THE FEMALE BUNCH (1971) **

Sandy (Nesa Renet) is a cocktail waitress who falls head over heels for a Las Vegas entertainer (Don Epperson, who also sings a couple of OK tunes).  When he breaks things off with Sandy, her gal pal Libby (Regina Carrol) invites her to join her all-girl gang.  Together, the wild women live on a ranch where farmhand Monti (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is the only man allowed on the premises.  Their leader, Grace (Jennifer Bishop) is a man-hating badass who occasionally makes runs across the border to Mexico to buy smack.  It doesn’t take long before a man (Russ Tamblyn) sneaks onto the ranch for a little action and gets a taste of Grace’s fury.

While the premise seems sturdy enough, The Female Bunch is mostly a mess.  The title makes it seem like it’s going to be sort of like an all-female version of The Wild Bunch, but’s it’s more like a western variation on a biker gang movie in that the girl gang rides around on horses instead of motorcycles.  Parts are dull, and yet, some scenes have a bit of a kick to them.  I liked the gang initiation scene where the new girls are buried alive in a coffin.  I also dug the part where Tamblyn gets busted by Bishop, which leads to a not-bad branding sequence.  There’s also a death scene involving a pitchfork that’s surprisingly well done. 

Most of the scenes though go on far too long and suffer from erratic editing.  Even worse, just about every scene transition is awkward at best, or downright amateurish at worst.  None of it flows together very well, which makes for a frustrating experience.  The film also contains some of the worst ADR I have ever heard, with some dialogue being spoken while the actors’ mouths are completely closed (and sometimes spoken by an entirely different person).  I guess you can attribute that to the fact that director Al Adamson was fired during production and replaced by John “Bud” Cardos (who also has a small role as a Mexican farmer who is terrorized by the girl gang), but the editing is pretty rough, even by both men’s standards.

It’s also sad to see Chaney floundering around in his final filmed performance.  His voice is hoarse, his face is flushed, and his eyes are watery.  I have a feeling that the bottle of booze he swigs from wasn’t a prop. 

The women in the cast are easy on the eyes, which helps somewhat.  Bishop has a commanding screen presence, and Lesley McCrea, Sharon Wynters, and Carol are fun to watch… whenever the editing allows for such things.  There’s also just enough nudity (some of which comes courtesy of body doubles) to act as an olive branch to keep you from hating it too much.