Based on a novel by Stephen Longstreet and directed by Jerry A. Baerwitz (his first and only feature, if you don't count helming English-language sequences for the US version of Toho's VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE), this enjoyably pulpy, low-budget, black-and-white feature revolves around migrant harvest workers who are considered "animals," "dirt" and "scum of the earth" by local residents, despite doing the crappy, back-breaking, low-paid jobs that no one else wants. Focusing on poor, white, female "third-class citizen" nomads in California, the script keeps any social injustice on the back-burner in favor of tawdry thrills and leaden melodrama, complete with bookending narration by grating syndicated newsman Walter Winchell, whose once-influential career had taken a massive nosedive by this time... Opening with stark, documentary-style footage of workers trudging on foot from job to job, this story focuses on four diverse women arriving at Ludlow Vineyard to pick grapes. Dolores Faith stars as brunette beauty Rose, who'll offer up her body to get whatever she wants from men, even making out with a passing truck driver in exchange for a lift. Others include Kathleen Freeman as wisecracking field veteran Goldie, Susan Kelly (Playboy's May 1961 Playmate of the Month) is voluptuous blonde Madge, and Arlynn Greer plays orphaned Julie, an innocent newcomer to this arduous occupation. The women are kept in line by brutish foreman Whitey (Dean Fredericks), who thinks taking sexual liberties with these "fruit tramps" -- whether it's slutty Rose or unwilling Madge -- is one of his job perks. Meanwhile, vineyard owner Sam Ludlow wants to turn his bleeding-heart, college-educated son Tom (Robert Harrow), who genuinely worries about the workers and their shabby living conditions ("Those women aren't pigs, they're human beings!"), into a real man by secretly pitting him against macho meathead Whitey. Along the way, Rose gets pissed when Julie snags a cushy housekeeper "inside job," which doesn't involve field work; Whitey secretly plans to someday run this ranch; there are drunken outbursts; plus "agitator" workers led by fed-up Goldie finally take action -- culminating in a wonderfully cheesy, revenge-fueled finale during which these exploited women band together in order to (though it's never stated outright or shown on-screen) castrate Whitey with their pruning shears... None of this is remotely subtle, but it is amusingly risqué trash (by 1961 standards) peppered with gratuitous showers and catfights. The film is also bolstered by a handful of committed performances, particularly 21-year-old Faith (who'd previously starred in 1961's DAMAGED GOODS) as promiscuous Rose. Initially promoted as a younger, Elizabeth Taylor-style sexpot, Faith was certainly lovely but her showbiz career went nowhere, and after appearances in sci-fi schlock like MUTINY IN OUTER SPACE and THE HUMAN DUPLICATORS, she married Maxwell House millionaire James Robert Neal in 1972, quit acting and passed away in 1990 at the age of 48. Fredericks, who'd played comic-strip pilot Steve Canyon on a short-lived '50s TV-series and worked with Faith a year earlier on THE PHANTOM PLANET, makes a suitably repulsive heavy. Plus longtime character actress Freeman -- a comedic scene-stealer in everything from Jerry Lewis' THE LADIES MAN to THE BLUES BROTHERS -- has a rare opportunity to show off her capable dramatic chops.

© 2025 by Steven Puchalski.