Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968)

A few weeks back I offered up this rave review of the 1966 Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills film, The Trouble With Angels. I'm not sure as to exactly how successful the film was in the theaters but it did well enough that a sequel was green lighted by Columbia Pictures. Having quickly become a big fan of the original, I eagerly anticipated a continuation of the story in some manner on the big screen so at the time I certainly viewed a sequel as a positive and not a negative.

Of course, if I had followed the film business back in those years the way one does on the Internet these days, I probably would have known to lower my expectations. But we didn't get Variety delivered to my house.

Ida Lupino would not be back in the directors chair, and neither Hayley Mills nor June Harding would return for the follow up. However, Rosalind Russell did sign on the dotted line to recreate her role as the stern but understanding Mother Superior. Mary Wickes, Dolores Sutton, and Binnie Barnes would also return to St. Francis as Sisters Clarissa, Rose-Marie, and Celestine.

With Mills and Harding out, Susan St. James, better known as Susan Who? in those days, was enlisted to team up with Mary Clancy's sister, Marvel Anne, played in both films by Barbara Hunter, also known as Barbara Who? as her small part in the original had done nothing to make her a household name.

New to the order of St. Francis was Sister George who would be played by Stella Stevens as a rebellious nun who is more into protests and peace rallies than going to mass. (Spoiler here if you haven't seen the original)

It is obvious even before the credits are over that the Sister George character was written with the hope that Hayley Mills would return to continue her role so that we could find out whether or not Mary Clancy had the right stuff to make it as a nun. But she didn't return so we get Ms. Stevens pretending to be a nun who is based on a character in the original but really isn't that character at all because the original actress went on to do more adult things like baring her backside for a film called The Family Way. Have you got that? I thought so.

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart sing the opening theme song. This will also give you a chance to get acquainted with our cast, especially Stella Stevens as Sister George.

When this movie opens, you get a snappy little pop song by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart conveniently titled Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. Who would have thunk it?

If the song sounds an awful lot like something The Monkees would have sang on their television, show it's because the duo penned a few of their classic songs as you can see here.

Whether you like the song or not doesn't matter. You're pretty much stuck with it if you watch this movie because Producer William Frye and Director James Nielsen (taking over for Lupino) love it enough to use it incessantly. You'll hear it sung during

Same song. This version is used during a dance sequence at a boy's Catholic School. It has a little more zing to it and I prefer it to the version over the opening credits. By the time the movie is over, this song will certainly have planted itself into your head and I'm not sure that's such a good thing.

the opening credits, in a dance sequence later, and sung over the end credits. And if that's not enough for you, Lalo Shifrin who co-wrote the song with Boyce and Hart, uses the same four or five bars from the song as his entire score. It is quite possible though that they only paid him for the one song because if you know anything about television and film scores you would know that Shifrin went on to pen some of the best there were including Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Dirty Harry, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, and one of my all time favorite haunting scores, Wait Until Dark.

While the song is playing we get several scenes of Sister George protesting and picketing, being arrested and bailed out by Reverend Mother so at least the film wastes no time in delving into what we can expect from Sister Woodstock. We also find out during this sequence that although St. Francis may have had trouble coming up with the money for a new boiler in the original film, they have an unlimited petty cash fund to bail Sister George out of jail.

When the credits do end, St. George The Dragon Killer (as she is referred to) is just returning from one of her P.U.M.A. rallies very much to the chagrin of Reverend Mother. and after a few quick shots to let us know we're back at St. Francis, we go straight to Reverend Mother having a chat with the often talked about but never before seen Bishop who looks remarkably like TV and Radio Icon Arthur Godfrey. The discussion is about a rally out west that Sister George would like to take some of the girls to. It is as described: Interfaith, Interracial, and co-educational. After telling Reverend Mother to have patience with Sister George, the Bishop convinces her to agree to the trip. And no sooner does she do so than there is a blast from one of the upstairs windows at St. Francis.

It is then that we meet Rosabelle (Susan St. James) for the first time and catch up with Mary Clancy's much maligned and once plastered cousin (read my review of the original film, you'll understand) Marvel Anne (Barbara Hunter). It seems that Sister George was teaching them about the dangers of household chemicals and how with the right mixture they could be used to cause all kinds of bombings and mischief, thus the explosion. I wonder if Barack Obama's good friends and terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn took Sister George's Class? (Sorry, sometimes I just have to).

At a meeting with the sisters, Reverend Mother clearly spells out the ground rules for the trip: junior or senior girls, B average or better, co-operative attitude, and reasonable hygiene habits.

Although the chances of them being picked are slim to none (Marvel Anne flunks on all categories, Rosabelle is straight A's but isn't up to snuff on the other requirements), Marvel Anne and Rosabelle decide to hold dance parties in the restroom and charge the girls to attend. It is never fully explained why the rest of the girls would have to pay to dance in their own restroom or why they would want to do so. You just have to take it for granted that they would.

Of course, they get caught by Reverend Mother, who quickly pulls the plug on the scheme. Still all is not lost. When Reverend Mother is told that the school bus is too antiquated to make a cross country trip, she finagles Marvel's father George Clancy into donating a new bus in exchange for taking Marvel Anne on the trip. I guess things haven't changed so much after all as it seems that even back in 1968 everybody will sell out at the right price. Even Reverend Mother.

George Clancy was referred to as Uncle George in The Trouble With Angels. What bothered me the most about this whole business with the bus is that in the first film, Reverend Mother was so disgusted with Mr. Clancy and his "secretaries" that she pulled the plug on expelling his niece because of it. Here, it is pretty much played as nothing more than an inside joke between Mother and Mr. Clancy.

The trip finally gets underway, minus Rosabelle only not really. Do you really need me to tell you that she manages to make the trip? But I'll leave it to you to discover how she manages that trick.

If you haven't seen The Trouble With Angels, then you might like this quickie fast food sequel as throwaway entertainment. Unfortunately, for those of us who did see that gem, this one pales by comparison. While we do get some returning characters, we get none of the charm, zero amount of the depth, and a story that does nothing more than move from one gag to the next. It's almost as if they only watched a third of the first film, and decided for some reason to just duplicate that and the heck with the rest of the story. It doesn't work.

Rosalind Russell does okay with what she has to do here which is basically catch Rosabelle (Susan St. James) and Marvel Ann on a couple of occasions and to argue with hip Sister George (Stella Stevens) when necessary. Just don't expect the antagonism between Rosabelle and Mother to be anything remotely resembling the conflict that she had with Mary Clancy because there is none despite the few sight gags on hand.

We also have a major problem from the beginning with the fact that the Marvel Ann character is still attending St. Francis. First, when Mary was sent to the school at the beginning of the original film, it is made abundantly clear that Marvel Ann had been at the school for some time. So surely she should have graduated.

Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing her at the graduation ceremony in that film so maybe she was just a terrible student which doesn't at all explain why Rachel was able to graduate when she was supposed to be the worst of the lot. Did I miss something? And if there's one thing I abhor about sequels, it's when they are completely inconsistent with what went on in the previous film(s).

Late in the film Rosalie and Marvel Ann get into a little spat that threatens to break up their friendship. It's such a minor incident as compared to what came between Rachael and Mary, that we just sort of shrug are shoulders and go on. We know they will resolve this one easily enough, right after the next silly sight gag. To be perfectly honest, I never got the feeling that the friendship between these two girls was that deep and if they ever somehow managed to graduate, they probably never saw or heard from each other again.

The conflict that simmers throughout the film between the Rev. Mother, who is set in her ways, and the radical Sister George is not very convincing. This might have played better if there was any reason at all to be understanding and sympathetic toward Sister George. Reverend Mother seems to at least be trying, but gets nothing in return. Sister George is such an obnoxious ass that we only find her to be more irritating with each second of screen time. If they had made her play the part as Mary Clancy, it might have helped even if it is a different actress.

Yes, I know it isn't the same but it's not like it couldn't have been done. It just doesn't help one bit that Sister George's method of trying to change the way the sisters think and feel about the outside world is to look upon them with total disdain most of the time, and to ridicule them the rest of the time. Sort of what B.H. Obama did to Hilary supporters and that hasn't exactly won them over, has it? (Sorry, couldn't help myself again.) I wish they had made the movie more about the conflict between Sister George and Reverend Mother with the caveat being they had worked to make the Sister more likable instead of just being totally overbearing and obnoxious.

I don't entirely fault Stella Stevens, but I couldn't help but imagine that having Hayley Mills in the role would have gone a long way to making the character much more likable. Stevens tries, but like everything else in this film, the script doesn't believe in giving us any depth to her at all. It's hard to believe that both films were penned by the same writer, Blanche Hanalis. Adding to the problems, journeyman James Neilson's direction is totally uninspired, directing the film as if it were a TV movie. Understandable when you take a look at many of his other directing assignments, although I did think he did well with The Moonspinners.

In the first film, the outsiders were also there for the specific purpose of moving the story along. Here, we get Milton Berle, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor, whose sole purpose is to be there as celebrity guests when the school bus carrying the girls needs to make a pit stop. And the fact is that most of what goes on when the bus does stop is about as silly and mundane as it gets. Oh look, it's nuns at an amusement park! Oh look, it's nuns and girls at a school for boys! Oh look, it's nuns at a dude ranch! Frankly, they could just as easily have stopped at the Dairy Queen, McDonalds, and Sears and it wouldn't have changed the story much. In between these stops we also get a lot of footage of the bus traveling down the road. In fact, if they had cut the scenes of the bus rolling on down the highway they probably could have knocked twenty minutes off the running time.

Worst yet, there is one totally weird sequence involving the bus and an oncoming train that seems to have been thrown

in for no reason at all. It certainly isn't funny. It adds nothing to the story and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else that happens in the film and you can only wonder what the hell were they thinking? It's as if they threw it in simply because they could and when you stop to think about it, it's a real downer.

If all this wasn't bad enough, what kind of a big finish do we get? We get the dreaded voiceover by Rosalind Russell telling us how everything turns out instead of a real ending. This is the ending they give you in movies when they can't figure out any other way to wrap things up without spending any more of the studio's cash. I felt like I'd been screwed, especially the first time I saw it when I actually paid money.

If you have never seen The Trouble With Angels, like I said, you might enjoy this once if you deposit your brain at your doorstep so you can stomach the marshmallow plot, and the cookie cut out characters. If you have seen The Trouble With Angels think of it as being the Mona Lisa and Where Angels Go Trouble Follows as the kindergarten finger painting equivalent. And if you can do no more than finger paint I have no choice but to give you my grade which is a C-.

Where Angels Go Trouble Follows is available to buy or to rent from Netflix on DVD. The format is the usual crappy pan and scan. However, the widescreen version can be seen from time to time on Turner Classic Movies. The Next scheduled showing is Sunday, July 13, 2008, at 6:15 p.m. EST. A couple of more showings are scheduled over the course of the next three months. Check the Turner website for dates and times.