Rowdy Girls has Tweed as a woman in the Wild West who is on the run with some money she stole from someone who'd stolen it from a bank. Disguised as a nun, she's hoping no one will bother her or her money, but she's wrong. First, a young lady on the stage coach with her, (Deanna Brooks), tries to steal it, and then later her coach is waylaid by a gang, which includes Strain. Eventually she and her money are parted, so she teams up with a local deputy whose brother was killed by Strain, and they try to track it down and help him get his revenge. Will they be able to take out these baddies and live happily ever after?
Again, I couldn't remember if I'd seen this before or not, but it was as good as I thought I'd remembered it at least. It felt like a Wynorski film, with all the boobs and buttocks--in fact we also had a stunt buttocks with Strain's then husband, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, having his cheeks pinch hit when the guy playing opposite Strain in a love scene didn't want his buttocks shown on camera--but also felt like the way you'd want Troma to do a Western, so it makes sense that they'd have distributed this. Beyond the T-n'-A, it had a lot of Troma comedy, but also hit all the beats we expect in a Western. The cast also did well matching the tone this was going for, led by Tweed and Strain, who both do equally well baring all in one scene and delivering tongue-in-cheek dialog in another. This is just a fun flick from 2000.
Unlike Danny Trejo who entered the Hall of Fame and the 30 Club at the same time, this is only Tweed's 7th, which I believe puts her with Lisa London and Tina Cote as joint third for most tags as a woman on the DTVC, behind Kathleen Kinmont with 8 and Cynthia Rothrock with 42. This is also her first post since we did Hard Vice in November of 2021. That may make you wonder why she's getting this Hall of Fame nod now, which I get. The main thing is in looking over my own experience with DTV films, erotic thrillers were a big part of that, and I'm planning to do more of them in the future on the site, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this now; but also in looking over her CV, she has a lot of action roles as well, many of which we haven't covered yet, plus she was in one of my favorite comedies ever, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. 80s and 90s DTV wouldn't be what they are without her, and I think for that reason alone, this was overdue.
For our film's other Hall of Famer, we have the great Julie Strain. I checked, and this is only her second film on the site since her induction two years ago, which isn't good that we haven't been doing more of her films. She's fantastic here as the baddie, which was cool, but the better movie for me would've been if she and Tweed were teaming up as bounty hunters taking out a bunch of outlaws, so I wouldn't have had to root for one over the other. As far as getting more Strain up, in our quest to get all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we still have three more of those that she's done. From there it'll be a matter of finding films of hers on places like Tubi, but making sure they aren't the edited version. One example is Battle Queen 2020, which is on Tubi, and also has Jeff Wincott in it. The Tubi version cuts 16 minutes off the original. I guess I could review it based off of that one, but I'd rather see a clean, uncut version. That's one thing that's good about Rowdy Girls, as far as I can tell, it's totally unedited.
While Troma isn't in the Hall of Fame, it's definitely a potential future Hall of Famer. I think the case can be made if The Asylum is in, Troma definitely should be in, which I agree with, the only thing is The Asylum made it in automatically by getting into the 30 Club, and in the process creating the rule for which it's named that Danny Trejo and Scott Adkins also almost got into the Hall of Fame on. The other thing is Troma has more horror, and we don't do as much horror, and they often don't have the names in them that Asylum films do, so we're more likely to cover an Asylum film, which isn't necessarily a good thing, it's more like it's something that's happened without me realizing it, and now we have 34 Asylum films on the site and this is only our 11th Troma flick. If Tubi is going to have more Troma like this though, I have no excuse to do more--plus I could just fork over the $5 a month to get Troma Now and get all the films if they have them on there. One thing I also noticed when I went on their site: it looks like they've moved away from the Hell's Kitchen location, which is sad. If you look at Hell's Kitchen on Google Maps, you'll see how expensive it would be to stay there, so that makes sense. They're currently located in Long Island City in Queens, which is still possible for me to get to from here in Philly, so maybe I'll make the trip up sometime.
Finally, I want to go back to the fact that Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, did stunt buttcheek work in this. By 2000 I was not only long done playing with Ninja Turtles, but my dad had thrown all my old figures out--along with my He-Man figures, Star Wars figures, GI Joe figures, etc.--but what I discovered in looking it up on Wikipedia, is Eastman was also done with Ninja Turtles at this time, having sold his share of the franchise to co-creator Peter Laird--who then sold it to Viacom nine years later. For me as a kid in the late 80s, the Ninja Turtles came along at a perfect time, because He-Man had run itself down, and I needed something new to collect. What I didn't realize until I thought about it now for this paragraph, was how this also got me into comic books, because I got the Ninja Turtle comics as well, and saw all the cool Marvel and DC comics next to them on the shelves, which then led to comic books being the next thing I got into collecting when I aged out of the Ninja Turtles; also, I think seeing Elias Coteas in the first Ninja Turtle movie made me a fan of him, which I still am--his part in the Sopranos intervention episode was fantastic, and that's one of my all-time favorite television moments. It's cool how watching some of these movies can bring back nostalgia like that, even if it's in the form of a major media franchise's co-creator acting as a stunt buttocks in a Troma Western starring Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this in the States on Tubi and Plex, plus it might also be on Troma Now if you're subscribed. I had a lot of fun with this, it's exactly what you want from a Troma Western with Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain in it. And here's to Shannon Tweed, of the greats, it's good to finally get her in the Hall of Fame as well.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177185
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