Reflections on ... The Female Bunch (1969)

 

Recently watched: The Female Bunch (1969). Tagline: “They dare to do what other women only dream about!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

Naïve young Las Vegas cocktail waitress Sandy (Nesa Renet) is fed up with men and through with hurting. In fact, Sandy is so distraught after the failure of her romance with a lounge singer that she overdoses on pills. Luckily, she’s rescued by her glamorous blonde go-go dancer friend Libby (Regina Carrol). And Libby knows the solution to Sandy’s problems. Blindfolding her first, Libby drives Sandy to a secret, isolated Californian ranch, the premises of a cult-like all-female community of hardened man-hating feminists. “We are completely independent of men!” thunders Grace (Jennifer Bishop), the sadistic and alienated leader of these female supremacists. This being a late sixties sexploitation film, this pack of misandrists still resemble off-duty strippers or glamour models, complete with heavy dark eye make-up, ratted-up bouffant wiglets and cleavage-flaunting wardrobes straight out of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. Once Sandy passes the terrifying initiation ritual (she’s buried alive in a coffin), she’s a fully paid-up member of “the sisterhood.” Before long, though, the in-over-her-head Sandy learns of the women’s criminal activity (they’re smuggling heroin over the Mexican border) and penchant for psychotic violence. Can she escape from their clutches in one piece? 

As this synopsis suggests, exploitation Western The Female Bunch shares DNA with Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) in which a trio of vicious go-go dancers embark on a homicidal crime spree in the desert. A z-grade grindhouse hack, director Al Adamson is no Meyer: his film-making is functional rather than dementedly inspired, but he does sustain an atmosphere of cruelty and sweaty urgency. Don’t expect much character development or motivation. For example, once the ultra-militant feminist amazons cross the Mexican border and start downing tequila in a taverna, within no time they are literally rolling around naked on the sawdust floor getting pawed by male admirers in an orgiastic bacchanal. So hetero-normative! So much for “man-hating!” Valerie Solanas would be vomiting with rage! (To be fair, only one of the gang members is overtly delineated as lesbian). 

In truth, the real-life behind-the-scenes stories surrounding The Female Bunch are considerably more interesting than anything that unfolds onscreen. The cast includes two genuine down-on-their-luck Hollywood stars presumably hungry for work (Lon Chaney Jr and Russ Tamblyn). Notoriously, The Female Bunch was filmed on location at the Spahn Ranch in the summer of 1969 - when it was inhabited by The Manson Family! Perhaps the most striking member of the female gang is statuesque redhead Sadie, played by Aleshia Brevard (billed here as A’lesha Lee). Brevard enjoyed a lengthy career on the margins of show business as a film, stage and TV actress, Playboy playmate, model and nightclub entertainer – and was a transgender pioneer. She kept her gender reassignment surgery a secret until 2001 when she released her autobiography The Woman I Was Not Born to Be. (She died in 2017 aged 79). As Libby, the magnetic Regina Carrol nails one of my favourite sixties bad girl looks (disheveled teased mane of peroxide hair, frosted white lipstick). Carrol was married to the director, and tragically died of cancer aged just 49.  And finally, Al Adamson was gruesomely murdered aged 66 in 1995 (his live-in handyman killed him after a dispute and “entombed” the corpse under cement where the jacuzzi used to be. The LA Times headline screamed: “Horror Film Director Found Slain, Buried Under Floor”).

 

The Female Bunch is free to view on Amazon Prime