Saturday, February 8, 2020

The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, The Great Claudia Jennings!

Claudia Jennings!!! Yes!!! Alas, an  American tragedy, but an eternal gift to B movie and exploitation fans. 40 years since her untimely and tragic death, she lives on. You may best remember her from "'Gator Bait" but in 1976's  "The Great Texas Dynamite Chase," we see Claudia as a femme- Burt Reynolds in drive-in form. She'll be nude a lot, have some orgy scenes, traipse through Texas in neat cars, carrying dynamite, robbing banks, and always looking sultry. Perhaps an improbable plot, but no more improbable than Jeffrey Epstein committing suicide in his cell.
Candy (Jennings) busts out of prison and immediately grabs some dynamite to use to rob a bank. She gets away with lots of money and gives it to her family so they can pay their house off. A modern day 'Robin Hood'? Nope. Now on the run she quickly picks up Ellie Jo (Jocelyn Jones). We first meet Ellie Jo while she is nude in bed and she'll be nude a lot. Ellie Jo sees Candy as the woman she seeks to be and convinces Candy to adopt her as a partner. The two will now pull off bank heists with the dynamite and every cop in Texas is now looking for them.
All goes well and this is starting to resemble a 70s Burt Reynolds film. The gals will have lots of pre-marital sex and be nude a lot. There will be a hot tub orgy and Candy will even have sex while buying dynamite. Uh oh...the gals continue robbing banks and the cops are getting more serious... their pistols have been holstered and the shotguns are now wielded. Instead of a Burt Reynolds film, now our femme-fatales seem to be in a "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" type film. You know what that means...the Bolivian army certainly does. The gore creeps in, people begin dying horribly, and the cops are not smiling. It is apparent that Texas and their law enforcement are done playing the patsies, and Candy and Ellie Jo sense the coming carnage.
Will Candy and Ellie Jo go down like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid in that aforementioned film? Are these two sexy bandits too pretty to get their...er...faces blown off? Is the desire to see the establishment humiliated a theme, big in the 70s, back visiting us here in 2020? Claudia Jennings is sultry and her personal story is captivating.  Ms. Jones is a sultry counterpart to Ms. Jennings, and this film is heavy on action...heavier on cheese...and a terrific love letter from Ms. Jennings to all her adoring fans. Do yourself a gratuitous favor and see "The Great Texas Dynamite Chase," directed by Michael Pressman.
To read a biography of Claudia Jennings, read Eric Karell's book, available at this Amazon link  Claudia Jennings

2 comments:

  1. If it's got plenty of action in it, I can easily forgive the cheesiness! Sounds worth a look!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a trip down the Burt Reynold's lane, when moustaches were popular before a designated month said they should be. Lots of nudity, sounds like they are doing it right.

    ReplyDelete