In 1967, David Friedman slapped together She-Freak from a lot of second unit footage, plenty of non-professional actors (including himself as the barker/talker) and a dream. For his lead he chose Claire Brennen who, like Candace Hilligoss, wasn't beautiful enough to be a mainstream star but was just interesting enough to ride the exploitation circuit for a lead or two. She does a fine job, maybe a good one had she had a director more attuned to an actor's needs, or just attuned to the actor's existence, period.
Anyway, Claire plays Jade, a waitress in a run-down piece of shit diner. She hates her job, hates her boss and she tells him off. Goddammit, she's going to get the good life, once and for all! Her solution? Become a waitress at the carnival.
Okay, look, no one said anything intelligent would go on with the plotting of this movie and you've probably already figured out that she hooks up with a Carny big-wig, starts running things and abusing the freaks and geeks and then they get sick of it and say, "Fuck it. One of us." I honestly don't think any of that qualifies as a spoiler to anyone who's seen, say, I don't know, three movies?
But here's the thing: She-Freak is the kind of movie that's bad. It doesn't look particularly good, the film grade is freaking (yes, intended) awful and the acting catastrophically uneven. And I like movies like that, sometimes. I like it because it was filmed in color in the sixties and somehow reminds me of childhood. There's something appealing about a movie that fills at least 20 percent of its running time with second unit footage of people walking around carnivals in the sixties. The whole movie works as a time machine much better than an actual Hollywood product because there was no money for sets or extras so everything you see is real!
And you know what? Sometimes, that's enough.
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