★★★½
“Hard-hitting early female cop flick, stands the test of time better than most 70’s movies.”
This is the kind of film Chris describes as “hokey”. I’m not quite sure what that means – the last to get the label was Deathstalker II, so I suspect it’s Chris-speak for “sucks”*. Luckily for the movie, she isn’t writing this review: I actually liked it, but spent the 70’s in the far North of Scotland, so the fashions do not evoke ‘Nam-style flashbacks. Chris denies, with some venom, ever having a pair of patchwork pants; I just find them quaintly amusing.
Anyway, if you ignore the stylings, it’s not bad. Currie plays Lacy Bond, a cop sent to crack an all-female crime ring, after overcoming the sexism of her colleagues. It’s pretty hard-hitting, with Currie showing impressive action skills (along with Jeanie TNT Jackson Bell as a gang-girl). Unfortunately, in the middle, she and a partner are sent to Catalina. Their “investigation” involves sailing, horse-riding, eating hot-dogs and falling into bed with each other, to a hideous easy-listening soundtrack; the film dies for 15 minutes as a result. Otherwise, for 1974 this is impressively feminist, with Lacy rescuing her partners, rather than the other way round, and it has brisk, crisp plotting, although it’s a shame the title gives away a major plot point.
The tag-line for the DVD has inexplicably been changed to, “Before James Bond…there was Lacy Bond”. But when Policewomen came out, there had been eight Bonds released and we were already in the Roger Moore era. Go figure.
* Chris has since confirmed this, with the qualification that ‘hokey’ implies a particularly flavoured subset of suckiness…about which I’m still vague!
Dir: Lee Frost
Star: Sondra Currie, Tony Young, Elizabeth Stuart, Jeanie Bell