Maury Dexter

Shayne (Diane McBain) and her stiff-as-a-board, full-on electric blonde hairdo is the boss-lady of the all-female bike gang “The Mini Skirts”. When she’s jilted by rodeo star Jeff (Ross Hagen) for the simpering, dark-haired Connie (Sherry Jackson), she quickly manipulates her mini-skirted mob and their tough-guy hangers-on, including Lon (Jeremy Slate) and Spook (Harry Dean Stanton), to give up their go-go dancing and tame smooching and instead subject Jeff and Connie a campaign of terror. Jeff and Connie make a run for it but the Mini-Skirt Mob soon have the newly-weds trapped out in the desert and with Shayne’s hatred spiralling into psychosis things are soon out of control and the body count is rising. Hyped by AIP as a tough female biker movie, the story (written by James Gordon White) is unfortunately more of a jaded melodrama about a jilted lover and her need for revenge than it is a story about “hog straddling female animals on the prowl” as suggested by the poster. It is, however, directed with plenty of campy energy by Maury Dexter, with cinematographer Archie R. Dalzell capturing the wild Day-Glo colours that the mob dress up in to good effect. The film has a great ultra-bright look and some of the desert photography is excellent with plenty of lovely panoramic scenery shots. The girls of Mini-Skirt Mob are as far away from tough-nut bikers as you could get and despite their beer drinking, desert-camping, Molotov-throwing shenanigans they remain dolled-up like models throughout. The acting is serviceable, with everyone doing what they have to do – Harry Dean Stanton is decent as the dim-witted spook, with Shayne’s sister Edie (Patty McCormick) coming across as the only likeable character. Diane McBain is great as the seething, revenge-driven Shayne and is great fun in a silly one-dimensional way. “The Mini Skirt Mob” barely qualifies as a biker movie, but it is still highly watchable in a slightly ludicrous, campy way.… (meer)