Five Loose Women (1974)

People are voting emotionally.

A Masterpiece!

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

After watching this cheap flick, there was one thing I was sure of. The protagonist's name -- Jabie Abercrombie -- is her real birth name. No doubt about it. I savor each syllable. It rings along my veins. And anyway, if you could make up a stage name, would you choose "Jabie Abercrombie"? As for any question about her figure, the mystery is solved in the first five seconds.Innocent Abercrombie finds herself in the slams and four of her fellow inmates force her to accompany them when they escape. The cops are looking for them everywhere. A long segment follow them as they hustle through the brush of the scenic milieu of the California coast range. Aside from Abercrombie there are -- let me see -- a tough Negro, a Southern racist, a hard-as-nails lesbian, and a rather tall nonentity.As they wobble through the bushes they first run into what seems like a Hippie love-in, in the middle of nowhere. They change their clothes and wobble on. Next, they reach a back road and flag down a Cadillac. They disable the driver, rape the half-conscious man, and steal his car. They gas up at an abandoned air strip tended by Ed Wood, who they knock unconscious. Then they run into five tough bikers. There is a brief fracas and the male Rat Pack is unconscious. Then they break into a farmhouse and take two hostages, and at that point they all seem to become lesbians and begin to molest the crippled farmer's wife. But why go on? The direction is clumsy. If a pan happens to cross the camera's shadow, so what? The editor was on mushrooms. A conversation ("If we're going to get through this we'll have to bury the hatchet") is shown twice. As for the performances, nobody can act. You can act better than anyone in this film. I can act better -- HAVE acted better. My performance as a drunken gambler in the superb "Traxx" was lauded by at least one perceptive critic -- my mother.Has anyone who claims that a movie is "so bad it's good" ever actually thought about that buzz phrase? A small budget is bound to be a hindrance to the story but the story itself doesn't need to be so eminently disposable. I doubt that a respectable movie like "Carnival of Souls" had much of a budget, or "The Little Fugitive." But they held a certain appeal for mature viewers whereas this seems designed for an audience of teen-aged kids at a drive-in, anxious to see bobbing bosoms before they get down to fogging up the windows.

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.