SAVAGE SISTERS

d. Eddie Romero (1974)

Another blog entry, another low budget, high entertainment Filipino made exploitation film, this time a broad romp about a proposed revolution in a fascistic 'banana republic' and the hunt for a briefcase containing a million dollars that will help finance the whole thing. That's the whole plot. 

Inconsequential but fast moving, the film looks like it was fun to make, although post-production stories of having to use the jungle as a bathroom and a cave filled with bats as a dressing room perhaps put a different perspective on it. It's mainly a lot of running around, gun play, martial arts and John Ashley showing off as an amoral but endearing entrepreneur who wears leopardskin underpants and has sex with everybody.   

As is often the case in these films, the female characters are at the forefront, and the three stars are black, white and Asian, which accounts for the film's alternate title, Ebony, Ivory and Jade. Yes, these women are there to be looked at, but they also kick arse and are always one step ahead of everybody else, and their motivations (greed; revenge; freedom) are clear and believable. The Ebony element is provided by Gloria Hendry, a striking looking and talented actress whose greatest performance was pretending to find Roger Moore irresistible in Live and Let Die. 

The usual suspects show up to support the stars: Sid Haig (as a sadistic panto Mexican) and the ever-present, always welcome, inexplicably still alive Vic Diaz (he looked close to death forty five years ago), here playing a bandit called One Eye who wears a tight t shirt that sits atop his pot belly and, when he turns around, reveals far too much bum crack, i.e. any.

The once all-conquering cycle is clearly running out of steam, but is still a good way of passing the time. Life is short, my friends, you must take your meagre pleasures while you may. The body count is ridiculously high, by the way, but even torture scenes are played for laughs so you don't really notice. Good times.  

GIRLS IN PRISON

d. Edward L. Cahn (1956)

There’s not much to distinguish Girls In Prison as anything other than a very generic b-movie: a mass stabbing, perhaps, a slight allusion to lesbianism, an earthquake that facilitates an escape, a prison chaplain who is a bit too interested in one of the new inmates. Much of the film is just as you’d expect, and given the advanced ages of most of the cast, the definition of 'girls' is fairly loose, to say the least.

The best thing in it is Adele Jergens as Jenny, top dog and matriarch of the prison. Jenny is fairly genial most of the time, even likeable and kind, but is hard as nails when it comes down to tin tacks, a gun wielding, wavy peroxided, scarlet lipped force of nature. She’s also absolutely gorgeous, even when chewing gum whilst simultaneously smoking a cigarette (actually, especially when chewing gum whilst simultaneously smoking a cigarette). The film would be almost insufferably dull without her.

After an hour and twenty minutes of molasses slow mayhem, the film climaxes in a bruising brawl and a gun fight. It’s a good way to end any drama, I find. After the dust has settled and the wonderful Jenny has gone the way of all pistol packing mama's, we end on a close up of a church steeple while some quasi-religious music plays, as if God has in some way been responsible for the restoring the balance of law and order. Rubbish. God was not responsible, although maybe he set off the earthquake to punish some other sinners in the general area. As for the rest, omniscient he may be, but micro management is not exactly his style. 

THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE

d. Leslie Kardos (1957)

We’re in one of our favourite cinematic locations (alright one of my favourite cinematic locations), the women’s prison. This particular jail is notable for its high incidence of fatal heart attacks amongst the prisoners, usually preceded by lots and lots of screaming. Somewhat unpredictably, It turns out that the prison governors are all 150 years old, the last surviving guinea pigs of experimental animal magnetism experimentation. Apparently, the treatment has formed an invisible stone sheath around their bodies, protecting them from knives, bullets, breaks, bruises and the ravages of time. Every now and again, the treatment needs renewing, so, before they turn into statues, they order their lumbering henchman to steal a female convict, at which point they dump her in a warm water bath, attach some electrodes and suck the energy out of her until she’s good and dead.

No, I don’t know how they came up with them, either. But I’m glad that they did, as it’s another mad minor classic from that most psychotronic of cinematic years, 1957 AD.