Sweet Sugar

Thanks to a friend I used to work with at a local video store, we had weekend contests to see who could find the Most Gawd-Awful Movie to play on the monitors...something so bad that it would stop the customers in their tracks from shock and disbelief. He thought he'd won with this hysterically bad gem, starring the amply endowed Phyllis (VEGA$) Davis as a horny free spirit, who gets spirited away to a prison/sugar cane colony in the middle of God-knows-where, after the local 'policia' frame her on a phony drug charge.

Covering all the bases, from mad-scientist flicks, women-in-prison movies, Seventies soft-core porn and badly made action flicks shot overseas on the cheap, it even throws in a little blackexploitation vibe with the faaaabulous presence of Ella Edwards. Cliff Osmond and Angus Duncan commit thespian thievery every chance they get, and Duncan seems to have popped in a set of steel dentures, as he gives every scene he's in a good going-over, like a fresh pack of Wrigley's.

The surefire way to know if you will love or hate this movie, is to find it under its original title and not any of the other name-changed versions. Because SWEET SUGAR may be the only version that contains that howler of a theme song, which sounds like the L.A. band X going on a HUGE acid-and-tequila bender in some South-of-the-Border dive bar, crossed with The Mamas and The Papas on Zoloft. If the priceless opening number doesn't do it for ya, you either need to switch to an actual film that has some tangible artistic value, or do what we did, and continue the quest to find the All-Time Worst Film on the shelf.

(In case you're wondering, BTW, I won the Contest after picking BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS.)