Note: Although the title on the Blu-Ray is Girls for Rent, the version I originally saw (on Beta, no less) back in the early ‘00s was called I Spit on Your Corpse! Because that’s the version I’m most familiar with, that’s the title I will refer to it as. Of course, the retitling was meant to cash in on the infamous cult classic, I Spit on Your Grave, but apart from a subplot about a slow-witted redneck rapist, it’s really nothing like that flick. It is however a solid slice of drive-in moviemaking, and certainly one of director Al Adamson’s all-time best efforts.
Moreno (frequent Adamson star Kent Taylor) runs an organization that is kind of like an evil version of Charlie’s Angels. One girl handles counterfeiting, another runs a call girl operation, one deals in stolen goods, etc. He hires Sandra (Georgina Spelvin) as the team’s hit woman, and immediately gives her an assignment to take out a politician. She doesn’t want to get her hands dirty, so she gets a call girl named Donna (Susan McIver) to unwillingly poison the perverted politico. Once she realizes she’s killed a man, Donna hightails it out of there and heads for Mexico. Moreno, nervous Donna will talk to the authorities, sends Sandra out in hot pursuit to silence her for good.
While it never hits the zany heights of Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein, I Spit on Your Corpse! is his most consistently entertaining film. It’s briskly paced, well-made, and looks great, thanks to Gary Graver’s excellent cinematography. The score, which alternates from sounding like a Spaghetti Western to resembling a James Bond rip-off, is also very good.
Hot off the heels of her notoriety from The Devil in Miss Jones, Spelvin delivers a knockout performance. Sporting a pixie hairdo and spouting her dialogue through a mischievous sneer, the tough-talking Spelvin kinda looks like a cross between Shirley MacLaine and Tura Satana. The opening sequence, where Spelvin escapes from a prison roadwork crew, perfectly sets the tone for the movie. Two female prisoners begin wrestling in the dirt to distract the guards before Spelvin conks them on the head and takes off into the desert. My favorite moment though is when Spelvin seduces the slow-witted would-be rapist and blows his brains out just before he’s about to get his rocks off.
We also get a great bit where Spelvin and her partner in crime, Rosalind Miles are hitchhiking, and roll a trio of drunks. Spelvin lures them in by whipping out her tit (most people stick out their thumb while hitchhiking, but not Georgina), and it doesn’t take long for her and Miles to kick the shit out of some Good Ol’ Boys. This sequence also features a brief smattering of topless kickboxing, and as far as I can tell, it is only the second instance of topless kickboxing in film history as it premiered just a few months after Cirio H. Santiago’s seminal T.N.T. Jackson.
Although the film clips along at a steady pace for the first hour or so, it kind of fizzles out just before the finale. The end chase through the desert is needlessly drawn out, almost as if Adamson was contractually obligated to reach a mandated ninety-minute runtime. That blemish aside, there is enough skin and action throughout the movie to make it highly recommended for connoisseurs of sleazy drive-in fare.
AKA: Girls for Rent. AKA: Fatal Pursuit. AKA: A Life in the Balance.
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