Rant #1,634: Garland ... And It's Not Judy

Welcome to spring.

In my neck of the woods, snow is on the ground, but there isn't that much.

Hopefully, this is the last blast of winter, and we all know that the warmer weather is coming.

Heck, the baseball season starts in about two weeks, so we know that better things are ahead.

And somehow, I am going to go from summer to garland, that is, one of my all-time favorite D-movie actresses, Beverly Garland.

Not too good a segueway, but ...

Garland is perhaps best know as Barbara Douglas on the long-running "My Three Sons" TV show, and after that, as the name behind the Beverly Garland hotels, but the late actress started her career as one of the all-time screen queens in bottom halves of double bills that you would see at the drive-in, starring in some of the most horrific films of the mid 1950s to the early 1960s.

This weekend, as my wife and I are apt to do, we were looking for a film to fill our time before we dozed off on Saturday night, and after looking through Netflix and finding nothing that suited our fancy, we went to YouTube, which constantly amazes me with what is on there, if you are willing to spend the time to search this site.

After going over dozens of movies, we finally chose "Swamp Women," a 1956 epic of a little over an hour that starred a very, very young Garland and a very, very young Mike "Touch" Connors.

Here is the link if you want to watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN0e4WHccxk

Working with a budget of about $25--mostly for the color photography--the film involves a female police officer who is sent undercover in a women's prison to link up with a gang of lady hoods who know where a stash of diamonds is located in the swamps of New Orleans's Bayou Country.

The female cop breaks out of prison with her new posse, including Garland and fellow grade-Z actress Marie Windsor, who plays the butchier of the women, and they make their way to get the loot.

On the way, they kidnap a man and his lady, and there starts a romp that sets the screen on fire, to a certain degree, as Garland plays a tough con with an explosive temper, one that eventually gets her killed by her fellow henchwomen when they find the stash of diamonds, and she then decides that she wants it all for herself.

Also along the way, the man--who all the women have the hots for--loses his lady friend to a hungry alligator, and the women cut their prison pants into attractive shorts.

And early on, we see shots of Mardi Gras in the mid 1950s, real footage that shows just how tame this event was--compared to now--60 years ago.

And the rest of the movie is actually shot in the bayou, but this isn't "Deliverance" in any way, shape or form.

Of course, the women get caught, the female police officer falls in love with the man, and all is well in New Orleans as the movie ends with the two of them arm in arm.

And again, this is 1956, so while the film pushes the boundaries of what could and could not be shown on the screen at the time, it never goes over that line, just insinuating a lot, never actually showing much of anything.

The only skin you see is the women's exposed legs after they cut their pants into attractive shorts, and there are no lesbian/sex scenes, as this genre often suggests or later on, shows with evident delight.

There are a number of catfights between the women--several of them featuring Garland--to the extent that today's WWE divas would be appreciative--and these fights are better than the ones you see on "Raw" and "Smackdown."

I read one review of this film, and the reviewer said something to the effect that "if the women were bustier, this could have been a Russ Meyer movie," and the reviewer is right, as this film is camp all the way, with sexual undertones that are there, but never developed or shown.

Heck, if this movie were made today, the sky is the limit with what they could do with such a simple story to make it a bit more complex, but since this film dates from 1956, I guess they did what they could.

And as an extra added side note, this film evidently is one of the first directed by Roger Corman, so you know that what you are getting is trash on a budget ...

But to me, a lover of crappy movies from the 1950s through the early 1970s, I really enjoyed this movie.

It is fun without being in your face, it features bad acting and bad dialogue, but it keeps you going--and it is worth the hour or so that you will spend watching this to see the early days of two future TV starts, Garland and Connors, learning their craft.

Needless to say, more than a decade later, they were pretty good actors on their respective TV shows, but back then, they were young and hungry, and it is fun to watch them as they take garbage and make it into gold--or at least fool's gold.

So if you have maybe an hour to spare, and not knowing what to watch on TV, check this film out.

"Swamp Women" won't tax your brain at all, but it will keep you going.