A quintet of female prisoners escapes from jail and take off into the desert and get involved in all kinds of trouble. They steal clothes from a bunch of dirty hippies, roll an unsuspecting motorist, battle some bikers, and rape a cripple’s wife while he watches helplessly. It all ends with a big fight at a gravel pit.
Fugitive Girls is really stupid and cheap but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it immensely. It was written by none other than the man himself, Ed Wood and features enough trademark Wood moments to make it a blast for his fans. There are the patented Ed Wood driving scenes where the film cuts from day to night and back to day again within the same scene. There’s the scene where the horny female criminals rape an unwilling man by the side of the road that’s almost exactly like the one found in Wood’s The Violent Years. And best of all, Wood himself co-stars in not one but TWO roles!
I also liked the fact that Wood and director A.C. Stephens employed the five women’s naked bodies to their fullest potential and used ANY excuse for them to take their clothes off, no matter how flimsy. (My favorite was when they had to strip off all of their clothes to check them for lice). The prison itself was freaking hilarious. The budget was so low that Stephens couldn’t afford to film the movie in an actual prison so he filmed it in a goddamn summer camp instead! Pure fucking genius! And come to think of it, this may be the only Women in Prison movie in which you never got to see one damn prison guard!
Wood and Stephens also collaborated on the timeless classic Orgy of the Dead. Co-star Rene Bond also starred in Wood’s Necromania.
AKA: Five Loose Women. AKA: Hot on the Trail. AKA: Women’s Penitentiary 8.
Angela (The Dicktator) Carnon stars as a depressed housewife and mother who is unsatisfied with her workaholic husband’s performance in bed. When they decide to join a swinger’s group, he gets insanely jealous when he sees a hot lesbian munching down on her box so he starts a big fight with her. She’s had enough of his ass so she leaves to go live with her bucktoothed girlfriend who encourages her to go out and have various flings. First she picks up an engaged guy, then a pilot who double-teams her with his roommate and finally, her and her friend seduce two musicians. In the end, she has enough of her slutty ways and tries to come home to her estranged husband and kids.
Ed Wood wrote the screenplay to this softcore skin flick and it may have been some of the best writing he’s ever done because most of the people in this movie actually speak like human beings for a change. Director Stephen C. Apostolof (who also directed Woods’ Orgy of the Dead) does a good job at balancing the sex scenes with the melodrama as he always keeps you interested in the “plot” without going overboard with it. He also films the numerous balling sequences with a bit of panache and really knows how to stage himself an orgy scene.
On the downside, his over reliance on transition scenes will drive you up the fucking wall. In every scene he’ll zoom in on someone’s wine glass until it loses focus and then cuts to them holding another wine glass in another place and time. It was okay the first four times he did it but it gets annoying as fuck after awhile. It’s okay though because the scene where Carnon loses her baby was creepy as all get out. Apostolof bathes the hospital room in red light and shows the dead baby’s shadow silhouetted across Carnon’s face. It’s definitely disturbing and not the sort of thing you’re used to seeing in a low budget 70’s skin flick.
While Carnon isn’t much of a looker she’s got a passable body on her and is really energetic during her fuck scenes. She’s also a dang fine actress too and really sells her character’s plight in a convincing enough matter for you to actually give a shit whether or not she actually gets back with her husband. 70’s porn vets Rene Bond and Candy Samples can also be glimpsed during the orgy scene too.
Apostolof and Wood once again teamed up for Class Reunion the same year.
AKA: Pleasure Unlimited.
Wood stars (under the pseudonym Daniel Davis) as Glen, a hapless transvestite who is engaged to be married but doesn’t want to tell his fiancée his shocking secret. If this one plotline was all there was, that’d still be enough to fill a barely hour long movie, but Wood has a lot more up his sleeve. He packs the movie but not one, but TWO narrators; one a doctor relating various stories of transvestism and sex changes to a clueless detective, and the other, Bela Lugosi sitting in a chair and rambling on and on about God knows what. (“Beware of the big green dragon who sits on your doorstep! He eats little boys! Puppy dog tails, and big fat snails! Beware! Take care! Beware! Pull the strings!”) Lugosi’s incoherent gibberish alone would be worth the price of admission, but Wood also throws in a heaping of meaningless stock footage to further confound the viewer. Everything from traffic (“All people, all going somewhere”), airplanes (“If the good Lord intended us to fly, he would’ve given us wings”) and even buffalo randomly come on to the screen, and Wood also finds time to haphazardly toss in a little “roughie” S & M footage as well, just because. The editing that ties everything together so incoherently in and of itself would make this flick highly recommended, but what really gives the film it’s “I can’t take my eyes off of it” energy is the passion and love that Wood obviously poured into the film.
Wood was clearly ahead of his time here and even though his cry for tolerance and acceptance of transvestites went on deaf ears in the 50’s, his singular passion and dedication to the project still holds up today, even if his methods were crude at best.
Oh yeah and since the producers originally hired him to do a sex change movie (Wood added in all the transvestite stuff as if he was making his own independent movie) so there’s an obligatory sex change operation at the end of the flick. If you’ve think you’ve seen it all, trust me you haven’t. Go out of your way to find this treasured gem, and you’ll be glad you did.
AKA: He or She. AKA: I Changed My Sex. AKA: I Led Two Lives.
AKA: Hellborn. AKA: The Young and the Immoral. AKA: Rock and Roll Hell.
Like The Manster, it was backed with Japanese money, has Japanese settings, features Japanese supporting players and has a climax atop of a volcano. Though not directed by Wood, a lot of his signature touches are evident and make up for Crane’s lackluster pacing.
It basically plays like a vegetarian version of Frankenstein.
James (Bigfoot) Craig stars as mad scientist Dr. Bragan. He yells and screams a lot (“How in the hell can anybody be so utterly stupid as to build a rocket base on the coast of Florida?”) while a rocket takes off. He has a conniption and his colleague suggests he take a vacation in Japan. On his way to the airport, his car breaks down and he takes it to a mechanic who specializes in “Snakes and Gas”. While waiting to get his car fixed, he digs up a Venus flytrap and smuggles it aboard his flight. (If Samuel L. Jackson was on board, the movie would’ve been called Venus Flytraps on a Plane.)
He goes to relax in a house in the country (That happens to be right next to an active volcano!) equipped with a greenhouse where he and his assistants try to strengthen the plant. He also has midnight rendezvous’ with the plant where he tells it, “Your mother was the soil! Perhaps the lightning will be your father!” He then has his team of topless bathing beauties to swim to an island to get another plant and combines the two. Then he pulls a Frankenstein and raises the plant onto a platform where it’s struck by lightning!
After the experiment, it becomes a hulking rubbery looking plant monster with flytrap hands. When it looks like it’s going to die, the hunchback assistant feeds it a puppy and it gets better, but after the hunchback teases the monster it attacks him. The monster uproots itself and terrorizes a nearby village. After it kills a child, simple Japanese villagers grab their torches and chase it. When Bragan discovers it’s a murderer he decides to kill it. “I will destroy my creation. My work of genius. Now I have to find a small farm animal!”
If you were concerned Bragan was going to do something lewd with a sheep or something, don’t worry, because he actually uses a goat to lure “Insectavorus” out into the open.
When the monster gets the drop on Bragan, they both fall into the volcano.
Or at least I think so.
Like Wood’s Bride of the Monster, this scene is so badly edited; you really have to think hard about what the hell’s going on. First you see the monster grab Bragan then two dummies fall off a mountain top, then there’s a shot of lava.
At least the goat lives.
The movie’s also got lots of stock footage, badly dubbed dialogue and tons of cheesy muzak. All this sounds a lot better (or worse depending on your point of view) than it really is, but Craig’s overacting coupled with Wood’s awful dialogue (“Unless I miss my guess, my creation is so powerful now, it can devour anything!”) is the main reason to watch it and the plant monster is good for a few laughs.
AKA: The Devil Garden. AKA: The Double Garden. AKA: Venus Fly Trap.
Wood looks pretty bloated due to rampant alcoholism (he’s seen taking a few nips here and there) and seeing him running around in his tightie whities is not a pretty sight but he’s entertaining to watch. His best line is when he tells one of the models, “Go ahead have a ball… or TWO!” The entertaining opening credits are painted on the models Laugh-In style.
Director Joseph F. Robertson also produced such classics as The Crawling Hand and The Slime People before settling down and doing skin flicks full time. Wood also was in Robertson’s Mrs. Stone’s Thing the next year.
AKA: Pretty Models All in a Row. AKA: The Photographer.
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