Female Bunch/Alley Tramp

Another passion of mine, besides music, is Exploitation cinema from the 60s and 70s. Films that should have been seen at the drive-in, but you’ll take watching them at home on VHS or DVD, because that’s the only way you can see them now. The worse the acting, the thinner the plot, the tackier the set pieces, the better. My latest great find in this realm is an odd and highly enjoyable film from 1969 called The Female Bunch. If Russ Meyer and Sergio Leone had ever collaborated on a movie, this is what might have come from such an ungodly marriage. It’s warped Spaghetti Western meets Warped Sexploitation as a band of pissed-off, man-hating honeys set up a commune on a ranch in New Mexico. There, they drink, do drugs, brawl, and maim or kill any many unlucky enough to wander onto the ranch or look at them the wrong way. A young Russ Tamblyn and a not-so-young Lon Chaney are among the hapless victims. There is a theme song that is absolutely cool and which sounds like the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! theme, if it had been written by Ennio Morricone. I got my DVD copy of this film from an independent seller on Amazon Marketplace. The picture quality is not the best ever, but the film is perfectly watchable.

Prior to that, my most recent trash movie happening was when I bought Something Weird Video’s twin bill of Alley Tramp and Over 18 and Ready. The second feature is kinda cool in its own way, but the real rave-ability of this DVD is all about Alley Tramp. This is what B-movies can and should be. A teenage girl with an annoying Midwestern accent, who catches both of her parents cheating on each other, decides she’s going to join in on the fun. The scene where her parents, who now know that she is fooling around with a distant cousin, confront her about skipping school and generally carrying on in a shameful way, will have you giggling hysterically and doing multiple playbacks. But maybe the coolest part of this movie is the music. In the opening scene, the bad girl walks into her house after a day at school, pops on a record on her parents’ stereo console, and what comes out, and what she does a dramatic dance to, is some kind of groovy, reverb-heavy instrumental that sounds like a cross between The Velvet Undergound and the backing track to a song by The Association. Airy yet rocking.