BACKWOODS DOUBLE FEATURE: COMMON LAW WIFE (1963)
+ JENNIE, WIFE/CHILD (1968)
Label: Film Masters
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 74 Minutes 41 Seconds (Common Law Wife), 82 Minutes 21 Seconds (Jennie, Wife/Child)
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono, English Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles, plus Audio Commentary Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Directors: Eric Sayers, Larry Buchanan (Common Law Wife) (Jennie, Wife/Child)
Cast:
In partnership with Something Weird deep-diving cult film connoisseurs Film Masters have a new hicksploitation double-feature fresh from the swamps for you, both Common Law Wife and Jennie, Wife/Child (1968), two Southern-fried exploitation flicks about two hot-to-trot blonde floozies presented in HD with fresh 4K scans of 35mm film elements, both making their HD debuts!
COMMON LAW WIFE (1963)
Label: Film Masters
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 74 Minutes 41 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono, English Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Eric Sayers, Larry Buchanan
Cast: George Edgley. Annabelle Weenick, Lacey Kelly,
Max W. Anderson, Bert Masters, Libby Hall
First up is the moonshine-shocker Common Law Wife (1963) which started out as a color 16mm color flick Swamp Rose by director Larry Buchanan (Mars Needs Women), then a distributor snapped up the film, sat on it a few years, and hired director Eric Sayers (The Garbage Man) to shoot additional 35mm scenes in black and white creating a composite cut, duping the 16mm in B&W as well, and released under the Common Law Wife title. In it old-timer oil tycoon Shugfoot Rainey (George Edgley, Mars Needs Women) has grown tired of his longtime girlfriend Linda (Annabelle Weenick, Don't Look in the Basement), and he's not just looking to trade her in for a younger gal, never mind that she's already only half his age, but he's looking to upgrade to his own damn niece, the pouty-faced sex-kitten Baby Doll (Lacey Kelly, The Dead One). Once Baby Doll arrives back in town, after spending a few years stripping in New Orleans (with allusions that she was driven out of town!), she sets the place alight with her brash sexuality, zeroing on on her sister Brenda's (Libby Hall, The Naked Witch) husband, her former flame, Jody (Max W. Anderson, High Yellow), the podunk town's current sheriff! Also sniffing after her is the moonshiner-entrepreneur Bull (Bert Masters). It's quite a lecherous bit if Southern-fried exploitation, there's not a ton of nudity, and it's not all-that-shocking nowadays, other than Shugfoot lusting after his own blood relative, but it's fun stuff. The storyline is a bit of a hot mess, we have Shugfoot looking to dump Linda, who establishes that through common law that she and Shug are in0fact married according tot he law, but Shig and lustful Linda, both of whom want Shug's riches for themselves, and both are willing to murder to get what they want! As this is a composite film assembled from two flicks the storylines doesn't come across as cohesive, especially since Baby Dolls looks different from scene to scene, and despite rumors it does look like the same actress, just made up quite differently, which makes it easy to spot which scenes were shot as Swamp Rose and which are the newer scenes added by Eric Sayers, that and the earlier film was shot on 16mm and the newer stuff is 35mm and looks considerably better. There's never a dull moment here though, it;s a hood seeing the backwoods blonde tear though the men in the town, no moonshiner or sheriff is man enough to stand up to her wild ways, leading to a terrifically pulpy finale full of tainted-moonshine and a handgun that I saw coming from a way out but enjoyed quite a bit, feeling a bit like a prototype John Waters flick.
JENNIE, WIFE/CHILD (1968)
aka Albert Peckingpaw’s Revenge
Label: Film Masters
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration:
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono, English Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director:
Cast: Jack Lester, Beverly Lundsford, Jim Reader, Virginia Woods
Up next is another blonde-tart hicksploitation flick with two credited directors, Jennie, Wife/Child (1968) aka Albert Peckingpaw’s Revenge, this time out the directors are Robert Carl Cohen (Mondo Hollywood: Hollywood Laid Bare!) and James Landis (The SadistThe Sadist), with the latter originally filming it as Tender Grass, before distributors brought in Cohen to cut it down, trim out the slow- parts, add some salacious goodness by way of the character of sexpot Lulu and a motorcycle striptease, and oddly enough, adding some silent era title cards. In it middle-aged farmer Albert Peckingpaw (Jack Lester, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant) is lovelessly married to the much younger (Beverly Lundsford, The Crawling Hand), but it turns out that being a farmer's wife is not all it's cracked-up to be, and she turns her lustful eye on Peckingpaw's younger farmhand, Mario (Jim Reader, The Glory Stompers), which is pronounced "Mary-O" in the flick! While Jennie flirts shamelessly with Mario her attempts to evade her, but she's a hot little number and this dipshit's will-power is only so string, so he gives in to her sexual charms before too long and they're rolling in the hay and making plans to steal Peckingpaw's cash and run off together, but her old man is hip to what his hussy wife and randy ranch hand are up to, and he has some sadistic plans in store for them! This was quite a treat, as where Common Law Wife was a bit of a hot mess this is more "polished" exploitation flick with a more cohesive storyline, sort of. There are some wild detours into town where Mario oggles town-tart Lulu Belle (Virginia Woods, Spinout!) while she shakes her top-drawer assets, comically smoking a stogie and taking huge swigs of beer while doing some herky-jerky "dancing", but what really makes this such a step-up over the a-side of this double-feature is the above average cinematography by future Oscar-winner Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) plus a soundtrack chockfull of earworks from legendary 60's fuzz-rockers Davie Allan and the Arrows, and some memorable tunes from Don Epperson (The Female Bunch) that tell you the plot of the story, which I thought was all kinds of cool. I thought this was also well-acted for what it is, and there;s some interesting range of emotion for the character, with both Jennie and Peckingpaw having interesting changes of hearts at certain point. In the end it's still a ludicrous turn of events, but still a riotous hoot as well, with Virginia Woods stealing the show as the town-tart.
Audio/Video: Both films arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Film Masters in 1080p HD, framed in 1.85:1 widescreen with new 4K scans of archival film elements. As mentioned in the review Common Law Wife was originally shot as the film on 16mm color film by director Larry Buchanan (Mars Needs Women), then a distributor snapped up the film and hired director Eric Sayers (The Garbage Man) to shoot additional 35mm scenes in black and white creating a composite cut, duping the 16mm in B&W as well, titled it it Common Law WIfe and distributed it under that title. The cutting back and forth between the 16mm and 35mm footage shot a few years later is pretty obvious and does not make for smoothest transitions, the lower quality 16mm footage sticks out like a sore, thumb, but overall it's quite watchable. There are blemishes by way of speckling, small tears and scratches, vertical lines, but for the most part it's quite sharp with decent grayscale and solid black levels. A few of the 16mm scenes are fuzzy looking and don't have the best shadow detail, but the 35mm stiff looks solid with crisp monochromatic lensing. Jennie, WIfe/Child (1968) looks the better of the pair, shot on 35mm the black and white lensing by future Oscar award winner Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) looks significantly better, there are some instances of small scratches and vertical lines but the image is much more stable and consistent, with good contrast and pleasing grayscale and deeper black levels.
Audio for both come by way of English DTS-HD MA 29 dual-mono or lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 mono with optional English subtitles. The audio on Common Law Wife is a mixed bag, at it's best it sounds boxy with a razor-thin range that leans tinny, at worst it sounds like someone took the audio and threw it in a garbage can and then wrapped it in duct tape. Jennie, Wife/Child fares much better with a consistent if limited range and fidelity, the soundtrack features several songs by fuzz-rockers Davie Allan and the Arrows, as well as some key earworms from Don Epperson (The Female Bunch) including the theme song and "Revenge", all of his songs pretty much describing what's happening in the flick, which was fun.
This set s well-stocked with bonus junk, we get an Archival Audio Commentary by director of Swamp Rose, Larry Buchanan, and film historian/Mondo Digital founder, Nathaniel Thompson, and a New Audio Commentary by Millie De Chirico, film programmer, writer and host of the podcast I Saw What you Did, and Ben Cheaves, programmer at Turner Classic Movies for Common Law Wife, while Jennie, Wife/Bride get an Audio Commentary by Millie De Chirico. Something I love about Film Masters releases is the fact that you can watch the feature film and one of the subtitles options is to view the commentary as a subtitle option - I wish more discs offered this option.
Also on the disc is a new Ballyhoo Motion Pictures produced documentary, That’s Hicksploitation: The Origin of Southern Sinema that runs 51-minutes, written and narrated by genre film historian C. Courtney Joyner. Disc extras are buttoned up with a 3-min Original, Restored Trailer for Common Law Wife and a 2-min Newly Created Trailer by Film Masters for Jennie, Wife/Child. The 2-disc Blu-ray release arrives in a dual-hubbed keepcase with a single sided sleeve of artwork
Special Features:
Disc 1: Common Law Wife + Extras
- Archival Audio Commentary for Common Law Wife by director of Swamp Rose, Larry Buchanan, and film historian/Mondo Digital founder, Nathaniel Thompson
- New Audio Commentary by Millie De Chirico, film programmer, writer and host of the podcast I Saw What you Did, and Ben Cheaves, programmer at Turner Classic Movies
- Original, Restored Trailer for Common Law Wife (2:44)
Disc 2:
- Audio Commentary for Jennie Wife/Child by Millie De Chirico
- Ballyhoo Motion Pictures documentary, That’s Hicksploitation: The Origin of Southern Sinema (50:30)
- Newly Created Trailer by Film Masters for Jennie, Wife/Child (2:06)
- Illustrated Booklet with Liner notes by Lisa Petrucci of Something Weird Video
This randy, redneck double-feature is a ton of backwoods fun, both featuring fiery blonde bombshells willing to do whatever it takes to get whatever they want! Film Masters restored HD presentations are far superior to the previous 2003 DVD edition from Something Weird Video, so it's well-worth an upgrade if you own this on any other format, and the extras are fantastic. This comes highly recommended to those lovers of low-brow backwoods Lolita exploitation flicks!
Buy it!
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