SISTERS IN LEATHER

Produced by Manuel S. Conde at the height of the great biker-movie craze of the Sixties, SISTERS IN LEATHER is like Herschell Gordon Lewis’ drive-in classic She-Devils on Wheels in that both films veered from the norm by dealing with tough female bikers. But while She-Devils on Wheels had a lurid, almost comic-book edge to it, Sisters in Leather wallows in a much seamier atmosphere which, combined with the amount of grimy sex on display, makes you want to take a shower immediately after viewing. Conde also did the photography and really gets down and into the nitty gritty during the sex scenes. Director Zoltan G. Spencer went on to give the world THE HAND OF PLEASURE and the immortal TERROR AT ORGY CASTLE.

Zoltan G. Spencer was nothing if not efficient. His softcore Sisters in Leather ends up running a curly hair over an hour, and the plot is set in motion before the opening credits. It helps, of course, that said plot is as twisty as a Popsicle stick. As white-bread, white-collar, whiny-ass Joe (utterly amateur Dick Osmun, A Sweet Sickness) marvels at the hottie he’s just picked up in his convertible before they mack their way toward third base, “I’ve heard of free love, and here it was, sitting in my car!”

Ah, but just as there’s no such thing as a free lunch, this supposedly “free” love comes at a price: $2,000, to be exact. That’s because the all-too-eager passenger, Dolly (Karen Thomas, The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet), is underage, and their nude shenanigans have been photographed for blackmail. If he doesn’t cough up the dough, Dolly’s fellow girl bikers — aka the Sisters in Leather — threaten to send prints to his lovely, lonely wife, Mary (Kathy Williams, Love Camp 7).

Anxious to find out more about these “hungry hellcats,” Joe spots the girls’ emblem on a male biker and follows him to a bar (where $1.50 would score you a “PICHTER” of beer, per the sign). What he should be doing instead is keeping an eye on the wife he ignores, because Dolly and her gang rat Joe out to Mary in an effort to “recruit” the square, suburban spouse into their lascivious lifestyle of lesbianism … and it works! At a rather unconventional ladies-only picnic, clothes become optional and the Sisters in Leather become the Sisters on Leather for a nude ride. I’m no biker, but I imagine that can’t be good on the seats.

Sisters marks a step up from Spencer’s The Satanist the year before, in that this has recorded sound — all the better to hear Joe complain, “They have my wife and they’re doing a pretty good job of turning her into a dyke!” The moral to this shady, skinflint skin flick? Zoltan should be thankful Twitter didn’t exist in ’69.