Olga's Dance Hall Girls

Olga's Dance Hall Girls (1969)

* (out of 4)

The wicked Olga (Lucy Eldredge) is back in action and this time she has a partner. The two of them are gathering up housewives to appear in their dance hall but of course this here is just a cover for prostitution.

I was never a huge fan of this series as I thought all four films (the fifth is currently lost) were quite awful but I did decide to give them another shot and I will admit that I found them to be slightly better on the second go around but there's no doubt that they are still pretty bad.

As you can tell, original star Audrey Campbell is out as Olga and I must say that Eldredge wasn't great nor awful in the role. In fact, I really don't think it's important who plays the part as there's very little acting needed. The film does have a bit more nudity than some of the previous entries and the ending is interesting to say the least.

As with the other films, this one is hurt by the lack of any good story and more times than not there isn't too much happening. For an exploitation movie there are a lot of moments where nothing much is going on and this makes the film rather boring most of the time.

After the success of the Olga series with Audrey Campbell, there were two sequels. The first, Mme. Olga's Massage Parlor, carried over a couple of characters from the original trilogy. Then came this film which retains none of the things that made the original series unique (for better or worse).

Gone is the Joel Holt narration that was present in the original films as well as the repetitious music that could drive a Disney fan to suicide. Olga herself is played by Lucy Eldridge and she does not have any of the screen presence of Campbell. I found myself more interested in her creepy sidekick who Olga refers to as Vince and the character who narrates refers to as Nick the creep (Larry Hunter from Doris Wishman's The Amazing Transplant). Even though he had two different names, he was entertaining to watch as he reminded me of a character that would have been at home in an early John Waters movie (in particular when he talked, I kept thinking of David Lochary in Pink Flamingos).

Plotwise, this one does make a bit of an effort as Olga and Nick/Vince have a new racket in that they are recruiting bored housewives to work in their dance hall which doubles as a house of sin. We are treated to a number of scenes in the hall and at one point, one of the dance hall girls strips down and her dancing becomes an aphrodisiac for all in the room. The film also takes a bizarre turn when we are shown the Olga and the gang are involved in occult rituals that involve human sacrifice. A nifty new angle but overall it didn't work due to the weak portrayal of the title character.