AN EXPERIMENT IN BOREDOM

Last night I was waiting for the Enemy Below to arrive for rehersal. I was rummaging through my DVD’s when I came across “Chain Gang Women”. My dad had bought it a while ago for about 5 bucks and had passed it along to me saying “You’ll like this, it’s terrible” (People do recommend films to me like that a lot – “you have to see this it was god-awful” is a pretty common recommendation that I get) I had not seen it and hell the title seemed perfect. But titles can be deceiving – there was no skin eating in “I Eat Your Skin” and looking at the back blurb I suspected there wasn’t going to be too many women in Chain Gang Women. Which is such a shame.

I’d like to see some kind of truth in labeling here, if you have a title like Chain Gang Women there are things you should be able to expect as consumer of film: good looking women in chains, a shower scene, at least one fight between two women, a sadistic lesbian warden (adding the soft-core Lesbian scene to the film – can’t not have that these days), a riot, an escape, the death of the heroine’s best buddy in the prison, final confrontation with either the warden or the boss of the cons or the corrupt head Guard and their ugly death and then finally, the state or feds coming in to clean things up and cart away the bodies. The thing nearly writes itself, unlike something say Beware Killer Sheep.

So I popped the tape in and in the spirit of Gonzo Journalism and as an experiment, I decided to take notes:

They are as follows (the numbers represent the elapsed time of the movie) – some editing for clarity has been done.

1:00 – Only one of the 5 “stars” of this movie is a woman. Not a good sign. I’m not watching something called chain gang women to watch a film about men on a chain gang.

6:45 – Still no woman. Banjo music though, not a good sign. Lead was in prison garb now in civvies being transferred to the prison Farm – suspect they shot this scene first and had to dance around why lead was in civvies.

8:45 – long rows of beds with men in them. One is playing the Harmonica – no women. They are handing out pabst blue ribbon to the cons. A progressive chain gang I guess.

10:55 – No women.

13:13 – The Unexpected cinematic use of chamber pots. No women.

18:20 – Back and White prisoner fight.

Time not noted: It’s the deep south why are they wearing blankets?

24:00 – Killer con (who is chained to the Male lead) is talking about the freedom to go to the toilet any time he wants to. I have to throw up.

25:33 – Talking about women – but no women.

28:02 – out in the field smoking. No Shower scene (thank god) no women.

32:50 - Is it legally allowable to call a film Chain Gang women when 32 minutes into the film you still haven’t see any women?

33:00 – Jail break – right out of Take the Money and run by Woody Allen.

33:00 “It’ll only take a couple of minutes to chop off your leg” Killer to Male lead.

34:45 – Cons running. Title song with banjo again. No women. Shit. Time to hit the gin.

35:01 – some kind of arty four frames in the shot look. All of them stink.

36:15 – The Defiant ones this ain’t. Man riding backward on a motor cycle while the other drives – the chains looks very very stupid.

39:33 Killer “I broke out twice, I know what to do.” - So what were you doing back in jail you’re so smart? Huh?

40:30 – Male lead takes off shirt while they steal truck. Blindingly white person. Stunningly pale.

41 – Male lead mentions girlfriend – We still haven’t seen a single woman.

41:10 – A woman! A woman! An actual woman.

42:02 – A man shaving in a bathroom with his shirt off is not what you want to see when you turn on Chain Gang Women.

43:31 – Naked woman, about 40 minutes late.

43:32 – cut back to Killer fully dressed and eating breakfast.

44: - Sex in the shower (not the shower scene you expect with a title like Chain Gang Women) they are behind frosted glass. Still way too much male butt in shot. This filmmaker has some issues he needs to address.

45: - Killer peeks in on boinking couple – cut to couple, cut to guy, cut to couple he goes back to kitchen to sit down, he is jealous and this bodes ill for the future – Jesus hit us over the head with the foreshadowing why don’t you? And I’ve have just about enough of this shit. And that’s the doorbell.

I didn’t finish the film after the rehearsal cause I didn’t feel like it. ½ the film was enough – over the weekend I’ll go and do the rest of it. We all need to know if this is going to be as stupidly clichéd and painful as I think it is going to be.

END EXPERIMENT>