Fugitive Girls (1974) - Blu-ray Review

Details: By Loron Hays; 23 January 2018

{jatabs type="content" position="top" height="auto" skipAnim="true" mouseType="click" animType="animFade"}

[tab title="Movie Review"]

Bad acting, bad sex, and organic tea. Count me in! What more could five loose women on the run from a prison want on the long and winding road back to the real world? Violent hippies with awesome moustaches and chains? Ed Wood in a dual role? Hell, this B-grade skin flick has those, too.

This is what happens when Ed Wood teams up with some porn stars. Fugitive Girls, now uncensored and raw as hell, is why you don't EVER fuck with the fringe.

A caddywhompus establishing shot of The Lodge Motel’s neon sign is the opening of A.C. Stephen’s Fugitive Girls. This tells you everything you need to know about this uncensored escape from a women’s prison. Everything – and I do mean everything – is going to come cheap and easy for this T&A excursion that is co-written by Edward D. Wood, Jr. Hell, he even makes a rare acting appearance in it as two different characters.

Don’t be surprised by Wood's involvement. A.C. Stephen and Ed Wood are, after all, the duo that gave us Orgy of the Dead in 1965.

From that establishing shot, the film cuts as the camera pans quickly down from some ugly-ass curtains and then across the puke green shag carpeted floor inside the motel. Clothes, mostly polyester, are thrown every which way as the camera moves to the squeaking bed. Hello THRUSTING buttcheeks! Two buck-naked people are deep in the throes of passionate lovemaking. The woman, Dee (Margie Lanier), looks all sorts of uncomfortable on the receiving end. This goes on for quite awhile. You may notice just how out of synch their panting and sighing is. Doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that the couple is out of booze. For Dee, this is how her night gets really shitty. She ends up, thanks to her dumbass boyfriend’s itchy trigger finger, in a Correction Facilities For Women where her cohorts – and this is on night number one while she laments her fate – break things down to their bare essentials.

Oh, yes, Dee is going to be someone’s main squeeze. Hubba, hubba. There’s Paula (Jamie Abercrombie), Toni (Rene Bond), Kat (Talie Cochrane), and Sheila (Dona Desmond) and all of them are hardened criminals. Which makes Dee the odd woman out. She needs to be broken in and that’s just what happens as her tears become cries … of ecstasy.

None of these chicks are staying in here for very long. Thankfully, this prison has no guards. Convenient! The denim-decked ladies, after making Dee feel so very special on her first night with them, essentially sneak out of their cabin, dodging spotlights (really), and lift a chain-link fence. This is their big escape as they slip out of the prison unnoticed and into the wilds of the undiscovered country.

And straight into the savage hands of a bunch of stoned and naked hippies. What?

This is a soft-core version of Easy Rider as lived by jailhouse ladies of the night. It’s a wild and swinging affair that – with no real momentum – struggles at most everything it hysterically throws up on the screen. The dialogue, punctuated with lines like "God, I'm telling you. I'm going to go naked pretty soon unless I can get out of these rags", is insane and filled with highly quotable lines that will definitely slay at any party.

With no Criswell and no “Bring me my nubian maiden!” squeals, Fugitive Girls gets its cheap and easy thrills from unexpected moments of violent outbursts like one in which the girls, after thumbing for a ride, pull a driver from his car before having their way with him in some tall grass. Obviously, the group is going to fracture and it happens soon.

Betrayed by her lover. Pimp killer. Smuggler. Bank Embezzler. Lesbian! Fugitive Girls lives and breathes once again thanks to fine efforts of Vinegar Syndrome, who present the film on blu-ray with a newly scanned and restored print mined from the original 35mm source. This is the fourth release in their Limited Edition Sexploitation Signature Series and the Blu-ray/DVD combo is strictly limited to 2,500 units. Act fast!

[/tab]

[tab title="Details"]

MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 90 mins
Director: A.C. Stephen
Writer: A.C. Stephen
Cast: Jabie Abercrombe, Rene Bond, Tallie Cochrane
Genre: Action | Crime
Tagline: No Prison Bars Could Hold Them!
Memorable Movie Quote: "There's only two things worthwhile for a girl - men and money!"
Theatrical Distributor: SCA Distributors
Official Site:
Release Date: July 13, 1974
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: January 30, 2018
Synopsis: Beautiful Dee is implicated in a fatal liquor store shooting committed by her boyfriend. Sent to an all-female work camp, she quickly finds herself at the mercy of four other violent and sex crazed prisoners who force her into their daring escape plan. Once on the outside, the five fugitives embark on a brutal and sex filled rampage across the countryside, while making their way to a mystery site rumored to have a buried suitcase full of money!

[/tab]

[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

Fugitive Girls (1974) - Blu-ray Review

Blu-ray Details:

Limited Edition (Blu-ray/DVD)

Home Video Distributor: Vinegar Syndrome
Available on Blu-ray - January 30, 2018
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English SDH
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A

Vinegar Syndrome presents Fugitive Girls with a stellar 2k restoration and an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. There’s just not a bad bone in this body. Using the original 35mm camera negative, this drive-in film now has details that were never before visible. Both the prison and the back road trails look layered with fine detail and, with the wind at their backs, the murders that happen are realized with a starkness that, while hilarious, is completely unexpected. The clothing is textured and so are the fabrics in the furniture. The sound, presented in a DTS-HD mono track, is adequate for this release.

Supplements:

Commentary:

Provided by exploitation filmmaker Frank Henenlotter and Wood’s biographer, Rudolph Grey, the commentary is quite solid and filled with small details about the shooting of the movie.

Special Features:

Fans get an archival audio interview with Tallie Cochrane. It is moderated by Casey Scott. An original trailer and a promo trailer rounds out the supplemental material. A reversible cover is included with fantastic art.