Bad Girls (1994) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Imagine a remake of The Wild Bunch with less violence, and some hot babes instead of Ernest Borgnine.

Man, now that I re-read that, it sounds like a really good idea.

It isn't quite as hot as it sounds. It does have some T&A in the form of some beautiful bare breasts provided by Drew Barrymore, but it doesn't have enough nudity to be a titillation movie, so the novelty of having women in the saddle quickly wears thin. On the other hand, it isn't tough enough to be a realistic modern Western, and it isn't silly and fluffy enough to be laughably bad. Except for the gender twist, Bad Girls is basically just a Western in the old-fashioned style, circa 1955 - with clean wounds to the shoulder, freshly-painted buildings, and meticulously neat streets. The prostitutes are attractive, young, and tasteful with clean hair and good teeth. The film does have some downright silly elements even by the undemanding standards of 1950's Westerns (the four women always look fabulous, even after a whipping), but the film tries to take itself seriously in general, just not to the point of gritty realism.

The plot? Four prostitutes are forced to flee a small town when one of them has to kill a john to save her colleague from a beating. During their flight, they balance off evading the Pinkertons, loving two honest settlers, and crossing paths with a notorious outlaw band. The plot treads along familiar ground and touches all the familiar bases. The final shoot-out with the desperados is in fact quite similar to the suicidal last stand of The Wild Bunch, except that the violence is not graphically ugly, and the members of the Wild Lady Bunch all manage to survive their desperate attack on a fortified outlaw hide-out with nothing so much as a bad scratch, despite the outlaws' possession of a Gatling gun. (The women's victory has to do with one of them being a tough gunslinger, and another having been a professional trick rider and marksman in Bison Billy's Wild West Show.)

Hey, I told you it wasn't gritty realism.

Madeleine Stowe is the toughest and most ruthless of the four gunslingin' supermodels, and she delivers the one performance that convinces you she might really have survived in the Old West. Drew Barrymore is a good rider, at least, but the other two provide more eye candy than anything else, and are not especially credible either as the successful prostitutes they are supposed to be when the film begins, or as the bloody gunfighters they become. Andie MacDowell as an action star? Andie looks mighty silly totin' heavy artillery with her fabulous hair, meticulous eye make-up, and perfectly manicured hands.

Yup, she looks silly - but gorgeous!

Speaking of gorgeous, Drew Barrymore was also completely babealicious. As I write this, in 2005, Drew is still an attractive woman, but in 1994 she was just a babe and a half.

Overall? Not good enough to watch it for Western gusto, but just not bad enough to watch it for laughs, either.