Sandy (Ness Renet) falls on hard times working in a night club as a waitress, falling in love with a singer who has no interest in keeping her around after he’s bedded her. With nowhere to go, she decides to give up on life but is saved by her co-worker and friend Libby (Regina Carrol), blindfolding her as she takes her to a secret all-female ranch out in the desert, completely independent of men. She finds a place of her own but must follow the rules without question. Soon, she’s running drugs across the Mexican desert while stirring up all kinds of local trouble for farmers and any men they can find. But maybe it’s not the life she really wants and getting out proves the toughest thing she’s ever done.
Filmed in 1969 by director Al Adamson, The Female Bunch is a classic low budget drive-in title with nearly no production value, shoddy acting, terrible ADR, gratuitous nudity, silly violence, and barely a thread for a story. Of course, that all makes it incredibly fun to watch as its loose attempts to be anything but keeps it well in within the cheesy realm we expect.
At 84 minutes, the film is perhaps best known, if at all, for its location shoot at Spahn Ranch, at the time occupied by the Manson Family and being the last film role of Lon Chaney Jr. Neither of these make much of an impression on the film, though it’s a little disappointing to see Chaney Jr. cast as an old drunk and former stunt man without much to do. Still, he’s clearly the most capable actor on set and at least has some presence playing a groveling simpleton who’s in over his head. You can see where his path leads almost the moment you meet him.
The plot centers on opportunities to have the women in various states of undress, with an easy eighty percent of the movie showcasing the troublemaking women squabble with each other and toy with weak willed men. We meet Sandy at the start but she’s barely in the film after the opening moments, her voice as narration a few times along the way popping up to remind us she is still part of what’s going on before she’s back in the finale.
Adamson and the script work to try and keep these women seen as a group of sexy hell-raisers, roughing it up in the desert and keeping all the men in their midst focused on their bodies, and for the time and money given to the production, it does as it intends. The group’s leader is Grace (Jennifer Bishop), and as expected, she looses her grip on the gang, resorting to increasing violence in hopes of keeping control. That leads to a cowpoke named Bill (Russ Tamblyn), who sneaks around looking for sex, ending up on the wrong end of a pitchfork as Grace gets carried away with her commitment to lawlessness.
Admittedly, this gives the last third of the movie some punch and a jolt of much-need energy as everything up to this is mostly improvised, scattershot nonsense. Its scene after scene of awkward, uncomfortably acted sequences that certainly keeps a smirk on your face, but loads your head full of questions, the primary one being “Huh?” I think I like the dreadful ADR the best, as the audio for the entire film is clearly added in post, often not even matching what the actors mouths are speaking, looking and sounding like an old dubbed Saturday afternoon kung-fu movie.
The whole thing is a strange conundrum, with young women trying to be outlaws against societal conventions for their gender yet on screen filling the same roles they seem to be working to escape from, dressed in scanty outfits, giggling and prancing about on their horses, and instead of really embracing their hatred of men (most of them actively want men to be there), sort of just become sexually available to them even as they give the impression of having authority over that decision. We never get to know Sandy or why she so ready falls into suicide when rejected, the plot just dropping her off at the end to run away with another man. It’s actually funny.
Brief and ultimately empty of any value, The Female Bunch is a marred gem of the genre that never truly takes advantage of the material, its nudity and sex far too tame, its themes barley explored, and its women forgettable. For fans of the curious only.