Martha Sayers (Terry Lumley) is a student at the Salem Academy for Women in Salem, Massachusetts. She flees the school in a panic. Racing home to Los Angeles she finds that her sister Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin) is not home. She locks the door and closes all the curtains. When Elizabeth gets home, she finds the police and the gardener (Bill Quinn) at her door. The gardener says he heard screaming from inside the house. When Elizabeth tires to unlock the door, she finds the chain bolt still in place. The police break in and find Martha handing from the rafters. Her death is ruled a suicide, but Elizabeth is certain that Martha did not kill herself. The police detective (Frank Marth) says they have no evidence that her death was anything other than a suicide and the case is closed. Elizabeth decides to investigate for herself.
Elizabeth talks to Martha’s former roommate, Lucy Dembrow (Gwynne Gilford). Something about the woman’s behavior disturbs Elizabeth. She decides to enroll in the school herself under an alias. She calls herself Elizabeth Morgan. At the school she meets Roberta Lockhart (Kate Jackson), Debbie Jones (Jamie Smith Jackson) and Jody Keller (Cheryl Ladd). They tell her they are the welcoming committee sent by the Dragon Lady, their nickname for the Head Mistress, Mrs. Jessica Williams (Jo Van Fleet). The girls help her get settled in.
The Fine Arts teacher is Dr. Joseph Clampett (Roy Thinnes). In class she sees a picture painted by Debbie. The girl in the painting looks like her sister Martha, but she is in a strange room. Another teacher is Professor Delacrois (Lloyd Bochner). His sadistic study of mice raises a red flag with Elizabeth. Then some really strange things begin to happen. Debbie has some kind of fit in the hallway, another student, Lucy (Gwynne Gilford), commits suicide. Elizabeth goes looking in the cellar and finds the room where the picture of Martha was painted. She flees when she sees someone in the shadows with a knife. When another suicide happens Elizabeth finds out that all the girls that supposedly killed themselves were orphans. Someone is targeting girls with no close family members. But to what end?
“Satan’s School for Girls” was released in 1973 and was directed by David Lowell Rich. It is a made for television horror film produced by Leonard Goldberg and Aaron Spelling for ABC. A remake of the film was done in 2000, also by Spelling.
As far as horror movies go, it is rather plain. It is sort of a “G” rated movie version of one of Spelling’s pop culture teenage television shows. There’s no sex and not really any violence, at least on screen. Most of the deaths are off screen, but there is one death that might give you some pause. There are some tense moments and some strange happenings but for the most part it is rather uneventful, as far as Satan cult worshiping is concerned. Still, it was enough to get the Christians up in arms.
Kate Jackson played the head mistress for the 2000 television remake. It also has two of the original “Charlie’s Angels”, Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd, which was also produced by Spelling.