Swamp Woman * (1941, Ann Corio, Jack La Rue, Mary Hull) – Classic Movie Review 3,980

‘She lived daringly, loved savagely’. The amusingly campy 1941 poverty row black and white thriller film Swamp Woman stars prominent burlesque striptease artist Ann Corio.

Director Elmer Clifton’s 1941 black and white thriller film Swamp Woman stars prominent burlesque striptease artist Ann Corio, Jack LaRue, Mary Hull, Ian MacDonald, Jay Novello and Richard Deane.

In poverty row PRC studios low-budget 68-minute quickie, Ian MacDonald plays Detective Lieutenant Rance, a cop who chases fleeing convict Jeff Carter (Richard Deane) and the promoter ‘Flash’ Brand (Jay Novello) who is pursuing a dancer called Annabelle Tollington (Ann Corio) in the Louisiana swamps.

With its bad acting and clumsy film-making, director Elmer Clifton’s overheated, amusingly campy, old-style 1941 hokum thriller is good for quite a few laughs at its expense, propelling the film into the so-bad-it’s good category.

Swamp Woman also stars Jack La Rue as trapper Pete Oliver and Mary Hull as Annabelle’s niece Lizbet Tollington, and also in the cast are Lois Austin, Earl Gunn, Guy Wilkerson, Jimmy Aubrey, Carlin Sturtevant, Ernie Adams and Frank Hagney.

Ann Corio performs ‘You Surprise Me’ (written by Eddie Cherkose and Jacques Press).

Ann Corio (November 29, 1909 – March 1, 1999) appeared in only five exotic poverty row films between 1941 and 1944, beginning with Swamp Woman and including 1942’s Jungle Siren, 1944’s Call of the Jungle and 1944’s Sarong Girl, but she was a popular striptease artist, best known at Minsky’s Burlesque Theater in New York City, making $1,000 a week in 1939 when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia closed down the city’s burlesque houses as ‘obscene’.

She is a member of the Hall of Fame at the Exotic World Burlesque Museum in Las Vegas.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3,980

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com