The Mini-Skirt Mob

The name of the production company - whose product nowadays regularly features in Incredibly Strange film festivals - alone should be enough warning as to what to expect in this silly, unintentional parody. "The Mini-Skirts" consist of four girl bikers, the brevity of whose skirts is compensated by the length of their eyelashes - plus, it seems, an equal number of chromosome-challenged boyfriends. The plot mostly consists of them "terrorizing", with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the pack leader's ex-boyfriend because he is now on his honeymoon in a caravan with another gal. Much of it naturally is an excuse for shots of the females riding around the wilds of Arizona on their Triumph motorbikes. Hmmm. Wouldn't it be rather cold dressed like that, how long would those hair-do's last? You also get regular glimpses of panties. As Leonard Maltin says in his movie guidebook, those who like the title should like the film.

I didn't think this movie was so bad. They had no set, no props really, and yet it served to be an entertaining story til the end. I thought Shayne was a well done evil lead lady, though she didn't seem to confident on a motorcycle, that's for sure. She did a good job at making you hate her. Her little sister was good too.

For a lot of the film, I felt sorry for the bride. But at the same time, you have to remember that she and the groom only knew each other for 3 weeks before they got married. She seemed really out of place, and that was intended.

It's the first time I had seen rodeo guys mixed with biker gangs, but I guess it makes sense. The scenes where people fell off cliffs were pretty painful to watch, I thought they did a good job staging those stunts.

All in all, the movie was entertaining and simple. I was thinking there would be more women kicking ass involved, but really it's just one woman who bosses some dudes and her sister around. It's not about a mob at all - just one evil, overly hair-sprayed lady. However, I wouldn't want to watch it again.

I forgot how many of these drive in types were turned out in the 60's & 70's, but this is one no one could remember but the actors' families. What an embarrassment, especially for someone like Harry Dean Stanton, who turned out to be such a remarkable character actor, who in this film is the only "character" of note.

Diane McBaine is miscast badly. Yet, note that she allowed her hair to get messed at least once & to have a dirt smudge, of all things(!), to be placed on her face in the final chase scene.

If you are bored & need a good laugh & want to remember the old biker movies, rent this. But, if you then feel you've wasted your buck, don't say I didn't warn you!

Actress Diane McBain plays Shayne, the leader of a group of female bikers, who call themselves the Miniskirt Mob. Shayne's ex-beau, rodeo star Jeff Logan (played by John Wayne clone Ross Hagan), dumps her to marry another woman. Crazy with jealousy, Shayne is hellbent on harassing Jeff and his new bride. And she enlists the help of her motorcycle gang, which includes her younger sister, to accomplish this.

This film is brimming-over with campy, late-60s energy. The women in the Miniskirt Mob, all wear the shortest of miniskirts, that women wore back then. They all have drop-dead gorgeous bods, and wear mile-high hair-sprayed 'dos, go-go boots, and heavy facial make-up. These women look more like 60s Vogue models, rather than tough biker chicks. Their boyfriends, who are allowed to ride with the gang, are all one dimensional oafs. These dudes drink copious amounts of beer, belch, and generally act like crude goons.

Diane McBain as Shayne, is the only cast member that truly conveys a menacing personality. The other characters seem milquetoast by comparison. Ross Hagan as Jeff Logan, gives a particularly stilted performance. Patty McCormick as Shayne's sister Edie, does gives a decent performance. She really makes the toxic sibling rivalry between Edie and Shane, seem credible. The only other cast member who gives an interesting performance, is Harry Dean Stanton. Harry plays the dim-witted cowboy, called Spook. He infuses Spook with a haunting, pathetic, yet smarter-than-he-looks quality.

The scenery in the film is gorgeous, but the lighting is a bit garishly bright. There's lots of vivid color contrasts, which gives the film quite a visual punch. The viewer can really get a sense of how uncomfortably hot the characters felt, as they sped down the highways on their bikes in the scorching, southwestern sunshine. There's also plenty of panoramic camera angles. Especially when the characters are racing around hairpin curves, while biking along deserted back roads.

This film is hilarious at times, and can also be downright annoying in some scenes. The camp factor is definitely there though, for those who like these sorts of 60s B movies. Overall, it's an entertaining film, and definitely worth a watch, especially for Diane McBain fans.

The Mini-Skirt Mob - sounds like the coolest girl punk band you ain't heard of, or just another AIP biker movie. It's the latter. This isn't that terrible, one guesses. No, it's knowable: this is a gosh-darn B-movie if I ever saw one. Why the gosh-darn? The movie deserves one: it's a western in biker-movie skins, and it shows a sign, oddly enough, of where its director Maury Dexter would be headed a year or so later when he made a very good low-level-action biker movie called Hell's Belles.

It's set mostly out in the desert, where the leader of the Mini-Skirt Mob, the bossy Shayne (Diane McBain rockin the hard-to-frazzle blonde-top look), is after a former cowboy who left her to settle down and marry with an ordinary girl. She and the gang and some other rodeo-party-down type guys (such as Ross Hagen and Harry Dean Stanton) basically chase after these guys till they strand them in the desert, rip their tires, and force a stand-off... a long one, that'll need some beer, and relationship drama!

There's some time during the movie where the writer tries to make this less about the bikes and more about the characters, and this is where things get a little shaky. Sometimes it's just plain hysterical trying to see these guys emote, or try to have any kind of connection. The fact is what makes the movie so entertaining is that practically everyone, even the two leads (and especially that little lady) are just stupid. Shayne might just be sadistic or mean, but there's still a level of not knowing all where its at and is only a minimal bad-ass. The keeper though is Harry Dean, always dependable in a fix for a supporting role, who is a "dumb redneck" among the group, but also isn't much in the way of being a killer. He just wants to hang out and party, and that's where the other girls in the 'Mob' want to be at. You'd think they'd go off and have crimes or party down. Nope. Have a chick as the leader, bound to have some man-drama.

If you like a biker movie way past your bedtime, you could do worse than this. Its action isn't staged too well and the acting by the two leads (Slate and Jackson) is so stiff you can feel the strain in trying to make an argument scene look halfway convincing, but some laugh out loud moments are to be had, like when we see a shot of the bikers arguing about something and a pan of the camera shows boy-scouts hearing their every word! Goodness! This is actually fairly safe stuff, nothing too dangerous actually in the way of much violence and sex.... actually, I take that back, there is one semi-awesome explosion, a couple of awesome cheesy deaths by incredible launch-off-bike, and a person runs out on fire! Nothing exciting, but its... what it is.