THE GIRLS FROM THUNDER STRIP (1970) *

Director David L. Hewitt has made some movies that were so spectacularly bad that they became instant classics (like The Mighty Gorga).  He’s also made some that were just plain bad (like The Wizard of Mars).  The Girls from Thunder Strip falls into the latter category.

   

Three bikers get their kicks by raping and humiliating women.  The only thing they hate more than women is hillbilly gas station attendants.  A tussle with one such hillbilly ends in the accidental death of the gang’s biker mama.  The sheriff promptly shows up and throws them in jail. 

Meanwhile, Casey Kasem (!!!) is a government agent trying to bust a trio of sisters who bootleg moonshine.  The sisters wind up busting out the bikers to help them battle the cops.  Naturally, the try to have their way with the sisters, which leads to a biker vs. moonshiner war.

The Girls from Thunder Strip plays like a mash-up of the biker, redneck, and moonshine genres.  There are scenes of biker stomping, prison breaks, and Good Ol’ Boy-style car chases accompanied by banjo music.  In fact, there is a LOT of banjo music in this movie.  You’ll probably get a headache from the constant, merciless, unending banjo picking.

This often feels schizophrenic.  It tries to cover too many genres and never does any of them justice.  The plot starts off incoherently and only gets worse as it goes along.  The tone is all out of whack too.  This is the only movie I can think of that contains a vicious rape scene and then twenty minutes later, Casey Kasem falls victim to a Bugs Bunny-style explosion that leaves him comically standing around in a daze with scorched clothing.

The ending is the pits though.  After a long foot chase (cue the banjos!), our hillbilly hero corners the biker leader into a cave.  Then, there’s a closeup of a stuffed bobcat, followed by the sounds of screaming and growling.  I guess this was supposed to signify the biker being killed by the bobcat, but the editing is so piss-poor it’s hard to tell what the hell happened.  It’s pathetic.

Hewitt’s next attempt at the biker genre, The Tormentors, was a lot better.