Jennings goes after big game in mid-1970s schlockfest.
Incredible though it seems to us, Truck Stop Women will be the 745th movie we've reviewed on Pulp Intl. And we never meant to do any. But writing reviews, commentaries, et al, gives us more latitude, legally speaking, to use all the imagery we upload. Tumblr doesn't have to worry about that. It's too sprawling, too decentralized, and ostensibly protected by a user agreement (which everyone ignores anyway). But as a dedicated website we don't have that luxury. So here we are with review 745, Truck Stop Women, which we watched solely owing to the participation of cult star Claudia Jennings.
Jennings was entertaining in efforts ranging from the swamp rat adventure 'Gator Bait to the futuristic dystopian thriller Death Race 2000. Here she's placed into another b-movie sub-genre—the hi-octane road adventure, which would beget such Americana as Smoky and The Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard. She plays a New Mexico truck hijackerworking for her criminal mom, whose operation is coveted by two mafia goons. The titular truck stop women, along with a few of their truck stop men, decide to resist this attempted takeover. The wonderfully named Lieux Dressler is one tough mother—unsentimental, opportunistic, and willing to battle to keep what's hers and her daughter's.
If the movie were a pure actioner, and Dressler and Jennings had been given 70% of the lines, the filmmakers might have had something good here. But with bluegrass backed sexual interludes and comedy riffs that mostly fall flat, this is not a movie we imagine Jennings was proud of. In fact, she's probably too good an actress to be subjected to its low grade parade of campy trucker tropes, but you take the work when it comes.
The good news is threefold—the movie improves as it veers farther away from its initial slapstick tone, the sexual vignettes, while dumb, do include Jennings, as well as the uber-stacked Uschi Digard, and the action scenes throughout are well staged. If you're a Jennings fan, her presence will suffice to get you to the end, but you'll certainly be thinking how much better this could have been. Truck Stop Women premiered today in 1974.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed. 2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments. 1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.
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