When you are wading through the filthy muck at the bottom of the cinema barrel, its movies likWhen you are wading through the filthy muck at the bottom of the cinema barrel, it's movies like She Mob that you hope to find. From the very first frame of the opening credits you know you are in for something special. The film blasts on to the screen with the title text looking like it has either been painted hastily, possibly in blood, or has been torn into the screen by a maniac. Brash, fast-paced, big band music explodes and we cut to a close up of two big naked boobs. The trumpets blare and the upright bass speeds through a jazzy rhythm. As the band screams itself raw the credits flash across the screen accompanied by black and white images of the curvaceous characters yet to come.

If Russ Meyer and John Waters got into a wrestling match and some of their blood got smeared on the mat in the ring, and someone mixed their blood together and put it in a test tube and someone used the DNA to breed giant super directors for a theme park on a remote island, and one of the giants escaped and made a movie, it would probably be something like She Mob. 

The actual human sized director who made this film (I’m assuming he was of average height but he could have been a giant) was named Harry Wuest. Surely Mr. Wuest was inspired by Russ Mayers’  masterwork Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, I which had been released in 1965. You can easily see that Wuest was enthralled by the black and white, gritty, toughness of Varla and her buxom, renegade rebels. Wuest released his opus three years later in 1968 and upped the ante by adding a lot of nudity. The Russian constructivist cinema style poster says it all.

​The prominent theologian Pat Robertson once said "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” As for lesbians Robertson warned that  “the acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and possibly a meteor.”  This is the context into which She Mob was released. Had Robertson been dragged to time Square and forced to see She Mob I think he would have had a stroke, either that or awkwardly excused himself and hurried off to the bathroom for some “alone time.”

It is the strange lot of films like She Mob to occupy two contradictory identities. They are both prurient and puritanical. She Mob indulges in soft-core depictions of sex, transgressive behaviors like homosexuality, prostitution, transvestitism, and general lawlessness, but it does not condone them.

She Mob exoticizes transgression. It makes being sexually indulgent and morally mercenary tantalizing for just over an hour and then returns us to normal society with a curt little spanking. Along with the sex, there is also an exoticism of poverty. The fantasy presented is that living without money means living without rules. Life on the edge may be harsh and cheap but it’s a life of pure freedom. Again we are allowed to entertain this fantasy for a brief time and then must cleans ourselves by watching these people get shot or put in jail.

The prominent theologian Pat Robertson once said "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” As for lesbians Robertson warned that  “the acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and possibly a meteor.”  This is the context into which She Mob was released. Had Robertson been dragged to time square and forced to see She Mob I think he would have had a stroke, either that or awkwardly excused himself and hurried off to the bathroom for some “alone time.”

It is the strange lot of films like She Mob to occupy two contradictory identities. They are both prurient and puritanical. She Mob indulges in soft-core depictions of sex, transgressive behaviors like homosexuality, prostitution, transvestitism, and general lawlessness, but it does not condone them.

She Mob exoticizes transgression. It makes being sexually indulgent and morally mercenary tantalizing for just over an hour and then returns us to normal society with a curt little spanking. Along with the sex there is also an exoticism of poverty. The fantasy presented is that living without money means living without rules. Life on the edge may be harsh and cheap but it’s a life of pure freedom. Again we are allowed to entertain this fantasy for a brief time and then must cleans ourselves by watching these people get shot or put in jail.

Big Shim seems to be the only true lesbian in the bunch, or at least what Pat Robertson imagines a true lesbian would be. She’s mean and butch and hates men. She’s clad in all in black and wears a fabulous black, pointy bra through the whole film. “Pointy” doesn’t quite convey the menacing nature of the undergarment in question. Big Shim eventually brandishes her conical twins like a weapon and hugs poor Tony the gigolo, thereby stabbing deeply into his torso, as she exclaims “I’ll show you that my tits are as hard as my heart!” I mean really, the movie is worth seeing just for that line alone. 

Some of the dialogue is delivered with a finesse only matched by Tommy Wiseau. Its hard to describe the complete lack of emphasis or affect when Luanne, one of that bad broads, exclaims “If I don’t get some soon, I’ll explode.” She eventually gets her wish when they kidnap Tony, tie him to a bed and use him like a human sex toy. Tony has a tough time keeping himself tied up. Sometimes his arms are suddenly free and then seem to magically get rebound. Big Shim gets impatient, interrupts the gang rape and demands that Tony be dressed up in women’s underwear and pantyhose. She has him hung by his wrists from the ceiling and whipped. You know how lesbians can be. Just as she was getting ready to castrate him they are interrupted by Sweetie East - Girl Detective, who looks like a woman dressed as a drag queen.

Sweetie will eventually be shot in the back with a shotgun but later the same night she will recover completely and have her way with Tony who has similarly recovered from being stabbed by Big Shin’s killer cones and roughed up by the gang.

In the end all the sinners are dispatched and the genie is put back in the bottle. Tony the gigolo survives despite his moral failings because he has been victimized like a transvestite christ on the cruel alter of women’s liberation. As is often the case in these films an argument can be made for the film being a step toward empowerment for women and the gay community or a reification of Christian patriarchy. It gives voice to both. Patriarchy may get the last word during the last two minutes of film, but depravity gets the rest. 

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