Three young girls living in a small Colorado town decide to take a trip on their motorbikes to California "to see the ocean". Two of the girls are sisters and go with the blessing of their widower father. The third has to sneak away from her strict parents. What follows is a long series of tragicomic misadventures. These "female hitchhiker" movies are one of my favorite 1970's exploitation genres(if they can really be called a "genre"). This is a little different in that the girls are on motorcycles rather than hitch-hiking, but otherwise this is in very much the same vein as movies like "Thumb-Tripping", "Girls on the Road", "Joyride to Nowhere", "The Hitchhikers", "Teenage Hitchhikers", etc. As in these other movie, there isn't so much a plot here as a random series of picaresque adventures.This particular movie is really a confused mixture of feminism and exploitation. The girls get peeped on, molested, and even raped by about every guy they meet, but they also manage to stick together and eventually take revenge on all these loutish males. In some ways this very low-budget movie actually anticipates the later Hollywood blockbuster "Thelma and Louise". It's too low-budget and exploitative to quite be the feminist fantasy that movie was, but it's not entirely just a male fantasy either (despite the tight shorts and somewhat loose morals of the three protagonists). In a typical scene, for instance, two of the girls are rolling a number in a gas station bathroom when they see a male pervert spying on them, so they respond by flashing theirs breasts and asses at him (yeah, THAT'LL teach him). But after he (perhaps understandably) actually approaches them, they beat the hell out of him and run him off.This movie definitely has its problems. It's even more low-budget than most of these type of films. The dialogue is very banal and the acting is atrocious. The single theme song gets very irritating and the end is both an egregious rip-off of a much more famous movie and is also very weak to boot. As an exploitation film it's pretty tame compared to some of the other "female hitchhiker" movies (like "Teenage Hitchhikers"),and it's definitely tame compared to many of co-director Bethel Buckalews other films (like "Sassy Sue" and "The Pigkeeper's Daughter"). Still, it's pretty unfair to criticize a low-budget movie simply for being low-budget. And while I'm not going to say it's technically a better movie than "Thelma and Louise", I find its confused message and its strange mixture of feminism and exploitation far more HONEST (with the exception of the crappy ending anyway) than that of the slicker, more "politically correct" Hollywood film.

How can one adequately (or accurately) rate a film such as Cycle Vixens? Here is a film that defies all film-making conventions: at least 50% of this brief story is taken up with roadside shots of signposts--and fingers pointing at signposts. Filled with more visual and verbal non sequiturs than you might think possible in 71 minutes, Cycle Vixens is both one of the worst films ever made, and one of the most compelling. One minute our heroic girls are tooling down the highway with the country-rock Cruisin' Down the Road blasting out of the soundtrack like a wayward outtake from Sweethearts of the Rodeo. Next minute they've been waylaid by a couple of seriously strung out junkies who somehow manage to tie up our clean-cut motorcycle mamas for a little roadside rape. Then the girls are back on their bikes, none the worse for wear. Cruisin' Down the Road is back in full force (the song plays an incredible FIVE TIMES during the course of the film) and Those Fingers are back to pointing at Those Roadsigns. Other reviews have mentioned the jaw dropping finale, which is truly remarkable and must be seen cold to be appreciated. Simitar's tape does seem to be cut--how else to explain some of the narrative lapses?--and kindly bleeps out all naughty words besides 'hell'. However, the good folks at Simitar had no trouble exposing us to frequent dissertations on the pleasures of getting high, not to mention that final scene...I guess heroin abuse is okay, but the word 'ass' is beyond the pale. I'll be first in line for the DVD.

This movie is what you would get if you crossed Easy Rider with Thelma and Louise, and had a 14-year old write the script. The ending is so odd that I sat in my bean bag frozen in awe of it's sheer lunacy. I only wish enough of you would see this movie to actually make the Worst Movie List, but doing so would probably double the total viewers who have ever seen this film.

This movie is so bad, it's embarrassing. I think it's intended as a sort of morality fable on the dangers of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But the story is so muddled it's hard to tell. I hope they did not pay someone to write the screenplay.This might make good subject material for Mystery Science Theatre, or as something to giggle at while stoned. Other than that, don't bother.