Reviewed by Steve Fenton
USA, 1967. D: Joseph Prieto.
Ad-lines: “Guys
and Choppers… Rich, Raw, Dirty Shanty Girls! Born Broke, Now She’s Worth a
Mint! …A Teen-Age Story for Mature Adults.”
The tramp’s falsely-accused African-American victim’s
hysterical plaint in his own defense to her viciously vindictive and utterly
baseless allegations of rape: “She lies!
She lies!! She lies!!!”
The tramp’s misbegotten drunkard daddy’s plaintive
plea to the holy roller on her behalf: “O
Lawd! Lawd knows, she’s gotta be
saved!”
Way back in 1990, thee myghty Hal Kelly of the
seminal Toronto-based cult cinema/pop culture fanzine Trash Compactor lent me his personal VHS copy of this
then-virtually-unknown movie (formerly available for a penny shy of $30.00 [US]
via mail order out of Whitestone, New York from a guy named Michael Burgujian).
I hadn’t seen it again since first watching ST and reviewing it in my long-defunct D.I.Y. Xerox zine Killbaby (#4) that same year. Since this
blog’s bossman Dennis C. expressly asked me to do so, I’m re-reviewing the film
here at Unpopped all these years later, just for old times’ sake. Basically,
this is my now-26-year-old (!!) original KB
review kinda sorta as-was, albeit heavily revised/updated/corrected/rewritten
and variously added-to/subtracted from. (Coincidentally enough, my son Chaz is
about to turn 26 years old this coming February. Man oh man, how time flies!)
Anyway, here goes nothing…
Irredeemable, unrelenting despair and squalor are
the rotting carcasses on which this landmark sleaze-buzzard feeds. (Damn! Did I actually write that
pretentious bollocks all those years ago?! But I digress…) That’s Sleaze with a capital “S”!
From the opening scratchy frames, showing a rear
below-the-waist view of star Eleanor Vaill (hereon top-billed as “Lee Holland”)’s
tight-skirted, broad-hipped nether regions – yes indeed, she’s most certainly
got “that fire down below”! – you can see that the perspective of this seedily tawdry
flick comes straight from the gutter, and is more than content to stay there
wallowing around amidst the garbage and soggy ciggy butts till doomsday comes
along, if needs be. An extra-jazzed-up version of the hoary evangelical Fundamentalist
gospel singalong standard “When the Saints Come Marching In” accompanies this
stark, ragged opener, and the same song is repeated umpteen times more on the
soundtrack throughout the course of the picture, just to further ram home the obvious
if effective ironic contrast. Elsewhere throughout, Frank Linales’ suitably
spare experimental-tinged score alternates intermittently between minimalist
freeform electric guitar noodlings and frenetic staccato bongo/highhat-and-slapback-bass
jazz jams (latter of which, if less-polished, are at times quite reminiscent of
certain jazzier compositions by frequent ’50s Roger Corman movie scorers Ronald
Stein and Fred Katz).
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"I'm beginning to see things a lot more clear now!" says Pa to Emily in between nips from his pint bottle of cheap rotgut. |
The scene – as per the first half of the title – is
a decrepit, way-down-South shanty town out in the boonies of hillbilly central,
GA. Here, a holy hellfire ’n’ brimstone evangelist, one Brother Fallow (Bill
Rogers), part of a touring religious revival show whose flimsy tent serves as a
portable House of the Lord, engages in some spirited bible-thumping (e.g., “The
man who is truly saved gives more than lip-service to the Lord – he gives cash!” and “You are putting money into a
bank account of salvation!”). This sermonizin’ preacher – most assuredly of the
“lay” variety (pun intended) – rails on about the dangers/evils of sin
(including, to name only a few, “Dancin’!
And drinkin’! And fornicatin’!”), but even a so-called man of God (“I’m
only a tool, in His hands…”) is not
immune to the primal, animalistic allure of the shanty tramp! Far from it, in
fact, as both the opening scenes and the cynically dark humorous twist ending –
with the absolute maximum of unsubtle innuendo and double entendre, of course – so tellingly reveal.
Subtly-flared nostrils and licked lips mark Miss
Emily (Vaill’s unabashedly sluttish character) as a brazen Jezebel right from
the moment that we first met her exaggeratedly hip-swinging along late-night
main street, positively basking in the lustful looks of all the menfolk she
passes. “When I hear you, I wanna surrender myself to the Spirit – all the way, preacher!” purrs the streetwalkin’
hussy to the sky pilot with a gleam of unmistakable licentiousness in her
bloodshot eye (make that both of ’em!
It’s a cinch imagining disgraced ex-televangelists/secret adulteratin’ fornicators
Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart falling for such a thinly-veiled come-on). Vaill,
evidently quite the Method actress, really immerses herself in the all-important
title role, radiating a cheap, easy carnality well-suited to her character.
Emily lives in a festering slum with her disgusting wino father ([“Kenneth
Douglas”/Otto Schlessinger] “…that’s a helluva way to speak to Daddy, ya lousy
tramp!”), turning desperate tricks whenever and wherever (with whoever) she can in order to eke-out her
meagre existence on the very fringes of skid-row, mere inches from getting
flushed right down the drain for keeps. Considering the sorry state of her
domestic situation, it’s hard not to feel at least some sympathy – however
small – for this “fallen woman” whose fall from grace, while presumably largely
of her own (un)doing, isn’t entirely her fault, due to all the extenuating
circumstances involved; but then, we might well say the same about her “poor,
pitiful” abusive papa, who isn’t symbolically surnamed Stryker for nothing and who’s
obviously been dealt a pretty shitty lot in life by Fate himself. So who to
blame here?! (Never mind all that: just sit back, enjoy the show, and be
thankful your own life isn’t anywhere near so sordidly pathetic as theirs are!)
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Sky Pilot: Bill Rogers as Brother Fallow praises God ("Thank you, Lawd! Thank you, Lawd!"). |
In ST,
the desperate, abject loneliness inherent to the predatory bar-crawling, one-night-stand
lifestyle is laid unabashedly bare and totally de-glamourized for the empty lot
it actually is. Indeed, sections of this film made for ideal
anti-advertisements in favour of practicing safe sex back in the not-so-naughty
’Nineties – approximately around when AIDS was first becoming a major cause for
concern in the public consciousness – and the same applies now (if not even
more-so, what with all the rampant, irresponsible and self-destructive
promiscuity and various mutated super-strains of STD that’re around these days
to the nth degree. But I’ll get off my moral high horse right now before I go
any deeper into that potentially contentious
subject! It’s utter immorality that
we’re here for, and that’s assuredly what we get, while safely experiencing its
dubious thrill vicariously via the players’ antics).
Seeking to cross-pollinate a couple of
then-marketable genres, ST’s producer/co-writer
and frequent Mexploitation movie dubbing boss K. Gordon Murray – who is a lo-o-o-onnng way from Santo, Santa Claus
and Popoca (a.k.a. “The Aztec Mummy”) here! – along with director Joseph P.
Mawra (alias “Joseph Prieto”), stirs a shit-disturbing pack of short-haired
bike boys into the gumbo too, just for bad measure and to kick-off all the
gratuitous mean-spiritedness. Known as The Rats, these losers rumble into town
on their generic mishmash of mostly non-Harley ’sickles, looking for the most part
more like a bunch of slumming frat-boys out on a tear rather than a sociopathic
gang of chain-swinging ruffians.
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MC leader Savage brings out the animal in Emily...it doesn't take much! |
A real fast ’n’ loose floozy, the immoral – or
perhaps just plain amoral (it’s a
fine line) – Emily hits on just about anything in pants. When a wholesome
boy-next-door type she’s been dancing with gets group-stomped by the bikers,
the tramp simply shrugs him off and goes for the badass alpha male pack-leader
Savage (Lawrence Tobin) instead. Later that night, Emily’s wannabe Wild One,
evidently tired of straddling his hog and wanting something softer to ride on (at least for a little
while), contemptuously spits, “You don’t know what fun is, you teasin’ little bitch! Shaddap, an’ PUT OUT!” Whereupon, the biker – not unexpectedly, sorry to say,
despite the rather half-hearted knee in the ’nads Emily gives him in
self-defense – attempts to ravish (i.e., rape) her; this rather than fork-over
the five-spot (“a fin”) that Emily demands right on the barrelhead for her
services, which may come easy, but – unlike she herself – certainly aren’t
cheap (at least by ’67 prices).
Elsewhere, Daniel (Lewis Galen), a right-minded young
black man whose father had been lynched by local Klan members years earlier,
has a case of the hots for our shanty tramp but BAD. His wise ol’ Momma – who’s been around the block a few times herself,
and knows the score – warns him to steer well clear of such an easy piece as
Emily (“You quit starin’ at that shanty tramp!” she slut-shames with extreme
prejudice), but Danny-boy nonetheless feels the irrepressible lure of the
tainted honey-pot and What’s Inside A Girl; which, in this case, certainly ain’t “sugar and spice and everything
nice”! The timely arrival of Daniel at the scene of Emily’s attempted ravishment
by the poor man’s Brando saves her honour… or at least whatever tattered shreds
of it still remain to her at this supreme low-point in her
“wham-bam-no-thank-you-ma’am” existence. Then, wouldn’t you know it, the
flightily fickle tramp promptly displays her “gratitude” for Daniel’s selfless
act of chivalry in coming to her rescue by taunting him and disrespectfully addressing
him as “boy”. Yes indeed, the ST (“Whatever I want, I get!”) is quite the piece o’ work, to say the least! “Damn you,
friggin’ shanty tramp!” curses Daniel before entering the lion’s den of Emily’s
ferociously feline charms; in fact, even as he falls for them, his aghast
facial expression possibly implies that he’d sooner trust a post-coital female
praying mantis rather than she. Yet, like a lamb to the slaughter, he nonetheless
foolishly snaps for her bait, which she waves under his nose like a carrot before
a donkey.
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"Pa!" exclaims Emily in shocked surprise upon being unexpectedly interrupted by him in whilst in Daniel's company. |
Intercut with all this seedy nightlife/lowlife and
the bike gang’s subsequent murder of interfering Daniel’s elderly ma (the
bastards!), the preacher delivers his endless sermon from the self-righteous,
holier-than-thou mount of his pulpit, going at it with as much fervor as the
average messianic atheist might nowadays (albeit in the opposite direction),
such is his seeming absolute surety that a higher power watches over us from on
high. The entire plot unfolds over the course of several hours in a single
night. The lack of any daylight scenes whatsoever brings a dismally bleak,
claustrophobic edge to the proceedings, as though we’re trapped in some
perverted Twilight Zone/purgatory of permanent darkness and unrelenting gloom, amidst
nothing but the basest of (in)human nature, with no light at the end of the
tunnel nor any silver lining in sight.
After hearing the preacher’s sermon, all filled-up
with two kinds of spirit (by no means
just the Holy one), Emily’s drunken pissant pops (“You stinkin’ old souse!”), upon returning home to the unhappy
hovel – which is literally caked
wall-to-wall with grime, much like the movie itself – catches the oft-topless
Emily horizontal with her until recently virginal ebony savior Daniel. Thinking
on her feet even while lying flat on her back, to protect her now-nonexistent
“reputation”, the tramp cries rape, verbally painting the hapless and entirely
innocent black youth with the blame as surely as if she was literally
tarring-and-feathering him. As a result, having been incited into a racist
frenzy by the drunk-as-a-skunk, grief-stricken Mr. Stryker (who fell for his
not-so-darling daughter’s duplicitous accusation against Daniel hook, line and
sinker, more the fool him), angry local rednecks turn out in droves to run the
falsely-accused and fully-framed Daniel to ground prior to stringing him up at
first sight, kangaroo court/lynch mob-fashion… if they can get their hands on him
after he does a runner through the benighted woods at Emily’s express behest
(all the better to inform the posse exactly where he’s lamming it to, of
course. With poor Daniel out of the way, her “virtue” [HAH!] will remain intact, at least in her sappy pappy’s inebriated eyes,
if no one else’s).
Sheer, undiluted – and decidedly deadly – venom oozes around the edges of
Vaill’s every utterance, and her actual acts are even more poisonous still. If
indeed actions do speak louder than words, every last one of hers shrieks “DANGER!! STAY AWAY!!!” at the top of their lungs. She turns a simple “Hello”
into a lewd commercial pregnant with sexual promise, and seems to
wholeheartedly relish all the negative karma she unleashes, as though it’s the
sole thing in her worthless, meaningless life which gives it any purpose
whatsoever. But, if this was a story about a nice girl rather than a total trollop
who makes the nastiest femme fatale in all of film noir look like a rank
amateur by comparison, how boring
would that be?!
Some wannabe Russ Meyeresque “hip” banter and
clever editing add an edgy artiness to the squalid proceedings (that late ’70s
Trooper hit “3 Dressed Up as a 9” for some reason comes to mind, most
especially in regard to Miss Emily herself). Also working in other such prime
ticket-sellers as incest and patricide en
route and even including a minor if at the same time key subplot involving
moonshine runners, events spiral further and further out-of-control, leading into
the tragic closing concatenation. Not unexpectedly considering all that has
gone before, the film concludes on a decidedly downbeat note, which shouldn’t
come as a surprise to anyone, given the overall tone throughout; although, as
mentioned above, there is a wry final development which leaves a bittersweet aftertaste
in our mouths rather than a totally sour one, but it’s still a decidedly sardonic
turn regardless.
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True to form, Emily casts aspersions on Daniel's manhood, even as she cruelly leads him on sexually. |
Possessing great economy in every sense of the word
right across the board, this starkly B&W – fittingly enough, in light of
much of its contents – Trans-International Films (TIF) production and sometime Kroger
Babb & Associates (KBA)-distributed offering (“She’ll Blow Your Boxoffice Fuse! Whata [sic] Bad Girl!”), SHANTY TRAMP
is without doubt one cynical slash of fast-moving, bare-bones exploitation
cinema, for sure. It is edited most judiciously and economically (to around about
a mere 72-odd minutes in its uncut form) down to just the barest necessities
needed to get the job done, and sans any extraneous filler. Its pessimistic
depiction of the “spirit” of Man (and Woman) sure doesn’t bode well for
humanity’s future. In this seamy worldview direct from the sweaty underbelly down
at groin level, poor, decent, dutiful Daniel and his doting mother are among
the few cast members who possess any admirable traits (such as compassion,
loyalty, moral courage, etc.), leaving the main bulk of the characters just
poor – very poor – white trash of the
trashiest kind.
Don’t bother looking for poetry, positive messages
or other niceties in this steaming hunk of hate from the dirty dark-side of
rural Americana. However, if you feel you need a privy glimpse (just for a
reminder) at how low you don’t wanna
go, ever, SHANTY TRAMP should suit you to a “T”. Just be sure to take a long,
hot shower after watching it though, because you wouldn’t want any of its slimy
residue sticking with you afterwards. Besides, the dark stain on your soul will
be a lot harder to wash out the longer you leave it. If that statement sounds
overly hyperbolic – which it is,
needless to say – such Carny-style hyperbole seems more than fitting in the
context of this kind of outrageous sexploitationer, and this particular example
stands as a true high watermark of its ilk in the overflowing toilet tank of
slime cinema.
All that aside, the film is an absolute must-see
for those of us who are into this sort of thing for the simple morbid fascination
of it rather than anything else. As ultra-skeezy ’60s sleaze skinema goes, it
really hits all the bases, leaving slimy wet skid-marks in its wake everywhere
it touches in-between. So if that sounds like your bag, by all means grab a
copy of Something Weird’s DVD-R (it’s also been put out on DVD at some point by
Alpha Video). If not, God bless you, brethren. Brother Fallow would be proud of
you for not heeding your baser impulses… unlike how he himself does!
NOTES: In
other ST news… Be sure to keep a
look-out for the various artists vintage compilation vinyl LP – which was subsequently
reissued a number of times, including more than once on compact disc – entitled
Teen-Age Riot! (Atomic Passion
Records). Though it is primarily a collection of J.D. (“juvenile delinquent”)-related
R&R tracks and audio movie trailers (“50,000,000
Delinquents Can’t Be Wrong!”), it does contain what is evidently an old
radio ad for the present film under review (quotes: “This unusual and abnormal motion picture makes those Swedish movies
look like a Sunday school show!” – “From the swamp-infested backwoods of
Georgia comes this story of a lust-loving tramp! Born broke, she found a way to
make money: she loved them all!”).
Immediately following this dramatically-intoned narration comes Betty Dickson’s
girlishly sleazy-sweet rendition of the boppin’ ’billy-rocker “Shanty Tramp”,
the movie’s title theme (sample lyrics: “I give my love / And all I get is
money”), whose music was composed by ST’s
credited scorer Frank Linales (in the opening titles to the actual film itself,
lyrics are credited to co-scriptwriter Reuben Guberman, but on the original 45
single issued on his self-owned KGM label, K. Gordon Murray actually receives
credit for penning the words to the song; possibly that might imply they both
chipped-in their two cents’ worth?). In the movie itself, rather than being
heard at the outset behind the opening titles as you might expect, the song instead
blares from a roadhouse jukebox further into the narrative, while a sparse
gaggle of twentysomething “teenagers” hip-frug frantically along to the beat
(titillatory C/U’s of girls’ bottoms jiggling in skintight slacks depict the vastly-more-appealing
1960s equivalent of twerking [ugh!]).
Though the Teen-Age Riot! collection
as a whole is uneven and mostly comparatively unspectacular as such PD (“public
domain”) comps go, just so long as you don’t have to shell-out full import
price for it, the above-mentioned inclusions and a few notable others make the
record (or CD) a worthwhile purchase for both trash cinema and trash music
enthusiasts alike.
On a note of related trivia, long-gone American lo-fi garage r’n’r combo The Dirty Lovers put out a 7" vinyl 45 rpm EP on Dog Meat Records in 1990 whose title track was entitled “Shanty Tramp”; however, while it is an absolutely kick-arse toon overflowing with raunchy punk snottery and the sleeve’s cut-and-paste graphics incorporate both ST the movie’s title logo and even some of its taglines, other than for those aspects, the high-decibel/treble-to-da-metal song (a blistering 2½-minute blast of rawk which is certainly not a cover version!) is only indirectly related to its namesake by general theme. For an actual cover of the song from the movie – if a considerably raunched-up one – check out Miriam Linna & The A-Bones’ straight-ahead rendition on a 1993 45 single recorded by them on the Giant Claw label; it served as the flipside to another cover of a song from a psychotronic movie, “The World’s Greatest Sinner” (which was originally recorded by Frank Zappa, no less, who composed the score for the 1962 cult flick of the same title starring Timothy Carey).
On a note of related trivia, long-gone American lo-fi garage r’n’r combo The Dirty Lovers put out a 7" vinyl 45 rpm EP on Dog Meat Records in 1990 whose title track was entitled “Shanty Tramp”; however, while it is an absolutely kick-arse toon overflowing with raunchy punk snottery and the sleeve’s cut-and-paste graphics incorporate both ST the movie’s title logo and even some of its taglines, other than for those aspects, the high-decibel/treble-to-da-metal song (a blistering 2½-minute blast of rawk which is certainly not a cover version!) is only indirectly related to its namesake by general theme. For an actual cover of the song from the movie – if a considerably raunched-up one – check out Miriam Linna & The A-Bones’ straight-ahead rendition on a 1993 45 single recorded by them on the Giant Claw label; it served as the flipside to another cover of a song from a psychotronic movie, “The World’s Greatest Sinner” (which was originally recorded by Frank Zappa, no less, who composed the score for the 1962 cult flick of the same title starring Timothy Carey).
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