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".
