Sweet Sugar

SWEET SUGAR is a cheap and derivative women-in-prison movie that seems to have been released to ride a wave of similar produce. This one introduces the main character, Sugar, in a brief set-up scene in which she's arrested as part of a drugs sting and sent to a rural prison "somewhere or other" where she forms part of a chain gang. Meanwhile, the women must deal with in-fighting amongst themselves, the machinations of the cruel guards, and the sadistic experiments of a mad doctor.

It all sounds very exciting and exploitational and yet it's really rather cheap and slapdash, just like Michel Levesque's other B-movie, WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS. Levesque seems interested in shooting a skin flick and a skin flick alone, so there's plenty of topless and rear nudity here but not much else in the way of suspense, tension, or violence.

I didn't mind Phyllis Davis too much as the lead. She's a top-heavy starlet clearly cast for her physique rather than acting ability, but she distinguishes herself quite well and there's something about her more than the usual bimbo actress. One of the most interesting things about the production are the authentically sweaty Costa Rican locations. Bizarrely, there are hints at voodoo in the narrative too, Timothy Brown playing a hilarious priest character who seeks to help the women. This isn't a film for cat lovers either. However, the resolutely plodding narrative mainly consists of escape and capture over and over again, and the air of familiarity means that this is a film only for sympathetic lovers of the genre.

Quality-wise "Sweet Sugar" is standard Women-In-Prison (though the setting is not exactly a prison, but a sugar cane plantation) fare, but it does make an effort to distinguish itself from the pack by mixing broad comedy (the heroine is injected with a drug that turns her on so much that she causes the machine she is connected to to explode!), sadistic violence (including involuntary cannibalism!), supernatural elements (one of the male prisoners knows voodoo and talks to "the spirits"), and just plain weirdness (coming mostly in the form of "the doctor", a creepy nutcase who like to perform "experiments" on the girls just for kicks). Phyllis Davis and Ella Edwards are both strong and attractive heroines, though not quite at the level of, say, Pam Grier and Margaret Markov. The film looks rather good, but it does not flow very well from scene to scene, and the sexy parts as well as the action parts are too short to satisfy. Worth a look for Phyllis and Ella. (**)

One of a slew of Women In Prison (WIP) exploitation flicks hurriedly lensed after Jack Hill's hugely successful "The Big Doll House" mopped up at the box office for Roger Corman. This one's fairly typical of the subgenre, delivering the WIP formula of nudity and sadism in well measured doses.

It's only notable features are an early writing effort by Stephanie "Terminal Island" Rothman and a truly over-the-top performance by Angus Duncan. He plays Dr. John, the demented warden of the sugar cane plantation to which Phyllis Davis is sentenced, with a hammy verve rarely seen today.

Also slightly notable is the 'cat tossing' scene which, IMOHO, wins the all-time award for "Worst Abuse of an Animal to Set Up A Stupid Visual Pun." Otherwise, "Sweet Sugar" is pretty much every WIP flick you've ever seen.

In SWEET SUGAR, the title character (Phyllis Davis) is framed, arrested for drug possession, and sent to cut sugarcane for the eeevil Dr. John (Angus Duncan). Not surprisingly, all of the female convicts are stunning, in spite of the hellish, tropical heat of the cane fields

Sugar soon runs afoul of Dr. John and is subjected to his diabolical experiments. Many examinations are performed. Much hanky is pankied! Then, things take an ugly turn and the torture begins, including the infamous "kitty cat attack sequence"!

Somewhere along the line, voodoo enters the picture, Sugar becomes an oracle, and all bets are off!

FACT: No other sugarcane plantation has ever hosted so many skinny-dipping sessions or bubble baths!

HAVE NO FEAR: Fans of immolation and / or cannibalism have not been forgotten!

DO NOT MISS: The apocalyptic uprising or the fiery holocaust finale!

This is pure gold, folks!...

Thanks to a friend I used to work with at a local video store, we had weekend contests to see who could find the Most Gawd-Awful Movie to play on the monitors...something so bad that it would stop the customers in their tracks from shock and disbelief. He thought he'd won with this hysterically bad gem, starring the amply endowed Phyllis (VEGA$) Davis as a horny free spirit, who gets spirited away to a prison/sugar cane colony in the middle of God-knows-where, after the local 'policia' frame her on a phony drug charge.

Covering all the bases, from mad-scientist flicks, women-in-prison movies, Seventies soft-core porn and badly made action flicks shot overseas on the cheap, it even throws in a little blackexploitation vibe with the faaaabulous presence of Ella Edwards. Cliff Osmond and Angus Duncan commit thespian thievery every chance they get, and Duncan seems to have popped in a set of steel dentures, as he gives every scene he's in a good going-over, like a fresh pack of Wrigley's.

The surefire way to know if you will love or hate this movie, is to find it under its original title and not any of the other name-changed versions. Because SWEET SUGAR may be the only version that contains that howler of a theme song, which sounds like the L.A. band X going on a HUGE acid-and-tequila bender in some South-of-the-Border dive bar, crossed with The Mamas and The Papas on Zoloft. If the priceless opening number doesn't do it for ya, you either need to switch to an actual film that has some tangible artistic value, or do what we did, and continue the quest to find the All-Time Worst Film on the shelf.

(In case you're wondering, BTW, I won the Contest after picking BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS.)