Five Loose Women (1974)

Fresh and Exciting

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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.

Out on a date "Paula" (Jabie Abercrombie) is sitting in the car while her boyfriend goes into a liquor store for some booze. What she doesn't realize is that he has just robbed the store and killed the clerk. When he tries to escape in the car she subsequently gets caught and is sent to a remote minimum security prison for women. On her first night there she is raped by another one of the prisoners named "Kat" (Tallie Cochrane) who is the leader of her particular cell block. Not long afterward all 4 women in this cell block decide to break out of prison and coerce Paula into going with them. After their escape it appears that each new scenario results in at least one of these ladies removing their blouses for one reason or the other. At least, that's what I considered to be the basic gist of the movie. As far as the actual quality of the film was concerned the script was weak, the acting was bad, the lighting was dismal and the action sequences were equally substandard. On top of that, other than Rene Bond (as the southern prisoner named "Toni") and possibly Janet Newell (as the hippie named "Calico") none of the women were that particularly attractive. In essence, while this may have been standard fare for a drive-in during the mid-70's it doesn't qualify as something anybody should rush out and view. At least I didn't think so. Below average.

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.

Two alternate titles for "Five Loose Women" are "Fugitive Girls" and "Hot on the Trail" (which was the title I viewed it under).This film was written by Ed Wood at the end of his career, and near the end of his life, when he was basically a down-on-his-luck drunk just trying to afford his rent. He has a minor part in the film where he looks rather beaten down and haggard...I don't think too much make-up was required to achieve that look.Rene Bond did a great job and looked great, as usual. A.C. Stephens did his usual Ed Wood style of directing. Don't know if it was intentional, but it's hard to tell them apart when it comes to things like lighting and how the actors deliver their parts.