This … is a guy.
Roger Corman’s Swamp Women (1956) is an odd combination of the bad with the good. A gang of desperate women are in their third year of imprisonment in a New Orleans prison, but the jewels they stole have not yet been found. They break out with the help of a new prisoner, who goes with them. What they don’t know? The newbie is a police lieutenant, working under cover. And what doesn’t she know? The jewels are hidden in the local swamp.
The one in the back seat on the left is bemoaning her lack of gun to return fire on the pursuing cops.
That makes her so hot.
On the good side of the ledger is the women in this movie, who quite frankly dominate. For the era, it’s unusual to see such a movie; it’s downright exotic to see a movie where several of the women are not just pushy broads, to use the jargon of the era, but actually bloodthirsty and quick with a gun. And the woman (and her boyfriend) who get caught up in the scheme on an innocent swamp trip are ground up and tossed aside by this gang.
On the negative side? The plot is silly, the acting mediocre, and the cinematography is rather ghastly – except for the underwater scenes, which I thought were impressively well done, even if they only last a total of roughly two seconds. While the characters are fairly credible, some of the actions – such as fabricating and tossing a spear, with superior accuracy, at someone in a tree, all in about two minutes – were quite unbelievable.
And I am forced to admit that the subtle acting skills of the alligator that ultimately makes a meal of the innocent woman (who seemed to more or less either try to suck the tonsils off her man, or weep and wail about her fate) were the superior skill set for this movie.
Two more notes: the commercial posters of this movie are wildly inaccurate and appeal to prurient interests. The only bonds are used on the non-entity guy who the gang captures along the way.
And the opening credit sequence? Imaginative, creative, and, in a way, disturbing.
In the end, it’s as if ideology met inferior film making, making me wonder if there might have been something more to this than made it to film.
