Revenge of the Virgins

Henry Darrow, who is best known for his awful acting, horribly fake Spanish accent, and bowl haircut when he played Manolito Montoya on High Chapparral; made his screen debut among bouncing breasts in Revenge of the Virgins.

Like the stories in hundreds of other movies and TV Westerns, the white guys are on Indian land trying to steal Indian gold. The only difference in this movie is that the Indians are all topless women. These girls are pretty cute, and they love to dance around topless. They also like to kill any whites that come to their land to find gold. That is gist of the story.

The only reason to fast forward through this movie is for the scenes of the Indian girls. The movie ratings system was not instituted until 1968, or this would have been rated R. The only other notable fact about this movie is that it was written by the notorious Ed Wood, Jr.

Most of us who are over 50 remember Henry Darrow not just from HARRY-O, but from his far better-known role as Manolito Montoya on THE HIGH CHAPARRAL. Credited as "Hank Delgado" (his birth name is Enrique Delgado), Darrow plays gunslinger Wade in this schlock western penned by the late great Golden Turkey Award winning Ed Wood (under the pseudonym Pete LaRoche). The film definitely lives up to Wood's stellar (ahem) reputation as a *really* bad movie producer/writer/director. The cast thought they were filming a straight-forward low budget western, and only learned after the fact that "footage of explicitly topless 'Indian' maidens had been spliced into the film post production." Unfortunately, the nudity meant that while it was his first "starring role," Darrow, who "transcended lousy writing, directing, photography, somnambulant co-stars and rubber rattlesnakes to give a credible performance" couldn't list the movie on his resume. For fans of both Darrow and Wood, however, it's quite a B-movie collector's item, though I'd be more inclined to call it a D-movie! Hilariously, unintentionally funny.

(Quotes are from the book HENRY DARROW: LIGHTNING IN THE BOTTLE by Jan Pippins and Henry Darrow.)

REVENGE OF THE VIRGINS is an early skin flick that plays out as a cheapo western set in the great outdoors. The main characters are a group of gold prospectors including a grizzled old timer, a couple of youthful cowboys, and various others, all of whom are united in the fact that they're entirely boring and lacking in characterisation. They travel to an area said to contain substantial amounts of gold, but the problem for them is that said gold is protected by a murderous female Native American tribe.

This is where the nudity comes in. The women all run around topless and show off their flesh for their occasional scenes. There's no more story to that and otherwise the tale has the mild kind of violence you'd see in a B-movie western from the era. The production values are cheap and there's zero suspense or really any reason to watch as the acting is uniformly bad too. The script was written by the inimitable Ed Wood, who really was happy to put his name to any old nonsense.

Hard to believe 2 cinematographers receive credit for this. All medium shots, no closeups, and the camera stationary. Inter-cutting within a scene is almost non-existent. Everything feels like it's happening from a distance.

The music score by Gene Kauer was lifted from the previous years THE ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER to which he is also credited. Kenne Duncan who narrates this at the beginning and closing portion also acted in aforementioned film.

The print quality of the Something Weird Video release is flawless which shouldn't be too surprising as it's doubtful the negative received any wear and tear beyond generating a few prints for circulation at the time of it's release.

Revenge of the Virgins (1959)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A group of men and a woman head into the Old West because one of the men located gold there years earlier. As the group begins their search for gold they come under attack by some topless Indian ladies protecting their land.

REVENGE OF THE VIRGINS is best remembered for being the first nude Western, which I guess is good enough of a reason for people to check this film out. It should be noted that it really does appear that a Western film was taken and edited down with the nude scenes added. I say this because the Western cast is never in the same scene with the nude Indian ladies but I will admit that the filmmakers did a good job at editing the footage together.

With that said, there's really not too many reason to check this out unless you're a fan of sexploitation and want to see this extremely early example of flesh on screen. The Indian ladies are all extremely good looking and show off their breasts whenever their long (fake) hair isn't covering stuff up. As far as the Western film, it's pretty typical for the era and is extremely boring.

REVENGE OF THE VIRGINS is pretty bad on all levels but thankfully it lasts just 53 minutes.