The Pigkeeper's Daughter / Sassy Sue (1975)

The Pigkeeper's Daughter (1975, 92 min.) - Since Moonbeam Swiner is The Pigkeeper's Daughter, it's no surprise that her best friend in the whole wide world is a little piggy named Lord Hamilton. And that has her Ma worried. After all, Moonbeam has reached the ripe old age of 19 and she still ain't hitched yet. So when a traveling salesman from the big city arrives on the scene, Ma quickly out-cons the con-artist and Pa arranges a shotgun wedding. "Sassy Sue" (1972, 83 min.) - There's a similar problem over at the Willard farm. In between making moonshine and custom-made outhouse seats, Pa is worried about his moronic son, Junior, who's spending too much time with the animals and not enough with womenfolk. What he doesn't know is, idiot Junior is already having a whirlwind affair with Sassy Sue, his beloved cow.

My name is Sue, how do you do.

On yea, I love you Sassy Sue. You can play hide the pepperoni with me anytime. Heeeeeeee Hawwwwwwww!!!! Just what I like in a sex video. Something weird is OK with me. July 24, 2008

The pigkeeper's daughter

The two girls that appear first are quite pretty, with remarkable bodies. And considering the time this was made, it's probably all natural. Everyone plays their dumb roles to the hilt, and for me, it never got boring. There is no irritating constant tease like the Russ Meyer films... it's full nudity, but not pornographic. The video quality is excellent, and I laughed out loud frequently. February 24, 2008

exactly what it says it is

It doesn't pretend to be anything more than a stupid excuse to present a bevy of beatiful young girls in various states of undress engaging in simulated sex--and it is exactly that. July 28, 2006

Pigs, Cows, And Custom Toilet Seats

I like Something Weird video productions in general, but this feature is way outside of any genre I normally like. I was strongly recommended this video as a specimen of spectacularly bad acting and plot developments, and in that regard I was not disappointed: these films have some of the worst acting ever exposed to celluloid. Before I go further, let me get it right out in the open that the actors in these films are with two exceptions so homely that you can utterly forget about the titillation factor. Yuck. (The exceptions are Terry Gibson, the actual pigkeeper's daughter, and Sharon Kelly, who later went on to work in adult films.) These films were shot in the early 1970s by schlockmeister Harry Novak and were independently released as "Restricted Admission", thus bypassing the rating system. They are racy, no doubt, but are about a contemporary R-rating for the most part. They are also just grisly to watch. Particularly offensive is the drunken moonshiner in "Sassy Sue" who the women find absolutely irresistible, despite the fact that he is almost exclusively seen in long johns the color of Pepto-Bismol.

I really like classic examples of horrible cinema, and both of these features qualify, especially in the plot and acting department. You will be hard pressed to find worse (although if you check my reviews closely you can find exactly one) in the history of the screen. "The Pigkeeper's Daughter" concerns itself with Moonbeam Swiner, who loves her hogs, particularly one named "Lord Hamilton" (don't ask me, I have no clue...) and her mother's attempt to get her married off as she is already 19. Fortunately a lotion and emollient salesman with a penchant for singing contemporaneously composed songs happens by. (You may want to turn the sound down when he sings; it is beyond the threshold of pain for most people.) I thought that it couldn't get worse. How wrong I was.

"Sassy Sue" is about a drunk moonshiner, his enormous wife (who has the least fortunate outhouse related scene I have ever seen or ever hope to see), and his halfwit son who is in love with Sassy Sue. The plot of this one, believe it or not, revolves around dad's custom made toilet seat and outhouse bench manufacturing business, and the romance it brings him (ponder that for just a second...), Junior's desire to become a mechanic (he performs some amusingly inept major surgery on a truck at one point), and the parent's joint desire to fix Junior up with a proper girl.

The acting is just mind-numbing. Ditto for direction: Ed Wood on his worst day couldn't have done this badly. I thought I was out of the woods when I was done with the features, but not so fast: "The Old Man's Bride", a 32 minute black and white short is a bonus, and may (no kidding this time) be the single worst film of any sort ever made. Ever. It is indescribable. My favorite part is the "scrounging to borrow used underwear" segment, which, I think was supposed to be sexy, but was most decidedly anything but sexy. Also watch out for some startling acting styles and, shall we say, rather poorly executed vocal dubbing. Way worse than anything from either Harold P. Warren, or for that matter, Jerry Warren. Do not miss this short. It sets the bar for all other movies to try to crawl under.

There are also some campy trailers for other Novak country bumpkin movies, some of which may actually be worse than these. All in all, I like bad cinema, and this is bad, so I would have expected to like it more, but the films revolved around homely people acting like complete gooberheads too much for my taste. Compared to these films "Inbred Rednecks" has a quiet dignity. Two stars, one for each attractive performer. Some people will really like this, most will find it unfulfilling and actually quite boring.

By the way, did I mention that Sassy Sue is a cow?

July 23, 2004

Cows and Udders

Up until three months ago, I was ignorant of producer Harry Novak, his soft-X filmographry or Something Weird Video, the Seattle company that's preserved these nuggets of drive-in history. Now that I've learned about them, I thank God for all three. Both "The Pigkeeper's Daughter" and "Sassy Sue" are goofy hillbilly humpathons that offer plenty of laughs, though most are of the unintentional kind. "The Pigkeeper's Daughter" has qualities more closely associated with porn: Wretched acting, a mere hint of a plot and even less of a script, and lots of extended sex scenes (which are pretty explicit for a softie). Terry Gibson (in the title role) and Patty Smith (a.k.a. Peggy Church) are about the only people anyone would want to see have sex. There's a surprising amount of male nudity--unfortunately it's in the form of out-of-shape John Keith and skinny Peter James (who has some nasty looking teeth). And what happened to the "actress" playing Gibson's mama? Her breasts look chafed and there's a horrible bruise across her lower back. Was she beaten into taking this role? (This might explain her performance.) By comparison, "Sassy Sue"--the story of a young man, his cow, and the women who try to come between them--is a much more polished effort. The acting is a little better (though it's still bad), the cast is more effective and there's actually some genuine laughs. A definite highpoint in this one is John Tull's tryst with one of the horny babes wanting some backwoods boffing ("It would help if you mooed a little," he snipes). The sex--although simulated and not quite as explicit as that in "Pigkeeper's Daughter" (there's a moment in the final scene that pushes the boundaries of softcore, however)--seems a little more genuine in "Sassy Sue." Both movies are raunchy fun, though "Pigkeeper's Daughter" is raunchier and "Sassy Sue" is more fun. Better than both movies are the trailers for other similarly-themed Harry Novak productions, like "Midnight Plowboy," "Country Cuzzins" and "Tobacco Roody." Fans of large breasts and trash cinema will definitely want to add this to their collection. November 12, 2002

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