Movie Info
Movie Name: Swamp Women
Studio: Bernard Woolner Productions
Genre(s): B-Movie/Action/Adventure
Release Date(s): April 1, 1956
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Yes, Bob…a trip into the swamp or this thing you call a “bayou” would be fun!
Lee Hampton (Carole Mathews) is a police woman who is going undercover. Helping a group of women known as the Nardo Gang escape prison, Lee hopes the women can lead her to the stolen diamonds they’ve hidden in the swamp. When Lee is unable to stop the women from kidnapping a couple named Bob (Mike Connors) and his girlfriend Marie (Susan Cummings), Lee has a new problem while trying to keep Bob and Marie alive.
Directed by Roger Corman, Swamp Women (also called Swamp Diamonds) is an action-adventure crime B-Movie. Released as a double-bill with Gunslinger (1956), Swamp Women was released to negative reviews and is often listed as one of the worst films of all time. The film was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K 5-03).
Swamp Women is one of those films I can credit Mystery Science Theater 3000 as being the first time I “saw” the movie. Like most movies on the show, it was ruthlessly torn apart, but I also find it is fun to go back and watch the movies without the MST3K crew commentary. Swamp Women is a pretty rotten movie that mostly suffers from an extreme lack of action.
I know the goal was to hide the diamonds, but maybe we should have just put them under a rock somewhere…
Despite being pretty short, the movie feels long. The movie needs to set-up the situation first with the robbers, the undercover cop, the diamonds, and (needlessly) the extremely boring couple of Bob and Marie. You would think once the movie hits the swamp, the action would pick up, but the movie continues to plod along…a great example is a sequence where the characters have to get out of the boat and pull it through some shallow swamp water. You think something is going to happen, but then they get back in the boat, and they are off again. That is kind of the theme of the whole movie.
The movie isn’t helped by the cast, but I also can’t fault the cast for everything. The characters are all rather bland and undefined. The movie is on the verge of being an exploitation flick, but never crosses that line (which would have made it better). I could imagine the movie being made in the 1970s with all the cast in bikinis as they travel through the swamp (and some ethnic diversity among the women as well).
We’re entering the 1956 “risqué” zone
The movie was shot around Louisiana where the story takes place and at least uses portions of a swamp for the filming. Of course there are snakes and alligators, but these too feel underused. It could have been a women in danger type movie or a man-vs-nature kind of film, but instead, the film has no identity.
Swamp Women is the type of movie that you can’t even have that much fun watching. I commend MST3K for managing to make it funny because the movie is rather a bore. Swamp Women is a harmless early Corman feature and that is about its only claim to fame…it is a good filler movie that you don’t have to pay much attention to, but you should probably stick to the MST3K version if you have a choice.
