disgusting, overrated, pointless

An Exercise In Nonsense

Admirable film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A quintet of desperate ladies go on the lam after escaping from a prison work farm. The cops naturally give chase while the gals embark on a wild crime and killing spree. Director Stephen C. Apostolof not only keeps the delightfully down'n'dirty story zipping along at a constant brisk pace and maintains a blithely lurid tone throughout, but also delivers several scorching hot soft-core sex scenes and oodles of tasty gratuitous female nudity. The leave-no-sleazy-stone-unturned script by Apostolof and Edward D. Wood Jr. certainly gives viewers their grubby money's worth: We've got the fugitives stealing filthy threads from a commune of low-rent dippy hippies, two babes rape a hapless male motorist, and there's even a lively brawl with a ferocious biker gang. Moreover, it's acted with gusto by a game cast of exploitation cinema regulars: Tallie Cochrane as vicious predatory lesbian Kat, Rene Bond as raucous racist white trash tramp Toni, Maggie Lanier as sweet innocent Dee, Jabie Abercrombie as the sassy Paula, and Donna Young as brash trustee inmate Sheila. Wood Jr. plays both a sheriff in hot pursuit and doddery old airstrip caretaker Pops. The robust combo jazz and funk score hits the get-down groovy spot. The vibrant color cinematography rates as another nice asset. A total scuzzy blast.

I was VERY disappointed with this film. I expected more of a Thelma and Louise female-buddy crime movie. Instead, the women prison escapees in this flick, had no sense of loyalty to one another. They were an extremely vulgar pack of hyenas, who beat each other up, double-crossed each other, and even committed lesbian rape against other women in the film.Instead of being shrewed thieves, who stuck together to plan their escape and find the hidden stash of money, the women escapees were too selfish and vicious, to trust each other for long. These women weren't liberated in a positive sense. They just ended up being a bunch of loose-cannons, incapable of respect for themselves, or each other. If you like 70s female crime caper films, skip this bomb, and see The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, which stars Claudia Jennings and Jocelyn Jones.

Fugitive Girls (1974) ** (out of 4) Director Stephen and screenwriter Edward D. Wood, Jr. teamed up several times throughout their careers with their best known film being Orgy of the Dead, which gets my vote for the worst film ever made but this film here isn't too bad. A sweet, innocent girl is sent to prison for a crime she didn't do but once in she's soon being forced to break out with her four cellmates. Soon the five women are on the run trying to avoid the police while searching for some money one of the women hid. This is pretty much your typical drive-in, sexploitation junk but it helps wonders due to the off the wall screenplay by Wood. The dialogue here is incredibly silly and offers some great laughs including some funny sequences where the racist woman gets into it with the black one. All five characters are the same we've seen in countless films like this as we have the sweet girl, the racist one, the tough black chic, the butch and the slut. While the characters are all unoriginal I must give Wood credit for really mixing up the screenplay and throwing all sorts of craziness into the mix. We get several fights, a scene where two of the women rape a man, hippies, bikers and a weird gas station owner played by Wood. All of the acting is rather poor but it does provide more laughs. There's also plenty of nudity on display but the DVD version is the theatrical cut, which is missing some nudity and extended sex scenes. Apparently a XXX version was also released in some theaters. This is certainly a poorly made film but if you're a fan of the WIP genre then you should get a few laughs out of this.

Okay, the women don't spend much time in prison, they're most on the run abusing hippies, a gas attendant (Ed Wood!) and they rape a man, just like in the Wood-scripted "The Violent Years" (1956)! The women ain't that good lookin' and the film is too dark but the film's nasty tone and the massive doses of nudity helps a lot + the Woodian touches are pretty clear. Any sleazemonger should own this cheap but mad flick. Also check the director's magnum opus "Orgy Of The Dead" from 1965 - also a Wood story with the mighty Criswell in the cast!