AIP were capable, (when they wished to be) of investing this kind of pulpy hokum with enough technical and pacing panache to keep their drive-in audiences involved.
Unfortunately, they didn't bother here.
Thus, unlike "High School Hellcats" and more especially "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," both of which benefited enormously from shadowy, film noir lighting schemes, and (fairly) well dressed settings, "Runaway Daughters" looks all of $2.98 cents.
This can be OK when the lackluster visuals are counterbalanced by an arresting storyline. But alas, the story here is little more than a synopsis of something probably rejected by the "Police Gazette".
Here goes: three teenage girls from different socio-economic circumstances link up to run away from home, in this case to LA, where they quickly become "dime a dance girls" (under the tutelage of Minksy voiced Adele Jergens--"on a good night you might clear $12.00" and "watch out for cockroaches").
Apart from the fact that taxi dancers were already way out by the late 50's, the script is handicapped by more serious problems, chiefly the fact that the girls don't run away until 2/3 of the way into the picture. Thus, we sit through multiple scenes of them sulking and arguing with their respective families.
These altercations include one in which one of our anti-heroines decks a 70 year old schoolmarm onto the lawn! Stereotypically, adults are all misguided at best in this, and of course, the blame for the youngsters delinquency is laid fully at their doorstep.
And what parents!--(if you have been pining away to see 30's film stalwarts, Anna Sten and John Litel, perform a drunken Charleston, then this is your film).
As previously mentioned, production values are lamentably skimpy. For example, the fabulously wealthy Marla English character lives in what appears to be a typical 50's subdivision tract house, with cut rate Danish modern furniture, and nary a hint of a servant.
For Frank Gorshen and AIP completists only
