Shanty Tramp

Exploitative story of a day (mostly night) in the life of a shanty tramp, southern slang for prostitute. What does this movie have but every cliché you might imagine people think about when they use the phrase 'white trash'.

On this one hot summer night, there's prostitution, religious hypocrisy, misogyny, drunkenness, fistfights, bigotry, interracial sex, biker gangs, incest, lynching, moonshine, a car chase with explosive results, nudity, murder, and even an instance of walking out on the restaurant tab! There's more than can be listed.

All presented in stereotyped characterizations, but the lead female, Lee Holland, does an admirable job in her only film role ever, as does the fellow playing the lecherous preacher, a Paul Newman look-alike. Also nice is the fact that all scenery are actual locations, making for a realistic setting. Most likely someplace in Florida, as the accents are not too deep south, more typical for Florida, and the producer K Gordon Murray worked out of a facility in Coral Gables.

One of the more enjoyable exploitation trash films I've seen.

There was a big market for films with sex and violence at their center in the 1960s. One can't blame the filmmakers for taking advantage of that. One also can't blame the filmmakers for not having much money and using not totally professional actors and actresses. On the other hand, there's a lot to like about the film. It is surprisingly realistic, thoughtful, and competently shot and edited. It manages to capture a lot of the attitudes and morals of the 1960s, showing both the racism and hypocrisy that was common in the South of this time period. It isn't a great film, but certainly holds your attention and is worth seeing for its historical value. If you want to see what the pre-civil rights South in America was like, this will give you a good idea.

If you don't know what you're letting yourself in for, you probably shouldn't be watching this. Otherwise, it delivers all it promises in every respect. You may feel the need to bathe after this delightful trash and will have numerous lines to quote. Joyfully sleazy.

SHANTY TRAMP is one of those scuzzy, low budget, regional black-and-white exploitation features made in America during the late 1960s and pushing the censorial boundaries; hence this film's surprising amount of topless female nudity. I found it a surprisingly decent production that tells the story of a small town getting stirred up by the machinations of a 'loose' young woman who riles up a local drunk before seducing a black man in a barn. Chaos, unsurprisingly, erupts. It's a film with better characterisation and acting than I expected, quite hard-hitting and grim in its depiction of fallen human characters, and laced with sex and violence.

Shanty Tramp is often mentioned as one of the precursors to the exploitation tradition - and that would certainly seem to be true. While films like Psycho and Peeping Tom had already brought violence to the forefront, this film revels in pure SLEAZE - as while still comparatively tame compared to some later efforts, Shanty Tramp still contains a number of detestable characters including a drunken father, a sinful preacher and, of course, the central character - an insatiable young hussy who uses people for her own enjoyment. The plot focuses on said character as she sets out looking for adventure at other people's expense. She meets a man at a bar, but he ends up getting in a scrap with a black man and is shocked to find that she prefers him! After rounding up his mates, the men prepare for vengeance upon the black man; as does the girl's drunken father, who believes his daughter's lies that he raped her and gets 'every white man in town' looking for him. All this goes on while a shady preacher is busy shouting about the lord!

The film was obviously shot on a very limited budget as the whole thing looks very cheap. Shanty Tramp was shot in black and white, but it's not the fluid black and white picture that adorns many, bigger budgeted, films as this one looks like the filmmakers got a load of film stock on the cheap. The acting too is mostly terrible, and the dialogue is mostly trite; but all this is unlikely to put off the seasoned exploitation fan, who will no doubt be used to poor production values and non-talented performers. None of this stuff matters anyway, as the real focus of the film is on the shady characters and nasty situations that they find themselves in. The film doesn't feature much blood - and indeed, there is only one real shocking sequence in the entire film, but this is down to the time in which the film was made, and Shanty Tramp is still an excellent early taster of things to come. Overall, this might not be a great film in the classic sense - but I'm sure it had some influence on films that are classics, and it's well worth tracking down both for that reason and for the fact that it's a great deal of fun to watch!