Tom DeSimone

For over forty years, Tom DeSimone has carved a career our of the B-movie and exploitation film industry. Having first gained acclaim whilst still at UCLA for his student short Wooden Lullaby, DeSimone began in the industry as a post-production supervisor during the late sixties. His first feature film as a director, Terror in the Jungle, proved to be a disappointing experience but DeSimone soon found work in the adult industry, directing a slew of X-rated pictures including Dust Unto Dust, Catching Up and The Idol under the alias Lancer Brooks.

After the surprise success of his adult comedy Chatterbox, DeSimone’s commercial breakthrough came in 1981 with the gothic slasher Hell Night, which starred The Exorcist‘s Linda Blair. Having previously directed two women-in-prison movies, 1972′s Prison Girls and 1982′s The Concrete Jungle, DeSimone teamed up with B-movie veteran Sybil Danning for 1986′s Reform School Girls, which saw wet-behind-the-ears Linda Carol sent to a tough all-girls reform school run by the sadistic Danning.

Tom DeSimone looks back on the making of Reform School Girls…

Reform School Girls was produced by New World Pictures. How involved was the studio with the development of the movie and how was the project first conceived?

“I had just finished Concrete Jungle and was trying to come up with a new project. The idea of a WIP spoof appealed to me so I wrote the script on spec and shopped it around. Two investors were interested and they optioned it and then brought it to New World. The studio wasn’t a problem setting it up but they did get involved during production and post production. My only complaint was that I felt they didn’t promote the film enough after completion.”

How inspired were you by the women-in-prison of the seventies, such as The Big Doll House and Black Mama, White Mama, and was it your intention to update that formula for the eighties?

“Actually, I was more inspired by a little-known film from the fifties, So Young, So Bad, which was about girls in reform school. That’s where the tag line for my film comes from, SO YOUNG, SO BAD, SO WHAT. I saw the film as a teenager and it just stayed with me for years and when I decided to do RSG it was a big inspiration. That plus other WIP films such as Caged.”

Reform School Girls was one of your more sexually explicit commercial movies, how do you feel your background in adult films prepared you for shooting the various nude scenes?

“Nude scenes are always more difficult for the actors than me. But it’s always a bit awkward. For that reason I had a mostly all-female crew on set where I could. Female assistant director, female sound, etc. My background in adult films only meant I was aware of what to expect and also made it easier for me to be aware of where to place the camera and how to best handle the actresses… since there were many in the shower scenes.

All of the actresses were well aware that there would be nudity, particularly shower scenes. This was all agreed upon before signing on. If you couldn’t handle being nude on the set, there was no contract. I didn’t want certain girls excluded from being nude out of respect for the ones who were willing. It wouldn’t have been fair, so everyone had to agree to be nude at one point or another.”

Having already worked on the X-rated Prison Girls in 1972 and The Concrete Jungle a decade later, how would you say Reform School Girls compares to those earlier films?

“Prison Girls was a disaster from the start and I have no good things at all to say about that film. It was an accident that I even ended up directing and I didn’t like anything connected to that project. Concrete Jungle was a bit more professional than the other, but of the three, RSG is my favorite and by comparison I think it’s the one film that best showcases my talent and is closest to my original vision and sensibilities.”

Reform School Girls seemed cut from the same cloth as Danny Steinmann’s 1984 exploitation classic Savage Streets, which featured your brother, Bob DeSimone. Looking back twenty-five years later, how do you feel about those type of films produced during the mid-1980s?

“Those films served a purpose back then; unfortunately, there’s no market any longer for these type exploitation pictures. The audience for them, mostly young males, has lost interest in that kind of titillation. Today they prefer super comic book heroes, bigger budgets and big action set-pieces. I guess the internet feeds the other interests now and topless girls on the movie screen seem old and dated.

I was actually hired to direct Savage Streets and that’s how Linda Blair and my brother came on board. I brought them to the project. However, well into production, the script kept getting re-worked and re-imagined by one of the investors who fancied himself a writer. It soon became clear to me that the picture was heading off in a different direction than where we began and I was unhappy with where it ended up. Frustrated over all the changes I felt were bad, I walked from the project and that’s where Danny came in.”

Having already worked with Linda Blair on Hell Night, who later starred in Chained Heat in 1983, did you consider approaching her for a role in Reform School Girls?

“I did offer her the role of the social worker in RSG but she was at a point where she didn’t want to do any more exploitation films for a while. Even though she wouldn’t have been a victim in RSG, something she was tired of playing, she didn’t think she could bring much to the project.”

Another veteran of Chained Heat was Sybil Danning, who was becoming something of a B-movie regular at the time. How did you come to cast her in role of Warden Sutter?

“New World kept insisting they wanted her in the film and were pushing me to give her the role of Edna, the Pat Ast role. I was very insistant that there was no way she could play that role but they wanted her in the film because they said her name on the video box would sell tapes. We fought and fought over this issue and eventually I decided to change one of the characters, Warden Sutter, to a woman’s role. I pitched the idea to them and they were satisfied, as long as she was in the film. I knew Pat from NY and always thought she’d be an interesting person on film. There was no way I was going to give up her Edna to Sybil. Sybil was fine in her role but I never sensed that she could have handled the satire or spoof it up enough. Letting her play it straight was actually funnier in the context than if we tried to make her go for laughs. Seeing her so serious with all the chaos around her is what makes her character work better.”

What memories do you have of working with Tiffany Helm, who had appeared in Danny Steinmann’s Friday the 13th: A New Beginning the previous year?

“Tiffany was one of the ensemble and I don’t really have any particular memories. Most of my energies have to go to the principle players, the background girls were less involved with my day-to-day workload other than for me to treat them as interesting dressing, atmosphere and color. I know she had some individual scenes but at this point in time, so many years later, I can’t really recall any standout moments working with her. I do think she was involved with a mini-mutiny on set regarding some of the nudity, which I’ll go over later.”

Wendy O. Williams was known for being an outrageous performer on stage. Do you remember what she was like on set?

“Wendy was nothing like her character or her musical persona. She was very quiet and mostly kept to herself. She never mixed with a group, ate alone in her trailer and was always off by herself or with her manager, who was also her lover. He had a very Svengali-like relationship with her. Always giving orders, making suggestions, challenging some of my direction, approving her wardrobe or not… I think he was always protecting his investment in her since the Wendy O. Williams character was his creation. She was never a problem but she was also very distant.”

Was it your intention to make any kind of statement regarding the treatment of inmates in correctional facilities or was the verbal and physical abuse the characters suffered purely for entertainment?

“The film was strictly for entertainment. No axe to grind, no soap box to get on regarding the treatment of women or young girls. It was our intention to just poke some fun at a genre that was well-established and had always been done with serious overtones. We wanted to keep our tongue-in-cheek attitude and just have a good time with it.”

Did you do any research into women’s prisons before writing the script or were you only concerned with catering to the target market?

“It was strictly for the market and New World was anxious to get it to that crowd. I did read the final shooting script for So Young, So Bad and watched several older WIP films for inspiration and atmosphere but I didn’t think any serious research into the workings of reform schools would have lent anything more.”

As with horror movies, the women-in-prison cycle fell into a standard formula. Did you embrace the clichés of the genre or was it your intention to give the concept a new spin?

“The only new approach was the humour we decided to go for. These are well-known characters, well-known situations and almost all the WIP films up till then featured similar situations and characters. My intent was to take them and make them broader, funnier and more entertaining if possible. Nothing seemed to be too over the top for us as we were putting some things together.”

Most of the characters in the script are exaggerated and seem to be intentionally portrayed as caricatures. What was your intention with the overall tone of the movie and did you ever consider making it darker and more realistic?

“Yes, they were all caricatures, that was our intent, not realism, but sick fantasy. You couldn’t possibly find a dorm matron as broad as Edna or teen girls who were anything like Wendy was. There are some dark moments in the film, one being Lisa’s tale of being locked up and why her ‘bunny’ is so important to her. But over all, we didn’t want stark realism, we wanted a few laughs, a few titillating scenes and some girl-on-girl action, which is what the audience for these films were expecting.”

Were any of your actresses especially difficult to work with and do you recall any interesting anecdotes from the shoot?

“Actually, Pat was the most difficult mainly because she couldn’t remember a single line of dialogue. We had to paste cards all over the set and it still didn’t help. We spent so much time dealing with pick-up shots for dropped lines and also for her never understanding the importance of hitting her mark on the floor, for lighting. It was a learning experience for her and a living nightmare for me. But seeing the dailies each night after shooting I knew it was paying off and was worth it.

Another anecdote was the small mutiny we had to deal with regarding nudity. Even though it was all agreed upon, we often had clever reasons being given up as to why one or more of the girls would suddenly not be able to do nudity. Feeling badly, her period (that was a favorite one) or just a change of heart, even though they had signed on knowingly. Toward the end of the shoot, as a big shower scene was being prepped, several of the girls just announced that they wouldn’t be appearing and fought tooth and nail with the production regarding this. I believe Tiffany was among the few who refused. Consequently, I dropped them from any final scenes we were shooting simply because I thought it unfair and unprofessional behavior. They lost some days work and some pay over it. Ultimately, the film doesn’t suffer but it did make for some difficult times on the set.”

Would you say that Reform School Girls was an enjoyable experience to shoot and how do you feel about the movie all these years later? Are you proud of what you achieved and do you feel it is given the respect it deserves?

“Well, I’m happy it’s become somewhat of a cult favorite. I continually get asked about it, interviewed over it and it keeps showing up on favorite lists from time to time so that makes me happy. It was, of all the flims I’ve done, the most fun and the only film where I can recall I was happy to get to the set each day because I knew we were in for some good times making it happen.”

View our behind-the-scenes gallery from Reform School Girls, courtesy of Tom DeSimone.