should watch this hard-hitting film -- it's more sobering than going through your teenager's diaries (unless your daughters are Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, in which case you should be both impressed and scared for your life) and though it does play over-the-top at times, teenage girls are over the top, dammit. And good for them injecting extra drama into our, as Lina Lamont intoned, "humdrum lives." If not for the film's honesty (the film was co-written with Reed when she was 13) and the lead actresses' talent and realness, it could have been a hokey mess. Instead it's a scary cautionary tale and a weirdly good time. (Oh god...I used to play slap with my sister.) Lock up your daughters! Or your sons -- not sure who is worse off.

"I met you on Monday, I fell in love with you on Tuesday, Wednesday I was unfaithful, Thursday we killed a guy together. How about that for a crazy week Sue Ann?"

Read the rest of my list, including troubled teen boys here.

Read more Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun.