-Grindhouse Fest spotlights the cult gems, sleaze classics, and deranged wonders that defined exploitation cinema’s golden run. Proceed with delight and caution-
Directed by Barry Mahon
Produced by Barry Mahon
Starring:
- Madame Sue
- Darlene Bennett
- Dawn Bennett
- Rita Bennet
- Monica Davis
- Victoria Astor
Rating: 
Madame Sue and her Times Square girls make up the “Prostitutes Protective Society” in this sleazy roughie from Barry Mahon, Errol Flynn’s former personal pilot turned exploitation workhorse. It’s as racy as you’d expect, but surprisingly even-handed when it comes to its hooker collective roaming the grimy streets of New York. These women aren’t out terrorizing the neighborhood; they’re just making a living, satisfying lonely guys, and minding their own damn business. Plenty spicy but refreshingly free of moral panic.
That routine comes to a screeching halt when a gang of mobsters muscles in, demanding a cut of the girls’ earnings and terrorizing anyone who refuses to play ball. Their intimidation quickly turns murderous, picking them off one by one. Instead of breaking their spirit, though, the bloodshed lights a fuse, sending Madame Sue and her crew on a savage revenge spree that feels like a rough-and-ready precursor to the rape-revenge cycle that would explode a few years later.
Mahon’s camera is every bit as horny as the johns prowling Times Square, lingering over flesh one minute and spraying the pavement with bodies the next. Yet for all its shameless exploitation trappings, the movie never loses sight of the bond between its working girls. It’s George Cukor by way of 42nd Street, where sisterhood proves just as important as skin—that’s the kind of beautiful female solidarity we’re dealing with.
At its core, the film is little more than beautiful, fearless hookers and crude mafia goons blowing each other away. The dark, teeming streets of Manhattan—captured with Barry Mahon’s trademark guerrilla flair and illuminated by blazing marquees, with flea-bitten apartments practically oozing exploitation atmosphere—become the battleground for this all-out war between hookers and hoods. Better yet, P.P.S. flips the roughie formula on its head by siding with its hookers instead of punishing them and transforms its working girls into bona fide exploitation heroines. While most 60s sexploitationers are busy kicking women around, Mahon lets his girls return the favor with bullets, brass, and one memorably painful lesson in why mobsters should keep their pants zipped.
