Also known under the far less exploitative title of Act of Vengeance, the AIP release Rape Squad is one of those strange drive-in thrillers that packs a feminist message of female empowerment, but only after giving audiences gratuitous images of the women being groped and molested.
Lunch wagon proprietor Linda (Jo Ann Harris, The Beguiled) is the film’s first and foremost victim, raped by a man dressed right out of a slasher series, what with his hockey mask and orange jumpsuit. During the assault, he creepily “requests” that she sing “Jingle Bells” because — his words here, so don’t shoot the messenger — “Music is always good with ballin’!”
When she finds other women who underwent similar trauma, she excitedly poses the hence-the-title question, “How do you feel about forming a rape squad?” Even without Linda explaining what a rape squad is or does, and what privileges its membership possibly could have, the ladies are all-in. It entails taking karate classes, followed by a nude group Jacuzzi bath, then turning the tables on predatory dudes via such methods of dying their dicks blue. Activism never felt so … I dunno, primary-hued?
Bob Kelljan of AIP’s Count Yorga pictures directs from a script credited in part to Betty Conklin. Don’t be fooled thinking a woman had any creative say on this uncomfortable revenger, as that’s a nom de plume for David Kidd, scribe of The Swinging Cheerleaders, which I’m guessing isn’t to be found on Gloria Steinem’s shelves. —Rod Lott