The Single Girls (1974)

Featuring the sort of lurid plot that later powered episode after episode of Charlie’s Angels, this sleazy drive-in picture tracks a serial killer who stalks visitors at a Caribbean resort where guests overcome sexual hangups by sleeping with each other. Naturally, all the female guests are twentysomething babes and most of the male guests are middle-aged. In one scene, the psychobabble-spewing proprietor of the resort encourages his guests to free themselves by “milling,” which involves turning off the lights so everyone can grope freely. This experiment goes awry when someone either bites or cuts a buxom young woman’s breast. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie. Codirected by the exploitation-flick brain trust of married couple Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, The Single Girls works about 40 percent of the time, delivering cheap thrills and nudie shots by way of coherent storytelling. The rest of the time, the movie ambles from one disassociated vignette to the next. Therefore, one’s tolerance for this sort of thing depends entirely on how much joy one is able to derive from watching ladies scream, screw, shower, and strip. Although the movie has a few proper dramatic scenes, mostly involving the trouble that sexy redhead Allison (Claudia Jennings) has with a possessive ex-boyfriend, those bits come across like filler, no matter how hard the appealing Jennings tries to give a real performance. Incidentally, Jennings also starred in the Sebastians’ next opus, ’Gator Bait, which was released later in 1974.

The Single Girls: LAME

Jud (1971)

          Released fairly early in the cycle of movies about Vietnam vets wrestling with PTSD upon returning to America, Jud deserves some credit for tackling serious issues at the very moment they were gaining sociopolitical relevance. Unfortunately, writer-director Gunther Collins has more passion for his subject matter than he does cinematic skill or psychological insight, so Jud echoes its protagonist’s angst-ridden journey by flailing about in search of meaning. The title character brawls, mopes, and wanders, pushing away nearly everyone who tries to form an emotional connection with him, and he endures flashbacks to horrific moments from overseas combat. Collins does an adequate job of conveying his leading character’s anguished metal state. Yet Collins fails to build an actual story around the character, so events in Jud just sort of happen, without any sense of a narrative shape. Worse, the climactic moment, which involves the death of a supporting character, is extrinsic to Jud’s journey, because the doomed character had major psychological problems well before he crossed Jud’s path. A more unified approach to this sort of material would have tethered the narrative’s ultimate tragedy to Jud’s PTSD, thereby conveying a theme about war claiming victims even after soldiers leave the battlefield, somewhat in the vein of the classic WWII drama The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). With its barrage of directionless ennui and empty lyricism, Jud is a jumble.

          Set in Los Angeles, the picture begins with Jud Carney (Joseph Kaufmann) renting an apartment in a small building run by busybody landlord Fred Hornkel (Norman Burton). Two tenants glom onto Jud immediately—lonely single lady Shirley (Alix Wyeth) and self-loathing closeted homosexual Bill (Robert Deman). Jud shuns both of them, gravitating to pretty girls for company, first Sunny (Claudia Jennings), with whom Jud trysts on the beach, and later Kathy (Bonnie Bittner), with whom Jud attempts to build a real relationship. Sometimes, Jud seems like he has everything together, as when he expertly prevents a used-car salesman from swindling him, and sometimes, he’s a hair-trigger menace, as when he beats a guy whose girlfriend resembles the woman who dumped Jud while he was in Vietnam. Despite smothering the film with plaintive folk songs, Collins never gives the audience a clue as to what they’re supposed to make of everything that happens onscreen. At the time of its release, perhaps Jud said something fresh about how the experiences of Vietnam veterans differed from those of servicemen in previous wars. Seen today, it’s sincere but inadvertently shallow, a near miss at best. For cult-movie fans, the main point of interest is presumably Jennings’ participation, as Jud was the first movie credit for the short-lived Playboy model-turned-actress.

Jud: FUNKY

Moonshine County Express (1977)

          Since the ’70s were rotten with drive-in flicks about rednecks hauling white lightning through the woods with cops hot on their tails, there wasn’t much left to say about the subject by the time Moonshine County Express was made. That said, the textures of this low-rent genre were so firmly established that delivering a straight recitation shouldn’t have been too difficult—especially since Moonshine County Express was issued by trash-cinema titan Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. All of which goes to explain why Moonshine County Express is vexing. The movie has the usual barrage of zippy nonsense, so it’s never boring, per se, but the storyline is so sloppy that it’s hard to tell which of the two main characters is the protagonist. After all, John Saxon gets top billing for playing a racecar driver who moonlights running ’shine, but the narrative actually hinges on the character played by Susan Howard.

          After thugs kill an aging moonshiner, his three daughters learn that he left them a secret stash of valuable Prohibition-era whiskey, so the oldest daughter, Dot Hammer (Howard), begins selling the hooch to her dad’s old customers. This gets the attention of Jack Starkey (William Conrad), the kingpin of the area’s illegal-liquor business, since he’s the one who killed the father in the first place as a means of eliminating competition. Giving the story its small measure of complexity is J.B. Johnson (Saxon), who drives for Starkey until switching sides to help the imperiled Hammer sisters. There’s also a sheriff involved, but suffice to say nothing truly surprising happens.

          Still (no pun intended), it’s possible to groove on the film’s pulpy elements. Playing the Hammer sisters, Howard, Claudia Jennings, and former Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick add eye candy, though all of them manage to keep their clothes since this PG-rated film is tame compared to other moonshine flicks. Saxon gives an unusually casual performance, and Conrad has a blast playing a cartoony villain. (Not every movie features the enormous Cannon star in a sex-fantasy scene featuring fishing tackle.) Furthermore, Dub Taylor plays a supporting role without his frontal dentures; the rootsy soundtrack features banjos and spoons and the like; and in one party scene, a bar band renders these peculiar lyrics: “Grandma’s got syphilis, Grandpa’s deranged, and all the children had their sexes changed.”

Moonshine County Express: FUNKY

Truck Stop Women (1974)

Difficult as it might seem to make a boring movie about mobsters fighting a madam who runs a whorehouse out of a truck stop, one should never underestimate director Mark L. Lester’s capacity for turning promising notions into terrible movies. During the ’80s, he spent wads of cash on such turkeys as Firestarter (1984) and Commando (1985), but during the early to mid-’70s, when he was just beginning his directorial reign of terror, Lester employed budgets as meager as his cinematic gifts. Lester’s third feature, Truck Stop Women, is truly abysmal thanks to this combination of brainless storytelling and yard-sale production values. The gist of the piece is that blowsy, middle-aged Anna (Lieux Dressler) operates a successful brothel along a trucking route, aided by her sexy daughters Rose (Claudia Jennings) and Tina (Jennifer Burton). Big-city gangster Smith (John Martin0) tries to muscle in on the business, eventually turning Rose against her mother. Violence ensues. The grimy nature of Truck Stop Women is made clear by the opening scene: Smith murders a naked man and women while they’re screwing in a bubble bath, to the accompaniment of an upbeat country song containing the lyrics, “if it feels good, do it.” Huh? The story unravels at regular intervals, the numerous sex scenes have the sleazy quality of no-budget porn, and the underscore is excruciatingly bad. (The music in some scenes sounds like it resulted from a concussion victim reflexively flailing fingers across a keyboard.) Even the presence of red-hot strawberry blonde Claudia Jennings, a onetime Playboy model, isn’t enough to make this bilge tolerable.

Truck Stop Women: SQUARE

Group Marriage (1973)

         Emerging almost inevitably from the anything-goes zeitgeist of the Sexual Revolution, Group Marriage is a lighthearted comedy about exactly what its title suggests, an arrangement by three couples to cohabitate and share sexual favors, thereby escaping the constraints of Establishment society. The movie is not quite as lurid and tacky as it sounds, though there are plenty of nude scenes as well as implications of encounters involving multiple partners. The movie is also not nearly as sharp as it should be, seeing as how it lives in the shadow of Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), which basically ends by crossing the sexual boundary at which Group Marriage begins. Whereas Mazursky’s film was a hip and thoughtful examination of the emotional and psychological effects of social change, Group Marriage merely gives lip service to serious issues while presenting anemic bedroom farce and simplistic clashes between seekers and squares. So even though Group Marriage is ultimately harmless, allowing its characters to display something vaguely resembling dimensionality, the movie is dragged down by knuckleheaded one-liners and a pervasive sense of voyeurism.

          The movie gets off to a rocky start, with cutesy scenes introducing viewers to Chris (Aimee Eccles), a clerk at a used-car dealership, and her boyfriend Sander (Solomon Sturges), proprietor of a bumper-sticker business. Chris meets Dennis (Jeffrey Pomerantz) and brings him home for sex, much to Sander’s chagrin, even though Chris makes the argument that her tryst was okay because she didn’t hide it from Sander. Then Dennis brings his buxom girlfriend, Jan (Victoria Vetri), into the mix, and it’s Chris’ turn to experience jealousy. Eventually, the group expands to include a studly beach bum, Phil (Zack Taylor), and a sexy lawyer, Elaine (Claudia Jennings). Complications ensue in the form of hangups and recriminations, as well as social pressure from folks who disapprove of the group’s arrangement. Some of the plot developments are imaginative, like Elaine’s quest to set a legal precedent for group marriage, and some are less so, like the various scenes involving the screaming-queen gay couple living next door to the group. To its minor credit, the movie never once devolves into outright sleaze, and perky performances keep the tone upbeat even when situations become complicated. 

Group Marriage: FUNKY

’Gator Bait (1974)

          A grimy revenge picture set in the swamps of the American south, ’Gator Bait is one of several ’70s B-movies that upended exploitation-cinema tropes by featuring sexualized leading ladies as formidable avengers. Interestingly, the picture was also written, coproduced, and codirected by a woman, Beverly Sebastian, who shared producing and directing chores with her husband, Ferd Sebastian. Claudia Jennings, the sexy redhead B-movie queen who began her career as a Playmate of the Year in Playboy magazine, stars as Desiree Thibodeau, a Cajun wild woman who lives deep in the wilderness. She supports herself and her two younger siblings by poaching animals and selling hides. One day, idiot deputy Billy Boy Thomas (Clyde Ventura) and his redneck pal, Ben (Ben Sebastian), track down Desiree and threaten to arrest her unless she provides sexual favors. Desiree outfoxes her pursuers, eventually tossing a bag of snakes into their boat—at which point Billy Boy accidentally shoots and kills Ben while trying to fend off the snakes. Ashamed of his stupidity, Billy Boy lies to his father, Sheriff Joe Bob Thomas (Bill Thurman), by saying that Desiree killed Ben. When Joe Bob shares this false report with Ben’s father, T.J. (Sam Gilman), T.J. swears vengeance. Accompanied by T.J. and his psychotic older son, Leroy (Douglas Dirkson)—whom Desiree castrated years ago during an attempted rape—the cops head into the swamp to find and kill Desiree. Bloodshed and tragedy ensue.

          ’Gator Bait is as grisly as any other rape-and-revenge picture of the ’70s, featuring at least one stomach-turning scene (the horrific fate of Desiree’s sister), and the way women’s bodies are showcased makes it impossible to forget that ’Gator Bait is a lowbrow endeavor. (Jennings wears a series of barely-there costumes, her legs and midriff on constant display.) Nonetheless, there’s a smattering of local color amid the sleaziness. Nearly every scene was filmed outdoors, so the verdant locations are like characters in the story, and the score features a saucy mix of harmonicas and other rootsy instruments. Jennings also gets to do a bit of acting, which was more than was usually asked of her, and she has a couple of decent moments brandishing a shotgun and spewing tough dialogue in a Cajun accent. ’Gator Bait isn’t quality filmmaking, to be sure, but it’s periodically exciting in a grotesque sort of way. More than 20 years later, the Sebastians returned to the swamp for the straight-to-video sequel ’Gator Bait II: Cajun Justice (1988), but none of the original actors returned.

’Gator Bait: FUNKY

Unholy Rollers (1972)

          A serviceable melodrama set in the world of roller derby, Unholy Rollers is a fairly typical Roger Corman production in that it blends sex, violence, and an underdog antihero. For the most part, the picture avoids outright exploitation elements, so it makes for comparatively guiltless viewing. There’s even a certain scrappy charm to Unholy Rollers, since the cheap production values suit the story about a working-class woman trying to take control of her own destiny. Accordingly, it doesn’t matter much that characterization, dramatic tension, and narrative momentum are lacking—it’s all about the vibe. Claudia Jennings, the lovely former Playboy Playmate of the Year who starred in a handful of ’70s B-movies before dying in a 1979 car accident at the age of 29, plays Karen Walker, a factory worker who quits her job and then seeks employment with a Los Angeles roller-derby team. Ballsy and tough, Karen quickly proves herself a formidable and unpredictable athlete, knocking down competitors with kicks and punches at top speed. Thanks to her good looks, Karen scores a number of endorsement deals even as she competes with the team’s former top player, Mickey (Betty Ann Rees), and watches a new would-be star, Beverly (Charlene Jones), gain traction. The threadbare narrative also includes Karen’s friendship with two buddies from her factory days, as well as her romantic involvement with a married man.
          In lieu of a fully realized storyline, Unholy Rollers has lots of vibrant stuff. Not scenes, mind you, just stuff. Fights on the skate track. A seduction scene at a gun range. A near-rape in a bar. Chaos in a grocery store. Although there’s rarely anything in this movie to engage the mind, there’s usually something to engage the eye. For instance, Jennings’ acting is weak, with her thick Midwestern accent making even her toughest line readings sound slightly comical, but she’s got sex appeal to burn. Additionally, one suspects that Martin Scorsese, credited here as “supervising editor,” had a hand in two of Unholy Rollers’ most appealing tropes—the inclusion of zesty ’50s songs and irreverent stadium-announcer patter on the soundtrack. (The announcers’ voiceover does a lot of the heavy lifting, in terms of conveying story information.) It’s also reasonable to assume that Scorsese designed the zippy editing that drives the sports scenes. As for the film’s director, Vernon Zimmerman built a wildly erratic filmography during his brief career. In addition to this flick, his fictional features include the bizarre Deadhead Miles (1973), for which Terrence Malick shares credit, and the offbeat Fade to Black (1980). Good luck finding a consistent directorial voice while perusing these offerings.

Unholy Rollers: FUNKY

The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976)

This brainless Roger Corman production delivers the exploitation-flick goods, because leading ladies Claudia Jennings and Jocelyn Jones spend a great deal of their screen time naked; furthermore, the promise of the film’s title is fulfilled, because the movie has Texan locations, dynamite explosions, and chase scenes. (As to whether any of these things are “great,” as the title suggests, that’s another matter.) Unfortunately, the movie is dull as hell, which is quite an accomplishment given the amount of action and skin that appears onscreen. Everything that happens in The Great Texas Dynamite Chase is predictable and trite, with cardboard characters pursuing silly motivations as one lifeless scene blurs into another. Even the usual rebellious irreverence that permeates Corman’s innumerable redecks-on-the-run movies isn’t enough to give this one much energy. It’s all been done before, and better. Jennings, the sensual strawberry blonde who gained fame as a Playboy model, plays Candy, an escaped convict who returns to her small town with a bag full of dynamite she stole from a prison demolition crew. Lighting the TNT as a threat, she struts into a bank and robs the place, aided by recently fired teller Ellie-Jo (Jones). Then, after Candy gives her family the stolen loot so they can pay the mortgage on the family farm, Candy teams up with Ellie-Jo for a string of robberies, plus occasional sexcapades with men they meet along the way. It’s all very lighthearted, with the crime spree treated like a giddy adventure, but the film somehow manages to drag—though it’s only 90 minutes, it feels much longer. Aren’t exploitation flicks supposed to be entertaining?

The Great Texas Dynamite Chase: LAME

Deathsport (1978)

The saving grace of Roger Corman’s cheapo productions is usually a sense of humor, and the importance of jokes to low-budget crap is obvious when watching the Corman turkey Deathsport, which is monotonously grim. A sci-fi thriller set in the same sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland seen in a gazillion other movies—gladiator contests organized by an authoritarian regime, radioactive mutants, and so on—Deathsport is so close to self-parody that it would have been easy to tip the thing into full-on satire. Instead, Deathsport is played straight, even though it’s filled with cartoonish costumes, over-the-top violence, and ridiculous dialogue. (In the finale, the hero announces, “Now we will have our duel,” and the villain replies, “I agree.”) David Carradine, seemingly unaware that he’s appearing in a piece of shit, lays on the gravitas to portray Kaz, a quasi-mystical warrior who roams the wasteland protecting common folk from overlords. He gets captured by bad guys who force Kaz and other warriors, including Deneer (Claudia Jennings), to participate in “Deathsport,” an open-field battle between warriors on foot and soldiers on motorcycles. During the game, Kaz and Deneer mount a rebellion/escape because they need to rescue a little girl from mutants. All of this is set to a chintzy synthesizer score that sounds as if it’s being played by a keyboardist whose day job is pounding away at a roller-rink pipe organ. Co-written and co-directed by Nicholas Niciphor (Corman and Allan Arkush also helped direct the picture), Deathsport is dull, grungy, and unpleasant, featuring not one but two scenes of nude women getting tortured in an electroshock chamber. Still, B-movie fans may enjoy the absurdly somber performances of Carradine and main villain Richard Lynch (a genre-flick favorite memorable for his badly scarred face). Furthermore, leading lady Jennings, a former Playboy model, is easy on the eyes whether dressed or (as if often the case here) not.

Deathsport: LAME

Sisters of Death (1977)

This silly horror picture begins with a weird ritual scene in which several robed women, part of a group called “the Sisters,” test the mettle of two acolytes with a game of Russian roulette. The gun goes off and one of the would-be sisters dies, cueing a string of freeze-frame screams over the opening credits. Seven years later, the survivors of the ritual receive invitations to a reunion party in the California desert, which they happily accept. So, in the course of about 15 minutes, Sisters of Death raises a multitude of questions it never answers. Why were the women surprised death was a possibility when playing Russian roulette? Why didn’t they just go on about their business after the acolyte died? Why, if the ritual were traumatic enough to break up the group, would they cheerfully reunite? And what, exactly, was the purpose of their organization in the first place? Satan worship? Avon sales? Instead of answers, Sisters of Death presents a goofy revenge plot in which the crazed father of the dead girl traps the survivors in a private estate so he can figure out which one pulled the trigger on his sweet little girl. Also thrown into the mix is pair of horny young dudes hired to drive the women to the estate; they linger afterward because they’re hoping to get lucky. To its very limited credit, the movie features a few colorful deaths (by electric fence, Gatling gun, rattlesnake bite, scissors), plus occasional weird details like the scene in which the villain takes a break from killing people in order to practice his flute playing. (Really!) However, Sisters of Death isn’t exploitative enough to thrill fans of trashy cinema, so the only point of interest is the presence of leading lady Claudia Jennings, a sexy strawberry blonde who turned her status as Playboy’s 1970 Playmate of the Year into a decade of B-movie stardom before dying in a car crash at the age of 29.

Sisters of Death: LAME

Fast Company (1979)

Badass biker-movie veteran William Smith didn’t get many opportunities to appear in “real” movies, and it was even less common for him to play sympathetic leads. So while Fast Company is a routine B-movie elevated by the skills and reputation of its director, it also represents a high point for fans of charismatic muscleman Smith. The director is, improbably, Canadian bio-horror specialist David Cronenberg, caught halfway between his early Great White North indies and his ’80s breakout period. He does a solid job as a helmer-for-hire, delivering all the requisite drive-in whammies; lean and mean but reflecting a fair amount of craftsmanship, Cronenberg’s drag-racing extravaganza is exploitive without being out-and-out sleazy. There's violence, debauchery, and skin, but also consistent characters and a rational narrative about how a devious corporate sponsor exploits its drivers. Enter the Dragon guy John Saxon, at the height of his macho comb-over glory, revels in his villainous role, and Smith plays a simple but relatable sort of romantic lead. He also gets to deliver a few tasty lines, like when he takes a shot at his sponsor, Fast Co. Motor Treatment, during a live TV shoot: "Fast Co. is gonna keep you regular and raunchy till way after sundown." Preach on, brother man! The low-rent '70s music is atrocious and tragic ’70s starlet Claudia Jennings is underused, but the movie pays off like gangbusters. Fast Company is that rare animal of an exploitation flick you can watch without feeling skanky the next morning.

Fast Company: FUNKY