Great Film overall

Excellent but underrated film

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

After watching this cheap flick, there was one thing I was sure of. The protagonist's name -- Jabie Abercrombie -- is her real birth name. No doubt about it. I savor each syllable. It rings along my veins. And anyway, if you could make up a stage name, would you choose "Jabie Abercrombie"? As for any question about her figure, the mystery is solved in the first five seconds.Innocent Abercrombie finds herself in the slams and four of her fellow inmates force her to accompany them when they escape. The cops are looking for them everywhere. A long segment follow them as they hustle through the brush of the scenic milieu of the California coast range. Aside from Abercrombie there are -- let me see -- a tough Negro, a Southern racist, a hard-as-nails lesbian, and a rather tall nonentity.As they wobble through the bushes they first run into what seems like a Hippie love-in, in the middle of nowhere. They change their clothes and wobble on. Next, they reach a back road and flag down a Cadillac. They disable the driver, rape the half-conscious man, and steal his car. They gas up at an abandoned air strip tended by Ed Wood, who they knock unconscious. Then they run into five tough bikers. There is a brief fracas and the male Rat Pack is unconscious. Then they break into a farmhouse and take two hostages, and at that point they all seem to become lesbians and begin to molest the crippled farmer's wife. But why go on? The direction is clumsy. If a pan happens to cross the camera's shadow, so what? The editor was on mushrooms. A conversation ("If we're going to get through this we'll have to bury the hatchet") is shown twice. As for the performances, nobody can act. You can act better than anyone in this film. I can act better -- HAVE acted better. My performance as a drunken gambler in the superb "Traxx" was lauded by at least one perceptive critic -- my mother.Has anyone who claims that a movie is "so bad it's good" ever actually thought about that buzz phrase? A small budget is bound to be a hindrance to the story but the story itself doesn't need to be so eminently disposable. I doubt that a respectable movie like "Carnival of Souls" had much of a budget, or "The Little Fugitive." But they held a certain appeal for mature viewers whereas this seems designed for an audience of teen-aged kids at a drive-in, anxious to see bobbing bosoms before they get down to fogging up the windows.

No one will mistake "Fugitive Girls" (the most common title for this film) for great cinema. The ultra-low budget, editing errors and continuity blunders alone guarantee that. But taken for what it is - a 1974 exploitation quickie, a drive-in nudie flick about female criminals - this movie really works. With the legendary Edward D. Wood Jr. contributing one of his finest screenplays and also acting in two different roles, the film won't disappear. "Fugitive Girls" is good entertainment! The acting ranges from passable to good, the dialogue ranges from classic Woodian nonsense to decent, the music often works very well, and technically...well, this aspect doesn't usually manage to impress. Director Stephen Apostolof deserves credit, certainly, for the superb pacing and for bringing out the best in actresses Tallie Cochrane, the '70's adult superstar Rene Bond (now supposedly deceased) and the strangely overlooked but genuinely charismatic Margie Lanier.Rarely do these no-budget grindhouse flicks deliver like this one does, and not because of overt sex or violence; "Fugitive Girls" succeeds on it's own quirky charm and likability. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is a *good* movie, but a great one for it's genre. Despite all of this, "Fugitive Girls" rarely receives extended mention in Ed Wood discussions, probably because it's such an oddity. It isn't family friendly like, say, "Plan 9 From Outer Space", doesn't feature any of his most famous players from his earlier period (like Criswell in "Orgy Of The Dead"), and this film barely qualifies as softcore, much less hardcore (such as "Necromania"). You get the idea. "Fugitive Girls" is top-shelf exploitation and recommended viewing for Wood cultists, Rene Bond fans, B-cinema specialists and grindhouse followers alike.(10 stars for genre excellence, not general brilliance)

Fugitive Girls (1974) ** (out of 4) Director Stephen and screenwriter Edward D. Wood, Jr. teamed up several times throughout their careers with their best known film being Orgy of the Dead, which gets my vote for the worst film ever made but this film here isn't too bad. A sweet, innocent girl is sent to prison for a crime she didn't do but once in she's soon being forced to break out with her four cellmates. Soon the five women are on the run trying to avoid the police while searching for some money one of the women hid. This is pretty much your typical drive-in, sexploitation junk but it helps wonders due to the off the wall screenplay by Wood. The dialogue here is incredibly silly and offers some great laughs including some funny sequences where the racist woman gets into it with the black one. All five characters are the same we've seen in countless films like this as we have the sweet girl, the racist one, the tough black chic, the butch and the slut. While the characters are all unoriginal I must give Wood credit for really mixing up the screenplay and throwing all sorts of craziness into the mix. We get several fights, a scene where two of the women rape a man, hippies, bikers and a weird gas station owner played by Wood. All of the acting is rather poor but it does provide more laughs. There's also plenty of nudity on display but the DVD version is the theatrical cut, which is missing some nudity and extended sex scenes. Apparently a XXX version was also released in some theaters. This is certainly a poorly made film but if you're a fan of the WIP genre then you should get a few laughs out of this.

A friend gave me a copy of this movie (titled FUGITIVE GIRLS) for free, thinking it was some worthless piece of garbage. I watched it, and slowly began to realize it was an unknown classic. Written by the infamous Ed Wood and directed by A.C. Stephens of ORGY OF THE DEAD fame, this tale of wrongful inprisonment and jailbreak is great viewing for exploitation fans. It's filled with cheesy dialogue, cartoonish performances (including an Ed Wood cameo as a cop), and sex. The characters are a treat as well: the "five loose women" the title refers to are an unforgettable bunch of hell-raising ladies. The butch, the nice girl, the redneck, the token black girl, and the meanie. In my favorite scene, the group happens upon a caravan of hippies in the middle of the desert. Let's just say that our favorite leading ladies find a convenient way to ditch their prison uniforms.