Finding some more ammo in the "sexy women on a killing spree" exploitation genre, Adamson very hastily put together Girls for Rent (also known as I Spit on Your Corpse), a crime drama that is almost difficult to write about while going through the Adamson oeuvre simply because of the routine nature of it. It is passably entertaining and not without its wonderfully seedy sequences, but rarely pushes beyond its assembly line feel (unsurprising considering the two vastly different titles that were used for its marketing). The narrative has a beautiful simplicity, with some complexities early on discarded for something nicely basic: two bloodthirsty female members of a crime Syndicate chasing a woman across the desert because she knows too much and threatens to rat on them. Adamson makes plenty of use out of his desert scapes, using these backdrops to mask the low budget of the entire production, but this is through a through a film that knows exactly what it is and how to feed into the desires of those who would want to watch it. At this point in his career, Adamson is clearly quite familiar with his audiences, and his ability to craft a genre picture for them feels professional even when the film moves to shaky territory.
Even compared to other Adamson productions, the history behind the film is fairly thin, aside from a potential lawsuit over the original trademarked titles Women for Sale (which was apparently pinned aside by Roger Corman as a title that he wanted to use for a yet-to-be-filmed project). Hot desert scapes (with temperatures north of 120 degrees) give the entire film a constantly sweaty and grimy feel, a perfect environment for the bloodlust at the heart of these two criminals. Much of this is quite the nasty piece of business, with the only levity coming from ones ability to shed their compassion and revel in such depraved violent lunacy (a centerpiece scene where one of the women seduces a young and somewhat slow man, begins to have sex with, and then puts a bullet in his head right as he approaches orgasm might be one of the sickest moment in an Adamson film seen to this point, but damned if it is not interestingly put together and being more suggestive of violence than actually graphic). Naturally the picture ends with an extended chase sequence, a mainstay in Adamson films of this nature, that culminates in a simple shooting: discarded climaxes as involved one of the women being shredded by a helicopter blade (too expensive!) and the two women fighting in a body of water (refused by the actresses because of the filth in the lake being used).
The popularity of certain Adamson titles spurned on a need for some kind of follow-up, more with name recognition than a "true" sequel that continues with the same characters (a slight exception being Blazing Stewardesses, the sequel to The Naughty Stewardesses, which uses two of the characters from the earlier film but completely changes the tone, style, and genre, and essentially mostly abandons these characters anyway). Nurses for Sale finds a way to merge the titular interests of Adamson audiences while also being a low stakes, patchwork job for Sam Sherman's Independent International. This is a piece more in line with Horror of the Blood Monsters in terms of production structure, but with far less thought put into it than that piece of science fiction. After acquiring the English dubbed version of the German crime/adventure film Käpt'n Rauhbein aus St. Pauli, Sherman hired Adamson to edit out about thirty-five minutes from the original film and shoot about twenty minutes of soft core sex with American actresses that vaguely resembled those in the original film, barely weaving them into this nonsensical narrative (that is mercifully only a little over an hour). The Adamson scenes are easy to pin out because of the obvious lack of dubbing. The overall bizarre nature of its patchwork job is enough to make it a curiosity, though the giddy effect of this wears out fast without anything else to latch onto.
But perhaps the most surprising of all may be Jessi's Girls, which is as close to a "good movie" (at least by certain standards) as Adamson may have made (though some persuasive arguments as to the "meta" nature of Dracula vs. Frankenstein has really elevated that film in this mind as possibly having more going on it than a simple cash grab). While Jessi's Girls is grotesque and seedy and quite the vile and violent piece of work, there are times scattered throughout where the content almost feels more like a cynical and nihilistic worldview being put on the screen rather than full exploitation, a piece where, for the first time in an Adamson joint, the violence feels like a sad inevitability with consequences rather than just a sequence to jolly-up the drive-in audience.
Also boasting a simple narrative, Jessi's Girls begins with the domestic bliss of Jessica (Sondra Currie) and her husband Seth, a young Mormon couple in the West. The two are attacked by a group of outlaws who rape Jessica, murder Seth in front of her, and then leave her out for dead in the desert. But Jessica survives and weakly arrives in the shack of a hermit who teaches her how to shoot a gun. Eager for revenge, Jessica frees three female criminals and the group journeys to kill the outlaws who took away her life.
The film is far more grim than other films from Adamson, with the content going beyond seedy and circling the downright gritty. Adamson also puts a little bit of distance between the camera and the violence, never lingering on much of it to excess and instead using it to offer a grim picture of this landscape. While the narrative does not particularly sustain full momentum, especially in the middle portions where the picture starts to meander with some over extended sequences that feel more like padding, Adamson steers away from unnecessary detours, interpolations, or "prestige name" cameos, and mostly plays the material with the seriousness that the content needs. Jessi's Girls is Adamson working in a slightly different mode, using exploitation as something slightly more than an opportunity for a sale.
Girls for Rent
Dir. Al Adamson
92 Minutes
USA
1974
Staring: Georgina Spelvin, Susan McIver, Rosalind Miles, Kent Taylor, Preston Pierce, Robert Livingston
**/*****
Nurses for Sale
Dir. Al Adamson/Rolf Olsen
84 Minutes
USA
1971
Starring: Curd Jurgens, Heinz Reincke, Johanna von Koczian, Herbert Fleischmann, Sieghaft Rupp, Angelica Ott, Christine Schuberth
*/*****
Jessi's Girls
Dir. Al Adamson
80 Minutes
USA 1975
Starring: Sondra Currie, Geoffrey Land, Ben Frank, Regina Carrol, Jennifer Bishop, Ellyn Stern, Joe Cortese
***/*****