Savage Sisters (1974)

One of many jungle bungles shot in the Philippines, Savage Sisters is a women-in-prison picture with a difference. And that difference is a pinch of Ginger: the star of the sleazy Ginger saga, Cheri Caffaro.

Sorry to disappoint potential viewers, but the Savage Sisters? Not real sisters. (Insert snare drum riff here.) They are subversive liberator and Navy daughter Jo Turner (Caffaro), political fanatic and commando Mei Ling (Filipino starlet Rosanna Ortiz), and their initial enemy, testicle-torture expert Col. Lynn Jackson (Gloria Hendry, Live and Let Die).

Believe it or not, but the story is too political for an AIP exploitation film. It has something to do with a hustler trying to smuggle a million bucks out of a banana republic — the country, not the clothing store — and naturally, everyone wants their hands on it. Everyone also wants their hands on these lithesome ladies, but that’s beside the point.

Jackson is assigned to find the two “hardcore insurrectionists” — revolutionaries Turner and Ling — and find out who they’re working for, or something like that; it doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, the scattered story is all about good vs. evil, with the latter being Capt. Juan Morales (Eddie Garcia). You know he’s bad, because who else wears those orange-tinted sunglasses?

Hidden in a poncho, WIP vet Sid Haig (The Big Bird Cage) is in this confused mess, and he plays his part as if he we were in a screwball comedy. He may be on to something. That would explain Caffaro’s ‘tude with the lines she so unconvincingly growls at her he-man opponents, from “No comment, pork chop,” to “You’re pissin’ in the wind, little man.”

And so does director Eddie Romero (the Blood Island trilogy), who helmed this disappointing flick. He not only forgot to deliver a coherent plot, but also — and most importantly — the nudity. —Rod Lott

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