Angels' Wild Women (1972) Reviews

• Falls short of viewer expectations.

  sonya900282009-06-25

  This film was released in 1972, a year that marked the last gasp, of Hollywood's fascination with the outlaw biker subculture. Much of the story takes place at the infamous Spahn Ranch, site of the Manson cult in real life. In the film, the biker gals get mixed-up with hippie pot farmers, who live on the Spahn Ranch. The hippies have a Manson-like guru who espouses peace and love, but is really a creepy, Svengali-like character. The biker babes come to the Spahn Ranch, after their men take to the road without them, in search of kicks. These biker women are tough, lascivious, and incredibly sexy-looking. They're like a wet-dream come to life, for many male, and probably some female viewers. And like the biker chick stereotype, these gals are always eager to get it on, with any male in their vicinity. Some of these women even manage to force themselves sexually, on a hunky farm-boy that they spot working in a field. In the end, he's shown clearly enjoying the amorous attention of these biker girls. Much of the film is incredibly violent. There's a brutal near-rape, of one of the biker chicks. She's rescued in the nick-of-time, by the other women in her biker gang, who proceed to pummel the would-be rapists to a pulp. It's as if the producers go overboard with the violent scenes, to prove to the audience that bikers are very vicious folks. Perhaps some of them are. But bikers are as human as the next person, and shouldn't be judged only by Hollywood's stereotypes of them. The film doesn't deliver on it's promise, to showcase mainly the biker women. Despite the title, the women in this film are still overshadowed by the male biker characters. Also, the overall story-line is somewhat muddled, and hard to to follow at times. In my humble opinion, this movie falls short of it's potential. Viewers expecting to see a biker movie that revolves only around the female bikers, will be disappointed with Angel's Wild Women.

• Lesser Adamson Biker

  Michael_Elliott2011-01-09

  Angels' Wild Women (1972) * 1/2 (out of 4) The biker genre was already on its way out with director Adamson threw this thing into drive-ins across the country. The story is pretty simple as a couple racist rednecks chase down a black woman and rape her. They picked the wrong woman to mess with because her biker sisters show up and beat them down. Later the girls end up on a hippie farm that turns out to be ran by a drug kingpin. No one outside of a mental asylum will mix up the work of Adamson with Bergman but at the same time when the cult director made a movie I'm pretty sure making a good one was the last thing on his mind. I've seen quite a bit of Adamson's work over the years and it seems like he was the type who just wanted to throw anything on the screen and just see what would work and what wouldn't. In something like Dracula VS. FRANKENSTEIN we get a mix 'n match of stuff and in the end the film turned out to be bizarre enough where it was hard to turn away. The first twenty-minutes of ANGELS' WILD WOMEN contains very little dialogue and instead we get a rape sequence, some fighting, some nudity, more fighting, some more nudity, more fights and a couple more fights thrown in for good measure. Needless to say this film doesn't contain an ounce of a brain but I give Adamson credit for knowing he didn't have very much and instead just trying to give people what they want. The nudity is fun and some of the fights scenes are rather funny and especially the ones with the women beating down the rapist. It's rather obvious some of these women had never been in a fight and it seems as if a couple were worried about breaking their nails. This issue makes for a silly fight but at the same time it's entertaining. The film really falls apart once the film reaches the hippie stuff as none of it is entertaining and the thing pretty much comes to a standstill with nothing happening. There's some love story thrown in for no reason and many other little odds and ends but nothing that adds up to much. The final hour of this film is extremely slow and hard to get threw and the hippie versus biker fight at the end comes much too late to save anything.

• Al Adamson's Requiem to the Biker Film

  Matthew_Capitano2013-09-19

  Leave it to director Al to put in his two cents worth on any genre; this time, it's biker films, thanks to the success of 'Easy Rider' (1969). A gang of biker chicks set out to kick the scummy butts of a collection of creeps. Not a particularly flowing film. Adamson wanted to show his flair for innovativeness by presenting a 'layered' approach in his photography (not to mention some token scenes which are a bit too paralleled alongside 'Easy Rider'). OK for Adamsom aficionados and those seeking to obtain some comfy slumber on the couch on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Vicki Volante ('Terry') has really cute boobs.

• Is there a point to all this?!

  MartinHafer2009-09-11

  Al Adamson might just be the worst director of all time--perhaps even worse than Ed Wood, Hershell Gordon Lewis, Ted Mikels or Ray Dennis Steckler. But once you've gotten to the level of these directors, saying exactly which was the very worst is all a matter of opinion and personal taste. For my money, I'd say Adamson--especially since he is responsible for such atrocities as HELL'S BLOODY DEVILS, HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS, Dracula VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN and BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. Probably his best film I've seen so far is PSYCHO A GO-GO (one of his very first films) and it's all been downhill ever since. If have haven't guesses already, I am a bad movie lover. Now I can't take a steady diet of nothing but horrid films, but I do like to laugh at the really awful stuff and have reviewed an awful lot of rotten films. However, for most bad film buffs, there are two main types of bad films--bad but unintentionally funny and bad and incredibly dull. The former are the "good" bad movies and the latter are just tedious messes. ANGELS' WILD WOMEN is one of the latter. It's tedious and not much fun to watch--mostly because there really isn't much of a plot. In many ways, it looks like a home movie made of a biker gang--with no narrative or structure. Like so many of Adamson's films, his wife, Regina Carrol, is in this film. She looked a bit like an aging stripper in this film and considering that she WAS an aging stripper this made a lot of sense. However she did look a bit out of place with the gang--with her white lipstick and her being considerably older than the rest. The film shows a lot of unconnected vignettes involving rape, fights and murder. As for the rapes, one begins the film and really didn't do much to advance the plot. The second one involved a man being raped by women. The third time was an attempted rape. As for fighting, there were so many fights that I really lost track of them. Heck, when people weren't busy raping each other, they were fighting--often with their friends. None of this really made any sense and towards the end, the characters started killing each other for no particular reason--they the whole mess just ended. Overall, this film looks like three or four of Adamson's projects somewhat randomly edited together. While it never has the goofy charm or stupidness that I love in some of his worst films, it also doesn't have much watchability or fun. And after a while it all gets pretty boring. I would recommend you not let kids see this. This isn't necessarily because of all the nudity and violence--it's more that crap like this can't be good for kid's growing brains!