Friday, September 25, 2015

The Alley Tramp (1968)

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Writers: Paul Gordone, Jean Michael, Allison Louise Downe

Composer: Phillipe Pounard

Starring: Julia Ames, Jean Lamee, Lisa Bourdon, Marie Delmonde, Steve White, Ann Heath, Jacque Sette, Lawrence J. Aberwood, Roy Collodi, Herschell Gordon Lewis

More info: IMDb

Tagline: She Went For Anything In Pants!

Plot: A teenage girl sets out on a sexual odyssey of having affairs with various men including her mother's secret boyfriend.



My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe with a group.

I just popped this disc in because of the title.  That Something Weird Video released it is icing on the cake.  Is it bad?  Yeah but it is entertaining to a degree.  That it was made in the late 60s makes it fun from the hair styles and fashion...


 to the outrageously wild mind set where chicks took it and liked it!



There's lots of gratuitous nudity from the mother and daughter and there's even a shot of mom's undercarriage which really surprised me as you don't see that in these exploitation pictures from the era.  Except for the bathtub scene with mom, HGL makes an effort to cleverly conceal the front bottom.
 


The picture only runs 69 minutes and its biggest problem is pacing.  There's a LOT of filler like when Marie (Ames) is in her room alone, changing clothes and so on.  Shit like that will bore the piss out of you but there are moments that are quite fun that include the bad acting. It's amazing how much you can accomplish with rehearsals, something I doubt HGL had time to allow for (or care for which can be part of the charm of his films).  The lighting is bad (lots of multiple shadows) but there's a lot of nakedness for the sake of nakedness.  The ending is fucking awesome.  Where the movie was slow in the first hour, the last ten or so minutes make up for that with a wham bam series of events.  I kept wondering about the title (great title, by the way) and how that pertains to this movie.  It's the final act that delivers it and in spades.  It helps redeem the picture and makes it a recommend based on that alone. It's fun but it does come too late in the film to make this even better.  The Something Weird Video DVD has this film as the first part of a double bill with OVER 18...AND READY! (1969) and it comes loaded with extras (sadly, no commentary by HGL) like 8 trashy trailers (including this picture) and three sleazy shorts. 

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