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.
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.