WELCOME TO THE GRINDHOUSE: POLICEWOMEN - Bring the grind to your house!

While I thought that Tarantino and Rodriguez's experiment in resurrecting seventies cheese with Grindhouse more or less a failure, I am grateful for one thing. They did manage to raise the audience awareness of the genre, and of course in true Grindhouse fashion, dozens of DVD companies have jumped on the bandwagon, releasing dozens of low budget crap on disc.

Some are more successful than others, but the best one of the lot is probably BCI/Navarre 's Welcome to the Grindhouse series. BCI has managed to get their mitts on a ton of flicks from Crown International - one of the bigger distributors of schlock and trash from the glory days of the drive-in - and are releasing them as double features at a very reasonable price.

The first one in my DVD player is 1974's Policewomen (not to be confused with the Angie Dickison television series) and 1975's Las Vegas Lady

Policewomen (which, strangely enough only features ONE policewoman of any note) is about a perky young officer named Lacy Bond (played by Sondra Currie, who A) still looks pretty damn hot in 2008, and B) has a surprisingly active career post her Drive in schlock phase) who languishes in her boring old post at the local women's prison. During a mass escape attempt, Lacy manages to use her mad Kung Fu skills to prevent most of the prisoners from getting away, attracting the attention of her superiors.

She is assigned - as soon as she undergoes some testing to prove that she's capable as any man-cop - to stop a gang of women who are in the middle of a crime spree. The mastermind behind this Woman-Mafia is the elderly criminal Maude Anderson (played by Elizabeth Stuart, and you're pretty much looking at her entire film career), who is married to a big muscle bound thug in his thirties called Doc (Phil Hoover, who had a nice long career is B-movies, appearing in drive-in greats such as The Thing with Two Heads, SuperChick and Chain Gang Women).

During the course of the investigation, Lacy falls in love with her boss, makes, sweet, sweet love, gets drafted into Maude's gang and kicks like eight kinds of kung fu butt along the way.

While not the best flick in the world, Policewomen is still pretty entertaining (and a darn sight better than the second half of the double feature on the disc). Sondra is reasonably charming with her sassy "take no crap in a man's world" deliver, and of course her Captain Kirk school of Kung Fu - highlighted when the men subject her to a misogynistic training course to prove that she can handle herself in the field just as good as any man could - is so shamelessly over the top that that it's funny.

The plot is surprisingly coherent and moves along briskly. The fight scenes are well staged, even if Lacy is using her Goofy Fist Kung Fu style, and of course Sondra is very pleasing to the eye - and being that this is a seventies exploitation flick, we do get to see a lot of the softer side of her.

Ok, the character development is non-existent; the All Girl Gang is nothing more than a bunch of archetypes lounging around the Cabana looking beautiful all day long as they sun themselves, and Maude is the most annoying criminal mastermind ever, but it's a fun mindless flick.

BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 4
EXPLOSIONS: 1
ROUNDS FIRED: 12
PUNCHES THROWN: 32
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 0
CAR CHASES: 1 (2 counting the boat chase)
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
AFROS: 1
F BOMBS DROPPED: 2
SEVENTIES FASHION SENSIBILITIES: 40%
BEST LINE: "Why honey, I don&#146t understand your attitude. I've always said nice things about gooks. "

THE DVD -
We get a widescreen anamorphic print of Policewomen, which I gather is the first time a DVD this good looking has turned up. Considering the low cost of the DVD, the low budget of the content and the treatment that the prints have probably undergone in the last 30 years, it looks pretty good. Not stellar or anything, but the print seems reasonably free of flaws and damage. It doesn&#146t look pristine, but one could argue that a print like that only enhances the grindhouse experience.

THE EXTRAS -
We don&#146t get much in the way of extras, but we do get a really cool presentation. Like the Warner Brothers "Night at the Movies" discs, where hitting play all gets you a news real, cartoon and a trailer before the main feature. Here, we get a Grindhouse Experience option, which plays a "Coming Attractions bumper", a trailer for Chain Gang Women ("When you live like an animal, anything goes!") and Superchick ("She's more than just one woman - and she's too much for just one man!") and then a "Our Featured Presentation" bumper - then the movie runs.

After Policewomen wraps up, we get an Intermission bumper, a "Please keep our theater clean" spot a trailer for Chinese Hercules ("The superhuman Beast of the East!")and Weekend with the Baby Sitter ("She is every man's first love, but she is trouble!") before the second movie on the disc runs. It's a very cool presentation that really makes you feel like you're in a nasty, run down old theater on 42nd Street. Just pour some sticky soda on the floor and your illusion is complete!

THE BOTTOM LINE -
This film is aimed squarely at drive-in film fans who like their stories with a little touch of female exploitation. Not a bad film with enough breasts and bullets and brawls to keep ones eyes focused on the screen.