As the new term is about to begin everybody near St Trinian's School for Young Ladies prepares for the worst; even the local police sergeant locks himself in his own cell! St Trinian's reputation for crime and hooliganism is well deserved; in chemistry they make explosives and gin, in geography they learn where all the best wines are made and when they play hockey a large supply of stretchers are required! This term sees the arrival of a Fatima, an Arab princess, amongst the girls and the return of the headmistress's previously expelled niece who hopes to learn about Fatima's gather's prize racehorse, Arab Boy, which her father has bet against. When Headmistress Millicent Fritton learns that the girls are planning to place a bet on Arab Boy with the local spiv she is horrified... then bets all of the school funds on it! As the day of the race approaches two groups of girls each struggle to make sure a different horse wins the race; and if the wrong one wins the school will have to close. If that wasn't enough trouble an undercover policewoman has come to the school as the new gym teacher and a school inspector is going to pay a visit on parents' day.

This, the first of the St Trinian's film, may be almost sixty years old but it has lost none of its anarchic charm. Alastair Sim does a fine job playing both Miss Fritton and her bookie brother Clarence; sometimes in the same scene, Joyce Grenfell is good as the undercover Sgt, Gates and George Cole is fun as spiv Flash Harry... the real stars though are the numerous girls whose behaviour makes them amongst the most feared people in the country! They are portrayed as genuinely anarchic without being unlikably malicious. The plot is of course fairly silly but it works well enough for a comedy. If you enjoy classic British comedies then this one is a must see.

Choose your fate: The terrible tykes of the fourth form, playing practical jokes that involve axes, or the...ummm...well-developed girls of the sixth form, who discovered some time ago cigarettes, gin, sex and how easily men can be led astray. The problem is that one set comes with the other. They are all there at St. Trinian's, that remarkably easy-going English school for girls led by headmistress Millicent Fritton (Alastair Sim). As Miss Fritton is fond of pointing out, "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." Miss Fritton sounds something like a melding of Julia Child and Eleanor Roosevelt, and definitely has Sim's droll and deadpan comic genes.

In The Belles of St. Trinian's, a sly, chaotic comedy from the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, St. Trinian's is, as usual, on the brink of financial disaster. Salvation may be at hand, however, when a rich sheik sends his daughter to join the fourth form and receive a proper English education. The sheik also is a horse owner and one of his prize racers, Arab Boy, is being trained near the school for a race. It's only a matter of time before the fourth- form girls form a racing pool and bet heavily on Arab Boy, with Miss Fritton adding to the pool what funds the school has left. (Much of the fourth-form girl's money comes from the gin they make in chemistry, then bottle and lower by rope to Flash Harry (George Cole),a Cockney fixer, for distribution. "It's got something...I don't know quite what," says Miss Fritton on sampling the stuff, "but send a few bottles up to my room.")

Miss Fritton, however, has a brother, Clarence Fritton (who, by some coincidence of casting, also is Alastair Sim),a bookmaker who not only has placed a bundle on another horse, but who also has a daughter. And he has placed the precocious Arabella in the sixth form to keep him informed. Soon the sixth form has kidnapped Arab Boy, the fourth form has taken the horse back, Flash Harry has joined forces with Miss Fritton, the sixth-form girls are determined that Arab Boy will not leave the second floor of St. Trinian's, Clarence and his Homburg-wearing gang have arrived, parents are driving up for Parent's Day and the Ministry of Education has arrived in the person of a very proper inspector. Total war breaks out at St. Trinian's. It's hard to say which is more dangerous, the African spears or the flour bombs.

Alastair Sim as Millicent Fritton turns in a tour de force performance. Miss Fritton is a tall woman with a stately bosom, fond of long gowns with embroidered lace and Edwardian hats with lots of feathers. She takes everything in stride, even a fourth-former pounding at something in chemistry class and, after hearing an explosion a few minutes later, the results. "Oh dear. I told Bessie to be careful with that nitro-glycerine!" She is firm in believing that St. Trinian's is "a gay arcadia of happy girls." Sim was one of Britain's great eccentric actors. Other than the sheer chaos of all the little (and not so little) girls doing terrible things, he delivers much of the film's pleasure.

Before I get to reviewing this film's merits, I should point out that this DVD needs captions--as it has none. While the English accents are not as thick as in some films, for us non-Brits it sure would help to have DVD captions or closed captioning--particularly if you are hard of hearing like I am.

The film is set at a god-awful girls school, St. Trinian's. The teachers are unqualified and indifferent--mostly because the kids are so incorrigible and unruly. It all seems to be this way because the Headmistress is a complete idiot. Interestingly, this lady is played by Alastair Sim--who also plays the part of her brother, a professional gambler. When the kids blow things up, kidnap or run amok, she seems to think it's a case of 'girls being girls'. All she really seems to care about it keeping her debt-ridden school afloat--by whatever means is necessary.

Watching this film was a lot like watching a hundred kids like the one from "Problem Child" as they go about their wicked ways. At first it was rather cute, but after a while I felt a bit numb about it. Fortunately, there is a bit of plot later in the film about gamblers and a kidnapped horse. While it's all mildly funny, I also was left inexplicably flat about it--and I am not sure why. I mean, seeing and hearing Sim playing a lady was great and the idea of a school full of horrid kids is cute...but the film didn't seem to have a lot more to offer--no deeper meaning or significance. It's decent but don't expect an Ealing comedy...though Sim is quite good.