★★½
“Better poster than a movie.”
This came out the same year as Swamp Women, with the Corman production beating this to the screen by a couple of months. Given the similarities in the plot, I have to wonder if the concept of the “mockbuster” pre-dates The Asylum. Though it’s not as if this is exactly a top of the line, Hollywood production, being distributed by AIP. You can probably tell from that gorgeous poster, which is a true work of art and, sadly, considerably more exciting than what this mostly pedestrian film has to offer. It begins with Anne Carson (Taylor) being sent to prison as an accomplice in an armed robbery, though she protests her innocence, and prison chaplain Rev. Fulton (Denning) believes her.
Key in the case against Anne was the unexplained disappearance of $38,000 in loot, which she says she simply walked away from. Needless to say, as soon as details of her conviction become known on the inside, a lot of people want to become her “friends”, not least queen bee Jenny (Jergens) and another cellmate, Melanee (Gilbert). After an earthquake hits the prison and throws everything into chaos, Jenny and Melanee make a break for freedom, dragging an unwilling Anne with them. On the outside, the other participant in the robbery, Paul, is equally keen to recover the proceeds, and is applying the screws to Anne’s father, using his as leverage so she will spill the truth to him.
Made in 1956, you can seem some of the standard women-in-prison tropes present, albeit inevitably in a diluted format given the time – the Hays code was still firmly in effect. Hence, the jail personnel are all nice, rather than abusive: the warden’s belief that Anne is not as innocent as she claims, is about as harsh as it gets (and, she’s not wrong…). There’s no nudity, naturally; any lesbian undertones are extremely implied; and the violence is limited to a couple of cat-fights. Though one does manage, with unerring accuracy, to make its way into a nearby puddle of mud. The main problem is pacing: while it starts and ends well enough, after the concept is established, little happens until the convenient tremor show up.
Certainly, nothing resembling the tag-lines takes place. I never did learn “what happens to girls without men”, not least because these are hardly girls, e.g. Jergens was aged 38 when this was released. The one man, presumably the Rev. Fulton, is not “against” the women, regardless of quantity, and even by mid-fifties standards, there’s little here to shock. Okay, expecting truth in advertising from an AIP movie is likely a stretch. But Swamp Women was rather more entertaining, realizing that it had to keep things moving forward to engage the audience. This knows the story has to go from Point A to Point B. It just doesn’t know how to make the journey more than marginally interesting, and to be honest, rarely makes much of an effort.
Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Star: Joan Taylor, Adele Jergens, Richard Denning, Helen Gilbert