There’s nothing quite like a knife fight, and you get a doozy on this promo poster for the crime thriller Girls on the Loose. You’re probably wondering if this actually occurs in the movie. It does, and it’s a fun scene, but a long and winding road getting there. The film has a nice opening—a heist by a trio of masked robbers. They pile into a laundry van driven a fourth gang member and peel off their disguises to reveal themselves as women. Mara Corday is the ruthless ringleader trying to keep her gang in line, but trouble soon arrives in the form of a police investigation and a weak link in the crew who needs dealing with.
The problems multiply when a detective takes a romantic interest in Corday’s little sister Barbara Bostock. Gang member Joyce Barker wants sis silenced, but blood is thicker than money for Corday. She and Barker eventually have the knock-down-drag-out depicted on the poster, but it isn’t really worth the wait. Girls on the Loose is a fun idea but ultimately is an undistinguished and forgettable b-movie that doesn’t do as much with its premise as it should have. There’s no definitive release date, but most of its reviews appeared at the end of March and beginning of April 1958, so we’ll say it opened within a week either way of today 1958.
