Swamp Girl

Swamp Girl (1971)

** (out of 4)

Deep in the swamps of Georgia, legend has it that there's a blonde woman (Simone Griffeth) who lurks in the wilderness. Many people have claimed to have seen her yet there's no real proof. That is until one day when the sheriff goes chasing after her and finally manages to talk to her. Soon after a pair of criminals kill her Pa and force her to take them through the swamp.

SWAMP GIRL certainly isn't a long-lost classic and it's certainly not Oscar-material but I'm pretty sure you already know that. During the 1970's there were all sorts of Southern exploitation pictures that managed to find a spot on various drive-in screens and that's exactly where the majority of them belong. This film here certainly isn't the best of the sub-genre but at the same time it's far from the worst.

I think the best thing this one has going for it are the actual locations. The majority of the running time takes place in the swamp where we get plenty of shots of various wildlife and this here is certainly the highlight of the picture. The setting is obviously just right for the story and I also thought Griffeth was good enough for the role. With that said, there's no question that this is pretty much lacking any sort of real story and calling it a well-made movie would be a mistake.

Still, if you're a fan of these type of no-budget pictures then there's certainly much worse out there so this one here is worth watching out.

Never a dull scene in this one. There is always something exciting happening. I love the local guys and their accents. You can tell they cast real swamp rats for this movie!

A girl has never really talked to anyone her whole life besides one man who she calls her pa. She is White, he is Black. She comes to learn about her entrance into this protected swamp life in a hasty, roundabout way. Her life is a tragic story, but she has managed to live happily thanks to Nat, her "pa". When outsiders invade their secret territory, she makes a lot of good moves. You're rooting for her.

I got a kind of excitement from how happy she was once she realized her home is a nationally protected wildlife refuge. She realizes she is allowed to throw all the hunting traps into the deepest waters of the swamp if she wishes because they are illegally set there. It satisfies you knowing that the sheriff respects her and even mentioned making her a deputy because she knows the swamp so well and doesn't like those poacher's traps any more than he does.

I recommend this film. It's a good story and it never gets boring.

SWAMP GIRL (1971)

I don't even know what I saw with this utterly boring film. There's a pretty blonde woman who endured some hard knocks as a child and then continued her entire life living in a stinky swamp in Georgia. She was raised by a black man who she now affectionately calls her "pa", but ultimately has to defend her homeland when ruthless outsiders threaten to interfere. Whatever.

I was checking some of the other positive reviews here and I can only surmise that I must have watched a different movie.

0 out of ****

Seemingly without effort, director Don Davis and lead actress Simone Griffeth reach out and lay hands on that flawless sincerity that overrated hacks like Goddard can only pretend to. Griffeth's Janeen is laid bare before us -- emotionally naked -- as the young actress gives herself to the audience completely, rawly, almost desperately.

Also notable is country singer Ferlin Husky, cast here as a good hearted swamp ranger. Husky lends his character an earthy honesty, a sun-wrinkled gentility that only just covers his own scars. He seems to help Janeen in a thinly disguised effort to purge away the acid pain that eats him from the inside every day.

This film has taken an unflinching grip on something living, something grand.

This is another "hicksploitation" movie, a genre largely pioneered by Russ Meyer and Roger Corman but really stretching all the way back to roadshow classics like "Poor White Trash" and "Child Bride". As these films go this is a rather tame, PG-rated version, but this does give it some of the charm of my much beloved 1970's bigfoot movies, except that instead of bigfoot we have a wee bit of blonde jailbait named "Janeen" who is the titutlar "swamp girl". As you might imagine "Janeen" is a girl who lives a swamp, but like bigfoot she is enough of a local legend to have a country/bluegrass song written about. She is white, but lives with an African-American "Pa". In the exposition-heavy beginning, "Pa" relates her origins to her for the benefit of the viewer. They basically involve "Pa's" former employer, a swamp rat abortionist who ran a side business selling "girl childs" to Arab sheiks and such on the white slavery market (which would be a pretty sick idea for a PG movie if it weren't so ludicrous).

"Janean's" idyllic existence in the swamp is threatened, first by a nice-guy "swamp warden" who is pressured to charge her with the death of a poacher she in fact rescued, then by a vicious Bonnie and Clyde-type couple lamming it in the swamp, and finally by her birth parents, who upon discovering her existence want to bring her back to civilization.

The swamp girl is played by Simone Griffeth, who's actually pretty good in her first role. She was only about sixteen at the time, which kind of precluded the full-frontal nude scenes she did in later films like "The Young Prey" and "Death Race 2000". Disappointing as that may be to many, the bigger problem is that she is a little miscast here--she is simply not the the feisty, tomboy type like say Claudia Jennings who played a similar role in the later and more well-known "Gator Bait". Griffith is very pretty, but looks more like an underage and underfed fashion model slumming in the backwoods than anything (you have to wonder for instance where she gets her hair care products in a swamp).I'd still maybe recommend this to those who don't mind PG-rated "hicksploitation" or are big fans of Griffeth. But for most people though I'd recommend something more like "Gator Bait" or a good Southern-fried bigfoot flick like "Legend of Boggy Creek", or, if you just want to see a lot "more" of an older and more voluptuous Griffeth, "Death Race 2000".