12/2: The Ramrodder (1969)

The Drinking Game:

1. Drink whenever Tuwana gets naked (only Tuwana or else you won't be able to get home)
2. Drink whenever you see a member of the Manson family (the Chief's daughter and the bad guy)
3. Drink when a scene that goes on waaaaay too long and the only way to make it bearable is to drink

The Movie

There is nothing normal about THE RAMRODDER.  Firstly, it's called THE RAMRODDER.  We've learned that this is an older term for a guy who herds cows but, well, it's called THE RAMRODDER.  Secondly, it's got:

• Two members of the Manson family.
• The "Dance of the Virgins"
• "Native Americans" wearing jeans
• People humping each other's legs
• A whip dipped in ketchup
• A topless catfight
• A girl loosing her maidenhood to a stick
• The.  Worst.  Dialogue.  Ever.

The year was 1969.  According the the film's trailer, we were in the middle of the "Great American Sexplosion", whatever that was, and exploitation director Van Guylder decided to make a nudie Western, because if ever there was a problem with Westerns, it's that people kept their clothes on.  Guylder decided to film the movie at Spahn's Movie Ranch, which used to be the set for shows like Bonanza and The Lone Ranger, but since then had become home to a group of hippex that George Spahn had allowed to live there in exchange for their keeping up the place.  This group of hippies called themselves "The Family", and were led by a guy named Charles Manson.

Guylder apparently was cool with casting anyone willing to take their clothes off, so two members of the family--Catherine Share and Bobby Beausoleil--ended up in the film.  Here's the freaky part: Beausoleil, who would later be convicted of murder, is the bad guy!  Did Guylder just see something in his eyes that screamed "evil"?

Anyway, the plot: the title character who so often rams his rod is a cowboy named Rick.  He's engaged to an airhead named Lucy who seems to take 20 minutes to say a single sentence but looks amazing with her clothes off.  Rick is out ramrodding some cows when he's attacked and left for dead by Beausoleil's character and then found and nursed back to health by a white-girl-playing-a-Native-American named Tuwana.  Shortly thereafter, the chief's daughter (played by Share) is raped by the bad guy (is it weird that one Manson family member pretended to rape another?  Yes, it's weird) and Rick gets the blame.  The tribe of white guys then decides to murder all white guys (sorry, the "Native Americans" decide to murder all white guys).  And, yeah, nothing makes much sense from there forward, but it makes for a really terrible, strange and utterly hilarious movie.  Also, it has muscular guy and hot girls wearing nothing or next to nothing, so much so that you'll forget to get excited by it all about halfway through.  Come make fun of it with us this Thursday!