It’s no surprise that Racket Girls (otherwise known as The Blonde Pick-Up or Pin-Down Girl) is a bad movie – its inclusion in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 catalog should tell you that without even asking. It stars real-life wrestlers Peaches Page, Rita Martinez, and Clara Mortensen as “themselves,” but the exploitative nature of this Russ Meyer by-way-of Ed Wood crime drama makes me question whether anyone was given a full script before shooting their scenes.
The plot revolves around an unscrupulous ladies wrestling promoter named Scalli (Timothy Farrell), his weaselly sidekick Joe (Don Ferrara), and the women they exploit through their rasslin’ promotion. Peaches is the new girl on the scene, and director Robert C. Dertano can’t seem to wait to get her out of most of her clothes (in a very 1950s sort of way). If Joe – the smarmy, hand-wringing, panting little pervert that he is – isn’t a stand-in for the director, I’ll eat my hat.
Anyway, it turns out that Scalli not only owes money to an unseen crime boss named “Mr. Big,” but is under investigation by some government agency or other. In one not-so-gripping scene, Scalli is even called to “testify” at what I can only assume is meant to resemble a congressional hearing (the set is a desk, a black curtain, and an American flag – nothing else). Somewhere along the lines, Joe kills a horse and both he and Scalli get what’s coming to them. I’m positive Dertano saw them as tragic figures – persecuted for their all-American desire to see half-naked women wrestle each other. You know, simple men who just wanted to live in peace with their giant stashes of magazines and to freely cat-call women and lasciviously ogle them as they walked by. Red-blooded American boy stuff.
Racket Girls is an example of one of the worst kind of films: an excuse for a director to act out his gross perversions while exploiting young women. What’s weird is that the film’s male characters are doing the exact same thing – and are called out about it by the women (some of them anyway). I feel bad for poor Peaches. She gets the worst of it. Ugh, I can’t imagine having to put up with all those leering leeches. As if this wasn’t bad enough, The production is horrible, the acting worse, and the story nearly non-existent.
As an MST3K episode, it’s also bottom of the barrel. The gang gets in plenty of good jabs about the exploitative nature of the film, but too often relies on catty female stereotypes. The preceding short, Are You Ready for Marriage? is much stronger than the feature.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.