Swamp Women

This 'Swamp Women' was one of the very first films Roger Corman directed (he was still in his 20's around the time it got released) but it immediately becomes clear how he built up of the reputation of being the 'King of the B's'. Swamp Women is short, only 67 minutes, and it looks like the whole thing only cost 50$. Still, it's a fun quickie handling about a gang of female cons who break out of prison accompanied by an undercover cop. They flee their way through a filthy swamp where a diamond-loot is hidden. Things get a little more complicated when they take a young couple, of which the male (Mike Connors) is a stud – hostage. The acting is lame and the scenery is weak (rubber crocodiles!!) but you'll still have a good time. It feels like watching a vicious exploitation gem with situations and plot ahead of their time. If the actresses would have been a bit bustier, this easily could have been a Russ Meyer flick.

Only Roger Corman could get the most out of a rented dinghy, access to a small area of swamp and New Orleans stock footage. Man...these cool chicks are very groovy as they put the "touch" on Conners. Not really a laugh-out-loud-so-bad-it's-good kinda film, but bad enough to keep you with it to the bad-girl end. The "action" is paced well enough and the cast is near-perfect B-movie/drive-in stuff. The 50's style denim hot-pants are "prison issue" and with the tied-shirt halter tops they're all ready to wrestle. Poor Touch (Mike) Conners...he has to spend half the film with his hands tied behind his back. But that only makes it necessary for the girls to do all the heavy lifting as they plod through the swamp and pull the boat through the shallows. It's "African Queen" meets "Gator Girls" complete with diamonds, booze, guns, a homemade spear and an alligator that can't float. Holy cow!

When I saw that the two queens of the B-movies, Marie Windsor and Beverly Garland were in one glorious, trashy flick togETHer -- I had to have it. I wasn't disappointed.

This movie is quite bad, but the highlights are so delightful there's no way it can be dismissed or forgotten. One reviewer dubbed it "Catfighting Floosies", and that clinched my purchase. I've called it this ever since, rather than it's actual title.

Honestly, someone should put out a heavily-edited version of it, stringing together all the squabbling women bits and deleting all the annoying paddling-through-the-bayou scenes. If it weren't for the latter, I'd have given this ... oh, at least a 6. Huzzah for the Fast Forward button.

This film might be considered awful, but this film was very entertaining and Roger Corman created a very low budget film with some great stars like Mike Connors, (Bob Matthews) and Beverly Garland as Vera. This film takes place in Bayou Lacombe, Louisiana and New Orleans, and deals with a woman named Police Lt. Lee Hampton, (Carole Mathews) who is willing to enter a prison of women and obtain information about stolen diamonds. Vera and Josie, (Marie Windsor) are women prisoners and Lee Hampton is in the same jail cell and cons these two criminals into escaping from jail in order to obtain these diamonds and catch them in a very swampy area in which they are hidden. Bob Matthews has the misfortune of being held prisoner by these very sexy and hot young gals and he has to try and out smart these very cruel and dangerous women. Enjoy.

For me, B-movie fan that I am, a film starring cult actresses Beverly Garland AND Marie Windsor, and directed by the legendary Roger Corman, was too great a lure to resist. And "Swamp Women" (1955) does indeed live up to its potential, at least in part. It tells the story of a trio of tough dames who bust out of jail and hightail it to the Louisiana bayou to recover their cache of stolen diamonds. They are abetted in their jailbreak by an undercover lady cop, who is trying to find the gems, too. In the wild, they bump into Mike Connors and his fiancée, which only leads to more trouble. Anyway, this little B features lots of female fistfights, knife fights and tough talk, with Beverly perhaps being the "baddest" of the bunch. Viewers will enjoy counting how many times she says "shut up" during the course of this short film. And at a mere 73 minutes, the film IS short, but somehow still feels padded with endless Mardi Gras and nature shots. Still, "Swamp Women" is a reasonably fun entertainment. The bad news that I have to report, however, concerns the state of this DVD itself. I have never seen a worse-looking DVD in my life. Not only have all the colors of its source print turned pink, but the image itself is fuzzy and blurry. The promise of crystal-clear DVD images has certainly not been met here, to put it mildly! The folks at Brentwood Communications should hang their heads in shame. If I wanted to see sickening off colors and blurry images, I'd be doing drugs and shots of Southern Comfort and prune juice! This film deserves so much better!