The Muthers (1976)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Admirable film.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie reminds me of the episodes of Magnum P.I where they'd be flashing back to Magnum, Rick and TC in Vietnam, where Thomas and Rick in really bad cammo makeup would be hustling through the heavy brush of Honolulu with TC hovering overhead in his chopper. Similar 15-cent production values. Same cardboard-cutout SE Asians. Same ridiculously bad hand-to-hand combat. Same generic music. I assume when people went to the Drive-In in the 70s they watched the feature film then furiously made out while this junk was on the screen. I can't imagine anyone actually paying actually hard-earned currency to see this in a theatre. Not even in 1970s Times Square. I give it 2 stars for the shower scene. Two beautiful firm black stars.

The title of this film might give you a clue to its poor quality. This is the kind of B film that one might expect to find in the worst drive-in theaters.The main characters are some beautiful black women who use poorly simulated martial arts to gain revenge on men who treat them like property, often white men.The dialogue is atrocious, the production values cheap, the acting amateurish, and the background music sounds like someone used a cassette player to tape instrumental sections of other films and then (almost randomly) used them in this film.This is Blaxploitation at its worst. It is demeaning to its audience, because the quality is so bad and it assumes the viewer is less sophisticated than a seventh grader. This film is so bad it would be laughable if not for its blatantly racist and misogynistic undertones.

A band of female pirates partake in a daring rescue mission to save one of their own from the vile clutches of vicious white slavers. Sounds like one hell of a solid and stirring premise, right? Well, alas, the potentially explosive potential of said premise never gets fully realized due to Cirio H. Santiago's flat direction, a rather blah and overly talky script by Cyril St. James, blandly staged action scenes, an often poky pace, surprisingly mild violence, and only a smidgen of gratuitous female nudity. The key problem is that Santiago never manages to acquire the hard sleazy edge needed to make this picture seriously smoke. Luckily, the attractive and animated female leads keep this one watchable: Jayne Kennedy as the classy Serena, Roseanne Katon as the sassy Anggie, Jeannie Bell as the sweet Kelly, and Tina Parks as the sharp-tongued Marcie. Tony Carreon makes for a suitably slimy villain as the scurvy and sadistic Monteiro. John Montgomery likewise breathes some much appreciated life into the otherwise fairly limp proceedings as treacherous rival pirate leader Turko. The ineptly staged martial arts fights with their obvious use of stunt doubles are good for a few hearty unintentional laughs. Fortunately, things pick up considerably in the eventful and exciting last third, but overall this movie sizes up as an okay diversion at best.

Filipino auteur and Roger Corman collaborator Cirio H. Santiago lensed, wrote (as Leonard Hermes) and produced this odd combination of blaxploitation action pic and chicks-in-chains quickie.Janine "TNT Jackson" Bell stars as half of a modern day pirate duo who, along with savage sista Rosanne Katon, must rescue Janine's sister from the clutches of evil coffee plantation owner Tony Carreon. Along the way they meet sportscaster-turned-actress Jayne Kennedy, who turns up as Carreon's mistress, and Trina "Thumper" Parks, who plays the head prisoner in Carreon's jive java jail.Really, this one is for WIP fans only. Trust me on this.