Sweet Sugar

When a prostitute by the name of "Sugar Bowman" (Phyllis Davis) is set up on a phony drug bust she is given the option of either serving several harsh years in a penitentiary or working for only 2 years at a prison which doubles as a sugar plantation. Sugar decides to cut her losses and opts for the 2 years. Unfortunately, what she doesn't know is that it is run by an abusive director named "Burgos" (Cliff Osmond) and a sadistic doctor known as "Dr. John" (Angus Duncan). Soon her attitude gets the best of her and this results in punishments for all the female prisoners which include rape, torture and even medical experimentation. Now, as far as the merits of this movie are concerned, I must say that the acting was pretty bad and the story meandered all over the place. But even so it was still kind of fun and it had some nice-looking ladies which included Pamela Collins (as "Dolores"), Ella Edwards ("Simone") and the aforementioned Phyllis Davis. That said, while I cannot honestly say it was necessarily a "good" movie, I may have cut it some slack and scored it slightly higher than it probably deserves.

A prostitute with a mouth fulla sass gets sent to a woman's prison work camp where it turns out the guards are sadistic and the camp leader is "experimenting" on the women that work there. Queue all sorts of half-naked debauchery as the girls fight back and give the babyfaced freakazoid Dr. John (yes!) the runaround, with an absolutely insane ending. I haven't personally for over half a decade, but it might be worth blazing out before watching this one.

Following in the genre-setting footsteps of Jack Hill's The Big Doll House (1971), Sweet Sugar is a formulaic Women in Prison movie from Werewolves on Wheels (1971) director Michel Levesque. Busty prostitute Sugar (Phyllis Davis) is set up for marijuana possession by a corrupt politician, and is thrown into a Costa Rican prison. She is given the opportunity to be moved to the sugar plantation in exchange for a confession, where she meets the various feisty inmates, including Simone (Ella Edwards). Amongst the male guards, there is hustler Max (Albert Cole) who is trying to get his young friend Ric (James Houghton) laid, and the tyrannical and sadistic Burgos (Cliff Osmond), all overlooked by the creepy Dr. John (Angus Duncan). The girls' hopes are raised upon the arrival of voodoo priest Mojo (Timothy Brown), who uses his powers in black magic to help set them free. If you're a fan of WiP movies, then Sweet Sugar, if anything, ticks all the boxes. We have shower scenes, * (naturally), topless flogging, ketchup-red blood, rapey guards, a filming location where filming is cheap, torture, a sassy black chick, and explosions. Where it stands out is in the sheer insanity of certain scenes, namely Angus Duncan's ridiculously over-the-top Dr. John, who performs * torture experiments on his subjects, and some drugged angry cats. Duncan camps it up so ludicrously that the mundanity of the rest of the film becomes redundant enough to get some enjoyment out of it. Davis has the chesty charm of a Russ Meyer lead (and also starred in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)), but she's no Pam Grier, and the film's quirkiness soon wears thin, as it plods from one familiar scene to the next. It's not quite as dull as most WiP movies, but it's still a pretty bad film that offers nothing new to the genre. www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

One of a slew of Women In Prison (WIP) exploitation flicks hurriedly lensed after Jack Hill's hugely successful "The Big Doll House" mopped up at the box office for Roger Corman. This one's fairly typical of the subgenre, delivering the WIP formula of nudity and sadism in well measured doses. It's only notable features are an early writing effort by Stephanie "Terminal Island" Rothman and a truly over-the-top performance by Angus Duncan. He plays Dr. John, the demented warden of the sugar cane plantation to which Phyllis Davis is sentenced, with a hammy verve rarely seen today. Also slightly notable is the 'cat tossing' scene which, IMOHO, wins the all-time award for "Worst Abuse of an Animal to Set Up A Stupid Visual Pun." Otherwise, "Sweet Sugar" is pretty much every WIP flick you've ever seen.

Do not let the average rating of 4.5 on this movie fool you; it is bad, very bad. In fact, after renting and watching it as a precursor/mood setter for a lowlife pub crawl, there was little disagreement between my cohorts and I that we had managed to find the worst movie available for rent at Blockbuster (I'm sure many of you feel that you have made similar discoveries, which I would be interested in hearing, but believe me, if this isn't the worst on offer at Blockbuster, it was at least the worst on offer at the Fredericton, NB Blockbuster on Priestman St.). Which was precisely its appeal, naturally - telling others about this truly bad movie was both entertaining and somewhat self effacing (the title I saw it under was "She Devils in Chains," which title justifies the suspicious queries as to my motives in renting this abysmal classic). I recommend this movie to anyone who wants to place the perfect lowlife opening bookend to a planned night of debauchery, and hope that their closing bookend is equally unsavory.

This used to be a regular on USA Up All Night, back when Gilbert and Rhonda were still hosting. Phyllis Davis is really gorgeous in a Russ Meyer kind of way (if you don't know what I mean, go rent a Russ Meyer film and you'll understand). It's supposed to be an action film, and is along the same lines as "Chained Fury" and "Reform School Girls". Closeups of breasts, simulated sex, etc. The acting is pretty bad, but combined with a ridiculous plot and the sexual innuendo it makes for an unintentionally hilarious film. If you've got a Saturday evening with nothing to do, invite a few pals over and rent this. You'll be laughing in no time...

Bad movie...great body. Watch it for that & nothing else. Sweet Sugar: 1/10 stars Phyllis Davis: 10/10 stars.

Sweet Sugar (1972) * 1/2 (out of 4) Sugar (Phyllis Davis) is a prostitute that plays by her own rules but she's set-up for a drug charge and sent to work in the fields cutting cane. She strikes up a friendship-rivalry with Simone (Ella Edwards) and it doesn't take long for them to realize Dr. John (Angus Duncan) is a sexual psychopath. SWEET SUGAR is yet another exploitation film that takes place inside a prison and features a lot of beautiful women being abused by a lot of not-so-beautiful men and of course there's the wicked leader calling all of the shots. There were so many different WIP (women in prison) movies being made during this period that you really needed to have something that set your film apart from the others. When you look at the genre as a whole, it would get much more darker and more brutal when various European director's starting making films like BARBED WIRE DOLLS. How does SWEET SUGAR stand up? Sadly, it's a pretty boring affair and unless you're a completest for the genre then you can just stay away from this. The biggest problem with this movie is that it wants to play the game of a WIP movie but there's no indication that the screenplay or direction knew what to do. On a technical level the film looks nice and it's better made than a lot in the genre but the biggest issue is that it's downright boring and this is never a good thing for an exploitation movie. The screenplay offers up a checklist of things that you might find in a film like this but there's nothing entertaining about it. Everything on display here has been done better in movies made before this and after it so you're basically just watching a watered down version of something you've seen too many times. There's nothing erotic about the sex scenes. There's nothing overly graphic with the violence. Yeah, there's a couple lesbians kissing and there are some beautiful women naked but everything going on around them is just boring. Director Michel Levesque directed WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS the year before and I wasn't overly fond of that film either. The movie is just way too boring for its own good and it just doesn't stand out in a crowded genre.

Thanks to a friend I used to work with at a local video store, we had weekend contests to see who could find the Most Gawd-Awful Movie to play on the monitors...something so bad that it would stop the customers in their tracks from shock and disbelief. He thought he'd won with this hysterically bad gem, starring the amply endowed Phyllis (VEGA$) Davis as a horny free spirit, who gets spirited away to a prison/sugar cane colony in the middle of God-knows-where, after the local 'policia' frame her on a phony drug charge. Covering all the bases, from mad-scientist flicks, women-in-prison movies, Seventies soft-core * and badly made action flicks shot overseas on the cheap, it even throws in a little blackexploitation vibe with the faaaabulous presence of Ella Edwards. Cliff Osmond and Angus Duncan commit thespian thievery every chance they get, and Duncan seems to have popped in a set of steel dentures, as he gives every scene he's in a good going-over, like a fresh pack of Wrigley's. The surefire way to know if you will love or hate this movie, is to find it under its original title and not any of the other name-changed versions. Because SWEET SUGAR may be the only version that contains that howler of a theme song, which sounds like the L.A. band X going on a HUGE acid-and-tequila bender in some South-of-the-Border dive bar, crossed with The Mamas and The Papas on Zoloft. If the priceless opening number doesn't do it for ya, you either need to switch to an actual film that has some tangible artistic value, or do what we did, and continue the quest to find the All-Time Worst Film on the shelf. (In case you're wondering, BTW, I won the Contest after picking BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS.)

Not even brainless fun. Dumb on every level and not worthy of a b-minus exploitation label. Just dumb really