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No one would expect high art from a movie christened Truck Stop Women, and they will certainly not be disappointed with the work of Mark Lester, who directed Firestarter and Class of 1984, as he wades into the waters of the nascent genre of truck films with this entry in 1974. There are an abundance of trucks, and an abundance of naked women, and the entire story revolves around a truck stop somewhere in the Southwest. However, there do exist some plot twists that push the film above other poorly done exploitation films.
Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings portrays Rose, who works for her mother Anna, Lieux Dressler, who is the owner of Anna’s 70-80 Truck Stop. Unlike the other girls who work for Anna, whose line of work involves sleeping with both the local cops and other truckers, Rose focuses on an entirely different fear. She captures female drivers and plunders their vehicles as well as the valuable cargo they are transporting. Such an enterprise is highly lucrative, which in turn causes the mafia, represented by the repulsive Smith (played by John Martino), to try and encroach on Anna’s territory. Sadly for Anna, Smith has a traitor working for him on the inside.
The story involves a few truck chases, some murders, a couple of montages to fill the runtime (yes, including one set to a trucker song), and plenty of nudity. The plot is so shallow that it’s difficult to go five minutes without a breast appearing and those breasts usually aren’t appropriate. Not even pornographic begins to explain how careless it is to cut truck driving montages with freeze frames of random topless women. When people start getting murdered for no reason around the truck stop, an attempt is made at a subplot, but such slaughters wouldn’t be necessary to slim the cast before the final scenes, which are pretty fun and surprising, even though the film seems just as unprepared as the majority of the audience.
Before I deal with the one or two shocking moments that pepper the film- how amusing Meyer’s movies is an entirely different subject. The movie embodies exploitation such as the majority of Meyer’s films does Uschi Digard goes around naked, but the cinematography is excellent, so it’s quite informative.
Truck Stop Women may lack the budget of a studio film, but the stunning views and well-composed shots suggest otherwise. This film serves as an early glimpse into the skills that Lester possessed as a filmmaker. Even with some pretty flamboyant special effects, this film definitely does not look cheap.
Besides the stunning visuals, this film contains some great performances led by Jennings, whose blend of beauty, and sensuality with professional skills was very promising, but fate served her a nasty hand a few years after this film. Without a doubt, Jennings steals every scene she is in. On the other hand, Dressler does a fantastic job as Anna, who performs more subdued, yet very different from how Jennings stars in this film. The rest of the cast, including Martino’s contrived version of a New York gangster, is not exactly receiving an award, but they help make the film’s less-developed plot tolerable till the very end.
Thanks to Code Red, Truck Stop Women is available on one DVD along with some other releases, and it comes mounted in a standard keep case that features the film’s somewhat misleading poster art on the cover. The disc has a static menu with buttons to play the film and view the extras, and the scene selections, audio options, and subtitles are also absent.
This disc is quite sweet in SD, as it was made from a director-approved scan of the original camera negative, so the amount of fine detail on display is impressive. The Fleshtones are also done well. The 2.35:1 is pleasing and robustly saturated. Black levels are stable even though the grain is consistent. Any damage is unobtrusive so it is acceptable, and servile digital discrepancies are simply not an issue.
Il s’agit d’un pan audio en mono qui s’appuie sur une piste Dolby Digital 2.0 qui, en termes de performance, est pas mal pour les dialogues du film qui sont à la portée de tout le monde. Cependant, tout cela semble secondaire par rapport à la vraie priorité: à savoir les musiques, notamment les compositions, qui sont sursaturées. La bonne nouvelle est qu’il n’y a rien de faux dans le son. Cela dit, on peut parler d’irrégularité. Prenez par exemple le titre. Ce titre commence extrêmement fort, puis, après un court instant, il adoucit le ton pour revenir sur des niveaux acceptables. Dans l’ensemble, il y a suffisamment de son au fond pour donner au film une dimension pleine.
Le plus surprenant est l’affiche, que référencement même pas sur la jaquette. En effet, le cinéaste Damon Packard s’est assoupi avec Lester pour une interview à voix au webinar. Packard a environ une douzaine de fonctionnalites et quelques flous, et cette partie de l’enregistrement de la voix active de Lester n’est sans aucun doute pas la plus captivante. En revanche, il a beaucoup de détails sur la production concernant sans doutes la vert beaucoup de choses intéressantes sur le monde de drive-in. Et Packard s’en sort pas mal du tout au regard de son propre intérêt pour ce film.
Lester’s interview at 9:13 covers many previously analyzed topics, but this time with plenty of the crude content to aid those unable to concentrate.
There appears to be a set of movie trailers that might catch the audience’s attention. These films are said to be from Code Red, and The Electric Chair seems to be an example worth watching.
In terms of the director Mark Leister’s future projects, many underestimated the film’s quality. While lacking expectations in the Truck Stop Women, most were pleasantly caught off guard by the final product. The equally rudimentary and skin-tone aspects of the film were also exactly what people had anticipated. This does make it an interesting watch. There is a good amount of detail in the audio, video, and extras. If someone enjoys abuse in cinema or well-made stories of women fighting over territory, then this is a nice pick.
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