Difficult as it might seem
to make a boring movie about mobsters fighting a madam who runs a whorehouse
out of a truck stop, one should never underestimate director Mark L. Lester’s
capacity for turning promising notions into terrible movies. During the ’80s,
he spent wads of cash on such turkeys as Firestarter
(1984) and Commando (1985), but
during the early to mid-’70s, when he was just beginning his directorial reign
of terror, Lester employed budgets as meager as his cinematic gifts. Lester’s
third feature, Truck Stop Women, is
truly abysmal thanks to this combination of brainless storytelling and
yard-sale production values. The gist of the piece is that blowsy, middle-aged
Anna (Lieux Dressler) operates a successful brothel along a trucking route,
aided by her sexy daughters Rose (Claudia Jennings) and Tina (Jennifer Burton).
Big-city gangster Smith (John Martin0) tries to muscle in on the business,
eventually turning Rose against her mother. Violence ensues. The grimy nature
of Truck Stop Women is made clear by
the opening scene: Smith murders a naked man and women while they’re screwing
in a bubble bath, to the accompaniment of an upbeat country song containing the
lyrics, “if it feels good, do it.” Huh? The story unravels at regular
intervals, the numerous sex scenes have the sleazy quality of no-budget porn,
and the underscore is excruciatingly bad. (The music in some scenes sounds like
it resulted from a concussion victim reflexively flailing fingers across a
keyboard.) Even the presence of red-hot strawberry blonde Claudia Jennings, a onetime
Playboy model, isn’t enough to make
this bilge tolerable.
Truck Stop Women: SQUARE
"Commando" is great fun; his "Class Of 1984" is way, way worse.
ReplyDeleteI have never understood the appeal of Claudia Jennings.
ReplyDelete