5ive Girls
By John Sheridan, Blockbuster.co.uk

Five troubled girls from different backgrounds are sent to a strict Catholic school where they are locked away by a disturbed priest and creepy headmistress. Each of the girls possess supernatural powers and they must use them to defend themselves against Legion, a demon from Hell determined to take their souls.

I was pleasantly surprised when I watched this film, I mean this is cheese (like most horror films in this category), but great cheese. Not only were the girls attractive but they could also act. The film also has the right mix of horror, suspense, action and drama… and most of all… the brilliant Ron Perlman.

The film introduces us to our five troubled girls who each have been abandoned at a Private Catholic school by their parents for being a handful. We have Leah, a girl who has the power to move things with her mind; Mara, a drug addict who can heal by just touching; Cecilia a blind girl who reads cards and Connie, a girl who practices Black Magic. There’s another girl… but, well, she doesn’t last long! (unfortunately).

The five girls are the only pupils at the school and apart from the one priest, the headmistress and a creepy caretaker; there are no other members of the faculty. The girls are only taught bible studies and nothing else and If this wasn’t strange enough, the school is more like a prison, with contraband confiscated and all entrances and exits locked up to prevent their pretty pupils from escaping….

The girls are also spanked (no, I’m serious), with a ruler should they do anything wrong. You know how these things are – Catholic (virgin) schoolgirls, blonde Headmistress, long rulers…. Ahem. I wonder if the school has been inspected by Ofsted recently?!

Anyway, these girls all have their secret powers and together they investigate the mystery of what is going on the third floor that has been deemed off limits to them. They soon find a dark and sinister purpose of them coming to the school, they encounter ghosts and they are forced to take on the demon Legion, famous from dark passages in the Bible and who, more recently, was responsible in abducting a girl, Elizabeth from their Priest teacher’s Father Drake’s classroom.

Perlman stars as Father Drake and he provides the intelligence in this film meaning that both adults and teenage boys / dirty old men will have something to watch. A priest who fell apart when his favourite pupil was dragged into Hell but brought out of retirement to teach strict bible study to the 5 pupils at the school.

He finds that his new Headmistress, Miss Pierce, is sinister and cruel, and takes great pleasure in putting him in his place and punishing the students. Will Father Drake stand up to this abuse or will he simply return to the bottle where he has been hiding and will any of the five girls escape this school that is perched on the edge of Hell?

All in all an enjoyable 90 minutes, think Dawson’s Creek mixed with The Craft and the ITV series Bad Girls and you wouldn’t be far wrong. A good horror movie, a little cheesy perhaps… but basically that is what makes this film so enjoyable. Add to your list.

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