LAW AND DISORDER

Sondra Currie commits police banality.


The badass on the above promo poster is the prolific and still-working U.S. actress Sondra Currie, whose credits include everything from 1970’s Rio Lobo to 2009’s The Hangover. Policewomen is actually about just one policewoman with the fun character name Lacy Bond. The action starts with a mass escape at L.A.’s women’s jail, which Lacy almost foils singlehandedly using her superior martial arts skills. But two convicts get away, one of whom is Jeannie Bell—the reason we watched this flick in the first place.

After the jailbreak intro come the opening credits, and the first image you see is this:

Which is a pretty nice visual. But lest you think this is a movie dealing solely with serious police work, the next images you see are these:

Then these:

And finally these:

So viewers know going in this is full spectrum ’70s schlock. Lacy is tapped for a dangerous undercover assignment taking down a gang of female drug smugglers. It shouldn’t be too difficult. The gang mainly lounges around an L.A. suburb in bikinis and hot pants. Their leader is a septuagenarian career criminal looking for one more big score before cruising into her sunset years. The cops have other ideas, and Lacy infiltrates the group in unlikely fashion in order to take them down from within.

Policewomen actually has a couple of twists we considered to be surprising for a low budget movie, but budget is the crux of it—higher production values might have yielded a passable effort, but there weren’t, and it isn’t. And sad to say, the movie mostly fails to cross the line into entertainingly bad—except for a rather amusing falling dummy shot—and instead remains a joyless slog for its entire length. Since the field of ’70s girl gang movies is so crowded, there’s no way we can recommend this botched entry. But before we sign off, here’s a screenshot of Jeannie Bell, whose afro reaches truly epic proportions:
Even with a top heavy hairdo and dead leaves stuck in her curls, Bell looks smashing. She can’t act. She and everyone else in the movie seem as if they’re searching for their lines on an optometrist’s eye chart, but even so, there’s nothing we’ve seen of Bell that does anything but encourage us to see even more. Check out a promo image of this eternal goddess here. Policewomen premiered today in 1974.

Is it weird that with all these women around the only thing that truly turns me on is pumping iron?
 
If only weight training could fix—*sob*—this hideous mug of mine.

Central I’m issuing a POLO alert for the Los Angeles metro area. Repeat—be on the look-out for a missing Polo shirt. Or any shirt from Ralph Lauren.
 
Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1964—Mass Student Arrests in U.S.

In California, Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest at the UC Regents’ decision to forbid protests on university property.

1968—U.S. Unemployment Hits Low

Unemployment figures are released revealing that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 3.3 percent, the lowest rate for almost fifteen years. Going forward all the way to the current day, the figure never reaches this low level again.

1954—Joseph McCarthy Disciplined by Senate

In the United States, after standing idly by during years of communist witch hunts in Hollywood and beyond, the U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for conduct bringing the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. The vote ruined McCarthy’s career.

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.

1936—Crystal Palace Gutted by Fire

In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure.

Barye Phillips cover art for Street of No Return by David Goodis.
Assorted paperback covers featuring hot rods and race cars.
A collection of red paperback covers from Dutch publisher De Vrije Pers.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web