Les Pétroleuses

I am one of the few who can actually lay claim to seeing "The Legend of Frenchie King" (1971) during its original UK theatrical release. The theater was not exactly packed for this feature which was yet another of the then endlessly proliferating Spanish westerns. These were characterized by a slightly off-kilter production design and heavily-accented dialogue (considering the bad accents I can't imagine that much of it was dubbed) by the English as a second language cast members.

Apparently Bardot had not learned her lesson with "Shalako" back in 1968, and she inflicted another of these things on herself. Basically the film is what you would get if you combined the plot elements of "The Dalton Girls"(1957) with those of "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964) and then tried (unsuccessfully) to give the story a comic quality.

The story is set in 1880's New Mexico, and like "The Dalton Girls" it features an outlaw gang of eyeball scorching girls. In this case there are five of them carrying on the family tradition (they don't have the Daltons as brothers but they have a legendary train robbing father).

The film opens with such a robbery. Disguised as men in black, the girls inflict ultra-violence on anyone who resists them. When she discovers the train robbery loot includes a deed to a local ranch the leader & title character (Bardot) decides they will all go domestic for a while. There is oil on the ranch and the neighboring rancher (Claudia Cardinale) wants to buy them out. She has four brothers. Which sets up a series of confrontations between the two women and a romantic pairing off of the four sisters and the four brothers. This culminates in a nicely staged if somewhat tame catfight. Meanwhile Michael J. Pollard plays his standard C.W. Moss character; this time working as a bumbling sheriff.

Bardot was in her mid-thirties and still looks great, Cardinale was a couple years younger and looks pretty high mileage and a bit chunky in comparison. It does not work to her relative advantage to be playing opposite Bardot. Nor does it help that the four other actresses are drop dead gorgeous.

It is this winsome foursome that makes the film worth viewing. They even manage to insert a little characterization. Patty Shepard plays Little Rain, the one with an Indian mother (note the headband). Teresa Gimpera plays Caroline, the oldest and most sophisticated. Emma Cohen plays near-sighted Virginie. And France Dougnac plays ultra-hot Elisabeth, she makes all the others (including Bardot) look rather plain in comparison. There is a great camera shot where they pan along the four of them standing along a bar which pauses at the end when Dougnac comes into the frame.

The original director was Guy Casaril but he was replaced by a desperate for work Christian- Jaque. The "real" legend of Frenchie King grew out of this change as in was long believed that there were two different films, "Frenchie King" by Christian-Jaque and "Les Petroleuses" by Casaril.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Unusual comic Western romp starring two foreign beauties of the 50's and 60's, Bardot and Cardinale. This certainly isn't a work of art but fun all the same. With Michael J. Pollard (from Bonnie and Clyde) as the sheriff, how wrong can you go? Warring families fighting over land (with catfights).

Wonderful music and an easygoing flowing rhythm, this film should become a camp classic. A 6 out of 10. Best performance = Michael J. Pollard. Good luck finding this one. Bardot's best 70's film (which really isn't saying much), but I had a blast when I saw this as a teenager back in the early 70's. Give it a shot!

After the first half of the sixties,Christian-Jaque 's talent began to deteriorate .It was extraordinary he fell so quickly and so low after the brilliant works of the thirties ,forties ,fifties and even early sixties.

Probably made to capitalize on the success of Louis Malle's "Viva Maria" where BB met Jeanne Moreau in 1965, "Le petroleuses" is a slapstick comedy where two gorgeous cowgirls fight for an oilfield. In her memoirs,BB remembers she could not ride a horse,and she was terrified each time she had to get back into the saddle.Her screams (Mama!Mama!) used to make CC laugh until she cried.She did not like the film.I didn't either.

Was blessed to see this gem of a movie in the Local Theater when it was first released. It was titled as 'The Legend of Frenchie King' back then. It is a 'campy, Spaghetti type of Western' that was original in its time for having females in the hero roles. IMHO, this film set the stage for the likes of TV series like Wonder Woman, Charlies Angels, etc. Etc. Be sure that you see the original, uncut version of this film...that is, if you can find it...I had heard a rumor that B. B. had at one time bought up most of the copies and had them destroyed, because she was not happy with the finished release. As was the norm in the 1970s, there was also an LP record release of the film-score, too.

LES PETROLEUSES's marquee value was probably enough to have every European theater sold-out when it came out. Let's face it, no one would flock to see this for its plot and characterization and it probably wouldn't have been green-lit in the first place were it not for ravishing beauties Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale. With a story that could've been plucked straight from the pages of the famous European western comic Lucky Luke, Les Petroleuses is an irreverent euro-western cartoonish spectacle from start to finish, a low-brow comedy populated by stock characters and silly slapstick but still fairly entertaining as far as these films go. What really makes it worthwhile however is the screen presence of Bardot and Cardinale, none of which have to stretch their acting muscles to earn their paycheck, except look as gorgeous as possible. Seeing Bardot's bare buttocks and Cardinale doing a song number dressed in a skimpy cabaret outfit probably helped quite a lot.

Interesting to note is that Les Petroleuses plays like a male sex fantasy of female supremacy. Bardot plays notorious train robber Frenchie King, leader of four black-clad European babes, while Cardinale is in charge of a ranch and her four idiot brothers. All the men in the movie are stupid and incompetent buffoons, chief among them the sheriff who is a bumbling fool always running after his horse and Cardinale's perennially horny brothers. The women are sassy, bossing the men around and outsmarting them at every turn. Buxom beauty Cardinale has an old Indian housekeeper while Blond vixen Bardot has a black manservant (who calls the Indian his "red brother"). Both Cardinale and Bardot have the goofy sheriff wrapped around their finger. At one point Bardot kidnaps Cardinale's brothers, has them tied and stripped naked before her and rains buckshot on their bare asses! In the end, the sheriff drops his star and gunbelt on the floor and sighs in admission of defeat that "the west ain't no place for a man".

You can guess the conclusion from sheer arithmetics alone and the movie is pretty crude from a technical standpoint, but eurowestern fans will have a ball seeing two of the most beautiful women ever to grace the silver screen duking it out for crude petrol.