Barefoot and Pregnant
Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, a wife/husband filmmaking duo of the 1970s and 1980s, made their first fictional feature, The Hitchhikers, in 1971. The film fits within that era's B-movie supercluster of exploitation films and drive-in theater product. Still, the movie, in an honest and expressive way, also possesses a poetic beauty, the filmmakers taking time to show landscapes, wildflowers, to depict images of early 1970s America with its truck stops, gas stations, back roads. In those days, there was still a sense of the possibility of finding remote locations where no one could bother you, unless someone might accidentally arrive, as does Misty Rowe's character Maggie, a pregnant runaway teenager who's been raped by a man who picked her up hitchhiking.
She meets a man named Benson who gives her shelter at his spread, a rundown barn and some other buildings where he lives with four beautiful young women, the five of them comprising his "Family."
The reference must be to Charles Manson and his Family of runaway girls, but Benson isn't twisted, he's just a criminal. His racket consists of using the pulchritude of his girls to get drivers to stop for them as they're apparently hitchhiking. Benson then sweeps in with his revolver, making the driver get out of his car. They rob the victim of whatever they can take that seems of value, especially cash, then send the man on his way, always laughing as they do so.
Maggie, after recovering from a miscarriage, joins in as an enticer of male motorists. She also starts a romance with Benson, making her the object of resentment by Diana, who never takes to liking the new arrival.
The movie meanders for too long. It also struck me as implausible that given the numerous highway robberies, the State Troopers wouldn't eventually catch up to Benson.
All along, Maggie has wanted to go to Los Angeles, and that's where she and one of the other girls go with Benson in an old school bus he buys for 900 dollars. (Stealing vehicles from car lots is evidently not something he cares to do).
The movie's happy ending seemed off-putting to me, providing no answers as to what happens once these outlaws get to the metropolis. They'll have to change their ways, but since they demonstrate an easy willingness to fuck people over, they'll probably do well in the big city, for a while anyway.
A constant undertone in the film deals with how the victims of Benson's gang are partly responsible for their own victimhood. By pulling over to the side of the road, they're complicit, revealing the desire to engage in some kind of physical transaction with scantily dressed--and in one case, totally nude--young women. One of the victims is a Christian minister. Many of them are married. One of them is, according to a newspaper account, a "pillar of the community."
This subtext of society's hypocrisies lends a degree of thoughtfulness to a film dedicated to making money through its frequent visuals of tits and asses, in true exploitation genre way.
I've seen one other film by the Sebastians: 'Gator Bait, from 1974, starring the late great Claudia Jennings. That, too, is a film combining the beauty of nature with a sexy actress--although one with a heightened acting ability and wonderful screen presence when compared to Misty Rowe, who, granted, was performing her first film role, several years before joining the corny cast of Hee Haw.
Vic Neptune
Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, a wife/husband filmmaking duo of the 1970s and 1980s, made their first fictional feature, The Hitchhikers, in 1971. The film fits within that era's B-movie supercluster of exploitation films and drive-in theater product. Still, the movie, in an honest and expressive way, also possesses a poetic beauty, the filmmakers taking time to show landscapes, wildflowers, to depict images of early 1970s America with its truck stops, gas stations, back roads. In those days, there was still a sense of the possibility of finding remote locations where no one could bother you, unless someone might accidentally arrive, as does Misty Rowe's character Maggie, a pregnant runaway teenager who's been raped by a man who picked her up hitchhiking.
She meets a man named Benson who gives her shelter at his spread, a rundown barn and some other buildings where he lives with four beautiful young women, the five of them comprising his "Family."
The reference must be to Charles Manson and his Family of runaway girls, but Benson isn't twisted, he's just a criminal. His racket consists of using the pulchritude of his girls to get drivers to stop for them as they're apparently hitchhiking. Benson then sweeps in with his revolver, making the driver get out of his car. They rob the victim of whatever they can take that seems of value, especially cash, then send the man on his way, always laughing as they do so.
Maggie, after recovering from a miscarriage, joins in as an enticer of male motorists. She also starts a romance with Benson, making her the object of resentment by Diana, who never takes to liking the new arrival.
The movie meanders for too long. It also struck me as implausible that given the numerous highway robberies, the State Troopers wouldn't eventually catch up to Benson.
All along, Maggie has wanted to go to Los Angeles, and that's where she and one of the other girls go with Benson in an old school bus he buys for 900 dollars. (Stealing vehicles from car lots is evidently not something he cares to do).
The movie's happy ending seemed off-putting to me, providing no answers as to what happens once these outlaws get to the metropolis. They'll have to change their ways, but since they demonstrate an easy willingness to fuck people over, they'll probably do well in the big city, for a while anyway.
A constant undertone in the film deals with how the victims of Benson's gang are partly responsible for their own victimhood. By pulling over to the side of the road, they're complicit, revealing the desire to engage in some kind of physical transaction with scantily dressed--and in one case, totally nude--young women. One of the victims is a Christian minister. Many of them are married. One of them is, according to a newspaper account, a "pillar of the community."
This subtext of society's hypocrisies lends a degree of thoughtfulness to a film dedicated to making money through its frequent visuals of tits and asses, in true exploitation genre way.
I've seen one other film by the Sebastians: 'Gator Bait, from 1974, starring the late great Claudia Jennings. That, too, is a film combining the beauty of nature with a sexy actress--although one with a heightened acting ability and wonderful screen presence when compared to Misty Rowe, who, granted, was performing her first film role, several years before joining the corny cast of Hee Haw.
Vic Neptune
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