Las Vegas Lady (1975)

Unless you’ve got a soft spot for one of the leading actors, or nostalgic affection for vintage footage of Sin City, there’s little reason to explore the low-budget heist thriller Las Vegas Lady. Ineptly written, poorly acted, and unattractively photographed, it’s a tedious mélange of clichés strung together by a vacuous storyline that the filmmakers can’t even bother to present coherently. The gist of the piece is that Lucky (Stella Stevens), a longtime resident of Las Vegas, agrees to rob the “bank” for a high-stakes card game on behalf of a mysterious benefactor. She recruits a trapeze artist (Linda Scruggs) and a waitress (Lynne Moody) for help, then struggles to hide her activities from her boyfriend (Stuart Whitman), a security guard at the casino Lucky plans to rob. As with most drive-in dreck from the Crown International assembly line, Las Vegas Lady makes very little sense. Since Lucky seems to be friendly with virtually everyone in Vegas, why can’t she make a regular living? And since her boyfriend just put a deposit on a ranch outside of town, why doesn’t she just leave Vegas with him to start a better life? More importantly, given that Lucky is not a career criminal, why was she recruited in the first place? (The only credential she ever mentions is that her breasts can distract men, which is true enough.) The picture’s wheezy plot is merely a set-up for a twist ending, but the twist is even more befuddling than what came before: Once you discover the identity of Lucky’s benefactor, you’ll wonder why he went to so much trouble. Anyway, everything in this movie is thoroughly dull and inconsequential, and the excitement level is dangerously low from the convoluted opening to the silly shoot-’em-up climax. Stevens looks great and Whitman provides a comfortingly macho presence, but their appeal isn’t nearly sufficient to justify enduring this movie. (The rest of the cast is forgettable, though Stevens’ son, future B-movie hunk Andrew Stevens, appears briefly.) In the vernacular of its location, Las Vegas Lady rolls a snake-eyes.

Las Vegas Lady: LAME