Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Hard to believe but this skin flick ‘Bound Cargo’ from director Lloyd A. Simandl, a man who is nothing if not a prolific purveyor of soft filth, could very well be the worst sexploitation film ever made. I know it’s the worst one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen my fair share. And it’s not so much that the movie itself is bad, which is it is, but of course we expect a bad movie in a sexploitation flick, so rarely would we hold that against it, but it was just a terrible misuse of thin naked women who can barely speak English. How could anybody screw that up?

Our film opens with the mistress known as The Widow (Rena Riffel) closely examining three lovely naked skinny women who she has promised shelter for, providing they do their part. But that’s the end of the story. Our story actually begins with three separate young women in Tanya (Eva Nemeth), Megan (Elena Tanchenko) and Katie (Lucie Haluzik) who are on the run from some violent, armed ethnic cleansers in Bosnia or someplace that I can’t remember right now. Almost everybody in this flick has a different accent from Eastern European to British to American but we are not concerned about all of that because this is soft skin flick so we move on.

These girls find shelter in a hovel operated by The Widow who has a small wood chopping facility and while she is wary of shielding these girls, she goes ahead and does the damn thing anyway. But then some evil cat who runs this search posse comes around The Widow’s crib searching for the girls, droning on and on about how clever he is and he finds one of the girls but keeps it quiet from his underlings. His plan is to have a private rape party, starting with The Widow followed by one of our skinny chicks, a plan which in retrospect is a terrible one since he didn’t sweep the house for firearms.

Now this dude dead and buried and The Widow was none too happy about being violated because of these chicks, but she will help the girls if they assist in her little wood chopping business. Simple enough. Apparently logging sucks total ass because despite the fact The Widow is housing, clothing (somewhat) and feeding these chicks they hate chopping wood with a passion and would rather take their chances with the gun toting soldiers searching for them.

None of this really matters much but the girls come around to their wood chopping lives until some wood buying cat presents The Widow with a better money making option for these skinny chicks which as it turns out is a Win-Win for everybody. Except for maybe the skinny chicks who speaketh the terrible English.

So we have established in previous articles that I have no discernible skills as a filmmaker, in addition to having no desire to be one, but if there was a movie I think I can stumble through creating it would be a soft-core skin flick. I’m thinking the hardest part of making this skin flick is finding women who are consistently willing to get buck-ass naked and Lloyd A. Simandl has jumped that hurdle with Edwin Moses type ease since this flick was filled with naked women. Then you examine the setup for this skin flick which includes crazy horny soldiers outside the cabin, a wicked task master of a mistress inside the cabin, who also happens to be saphic in nature, hot and naked most of the time, in addition she has laid down the rules for her charges which requires them to do almost everything naked, and when they do good they get to spend the evening with her. No, none of this setup could possibly make for a good movie but it sounds like it should at least make for a good skin flick, but what went wrong? Hmmm…. Let us examine.

So our young women spend a lot of time naked, this is true, but they don’t do much of anything while naked. For instance The Widow insists they take a bath. Any skin flick worth its salt should have naked women taking baths. But this is exactly what our naked chicks do in this movie. They take a bath, not because they want to pleasure themselves, or make out with each other… they often take bath’s together… but because they need to wash the dirt off their ass. Is this a skin flick or a hygiene doc? And we have to watch them from the time they step in the tub to the time they get out and dry themselves off which takes forever. Still naked our girls now eat dinner, have some salad, drink a beverage then get ready for bed. Then they wake up and cut wood. And then they do it all over again. Work, bath, eat, sleep. I’m no expert but that’s life, not a skin flick. For instance in the Japanese ‘Zero Woman’ sexploitation flicks, Agent Zero really, really enjoys her baths. I mean Really. Plus Mr. Simandl seems to be drawn to a particular body type, that being women around 5’4", weighing about 105-110 with the exact same figures. Of course who wouldn’t like that but as a filmmaker serving an audience I think I would’ve opted to mix it up a bit. A little variety perhaps. Short, tall, bigger boobs, flat chested, wide hips here, no hips there… Serve your audience Mr. Filmmaker, not yourself.

Every once in a while The Widow will make out with one of the girls, but truth be told these girls looked like they’d much rather be dragging logs than being forced to make out with Rena Riffel, and Ms. Riffel is pretty damn hot. Not to mention our soldiers floating around just murdering hot women. In reality, in a real ethnic cleansing situation this makes sense… but in a sexploitation flick?

Upon examining this film I think I may have to take these sexploitation theories and make my own sexploitation flick. If anybody has access to a dozen or so super hot women who will get naked for next to nothing, and also owns a camera and a light, drop me a line… let’s create some movie magic!