The Female Bunch (1969)

Director: Al Adamson

Starring: LON Chaney Jr, Russ Tamblyn, Jennifer Bishop, Nesa Renet

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: Women who live by their own rules...

Plot: After a string of bad times with men, Sandy tries to kill herself. Co-waitress Libby saves her and takes her to meet some female friends of hers who live on a ranch in the desert. Grace, the leader of the gang, puts Sandy through her initiation and they get on with the real job of running drugs across the Mexican border, hassling poor farmers, taking any man they please, and generally raising hell. Soon Sandy becomes unsure if this is the life for her, but it may be too late to get out.

My Rating: 4/10

Would I watch it again? Uh, no.

#28 on Dusk to Dawn Drive-In Trash-o-Rama Show Vol. 1 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

Here are the facts.

1) THE WILD BUNCH was released in 1969. Is the title taking advantage of that awesomefest of a movie? Sounds like it. There's a bunch of females and they're riding horses.


2) How do we know they're females? They get naked from time to time!


3) This was one of the last movies for the once great but now just a professional drunkard, Lon Chaney Jr.


4) How do we know this? He's not that good of an actor to be able to pull off this glassy-eyed, toasted beyond belief scene as well as he did...



5) Yeah, but how do we know how great of a lush he was? He died of liver failure.


6) Miraculously, Russ Tamblyn still pees among us.


7) This is the second Al Adamson movie I've watched in less than 3 years and it's about on par with the other one, DEATH DIMENSION (1978).


8) Did I mention the nudity? I should have kept a can count but I would have needed both hands. Jesus, you're sick. I'm just saying there probably weren't enough boobs to count on all 10 fingers!


9) This film is the second highest rated of the 23 Adamson directed. At an average rating of 3.37 out of 10, it's barely behind his highest rated, LOST (1983) at 3.7!


10) With the exception of one film, it's pretty clear that every movie of his I see from this point on will be worse than this one. Not very comforting.

A still from DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971), Chaney's last film.

11) From the opening theme song it's clear that Adamson had recently seen Russ Meyer's, FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965) and thought he could make his own version with the twenty dollars he had in his pocket.


12) He couldn't...but it didn't matter because he got girls naked!


13) I'm not entirely disappointed with the film as it at least lived up to its name, gave us a bit of violence, skin and the sad, sad look at one of the great names in horror movies at the end of his career. More boobs and less booze would've been better.