Director/Screenplay/Producer – Jim Wynorski, Photography/Visual Effects – Chuck Cirino. Production Company – Sugarbush Productions.
Julie K. Smith (Zoe), Shauna O’Brien [as Shauna O’Brian] (Shauna), Jill Tompkins (Jill), Julie Dey (Julie), Seana Ryan (Seana), Lenny Juliano (Lunk Johnson), Julie Strain (The Bare Wench), Dick Bigdickian (Himself), Mary Lou Bell (Filipino Abductee)
Five girls, all UFO experts, set out on an expedition to Bare Wench Mountain to investigate reported UFO sightings. They discover Lunk Johnson, who was abducted by the UFOs, left on the ground. After reviving Lunk, they get him to carry their packs. In between assorted fooling around, they discover an alien in a jar that gives powerful orgasms and a box that causes clothing to disappear.
The Bare Wench Project (2000) was a softcore parody of The Blair Witch Project (1999), quickly released in the wake of that film’s runaway success. Essentially, director Jim Wynorski took a bunch of starlets best known for taking their clothes off and got them to wander around in the woods, improvising a series of softcore riffs on Blair Witch. The result was excruciating in its inanity. It was however a success and produced a host of sequels starting with Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless (2001), Nymphs of Mystery Mountain here and followed by Bare Wench Project Uncensored (2003) and Bare Wench: The Final Chapter (2005).
The Bare Wench films are a series that has taken what was a bare bones (if not bare breasts) concept in the first place and tried to keep generating sequels out of it. Three films in and it becomes apparent that Jim Wynorski is just recycling the essentials of the other films – group of girls go hiking in the woods on a minimal pretext; girls find almost any opportunity to flop out their massively oversized breasts and/or make out with one another; there are the characters of Dick Bigdickian and Lunk the hapless porter; there’s a Bare Wench who makes occasional appearances; and various scenes with the girls wandering around the wilderness, splashing in streams, dancing nude in front of a bonfire and topless in a tent.
The Bare Wench films are ones where Jim Wynorski and the actresses are taking not a shred of anything that happens onscreen seriously. Frequently the girls seem to be improvising their dialogue. As the end credits play, the cameras appear to have been left rolling as everyone started partying and getting drunk. Some of the scenes are agonising in their lameness – the girls announce “Oh my God, there’s a fork in the path,” and come across a plastic fork implanted in the soil. At another point, they stop in the middle of a stream, strip down and squirt chocolate sauce all over their bodies claiming it is bug spray.
Some of the most absurd scenes are those to do with Lenny Juliano’s Lunk. He was abducted by a UFO at the end of the previous film,. Here the girls find him lying unconscious in the middle of the trail. Their solution to revive him is to strip their tops and chant in a circle and then for Julie K. Smith to climb on top and dry hump him. After he makes a tentative recovery, the girls promptly turn around and get him to carry their packs. The Found Footage format that the first film was based around parodying seems to evaporated by this entry – sometimes the camera sets ups are regular ones, other times the camera is being held by someone but when all of the group are in frame, it leaves you wondering who among them the cameraperson is meant to be.
Actually the Lunk scenes turn the film from being one where Wynorski and a group of stacked girls go partying into the woods into something that often feels mean-spirited. A lot of scenes in the middle involve the camera focusing in closeup on the girls’ butts or them bending over and so on, at the same time as they are telling Lunk to get away or what a creep he is and making general putdowns of him. For a film that is supposed to be an erotic fantasy, all this seems to tell the (presumably) male audiences watching is that the women exist on a plateau of unattainability where the only essential use the token male of the show has is carrying the bags, eternally lusting but with the objects of his desire remaining forever beyond his reach.
Jim Wynorski’s other genre films are:- The Lost Empire (1983), Chopping Mall (1986), Deathstalker II (1987), Not Of This Earth (1988), The Return of Swamp Thing (1989), Transylvania Twist (1989), The Haunting of Morella (1990), Sorority House Massacre II (1990), Sorority House Massacre 3/Hard to Die/Tower of Terror (1990), Scream Queen Hot Tub Party (1991), Munchie (1992), 976-Evil II (1992), Ghoulies IV (1993), Dinosaur Island (1994), Munchie Strikes Back (1994), Sorceress (1995), The Wasp Woman (1995), Vampirella (1996), The Pandora Project (1998), Storm Trooper (1998), Desert Thunder (1999), Crash Point Zero/Extreme Limits (2000), Raptor (2001), Thy Neighbor’s Wife/Poison (2001), Gale Force (2002), Project Viper (2002), Cheerleader Massacre (2003), More Mercy (2003), The Curse of the Komodo (2004), Gargoyle (2004), The Thing Below (2004), Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade (2005), Komodo vs Cobra (2005), Sub Zero (2005), The Witches of Breastwick (2005), The Witches of Breastwick 2 (2005), A.I. Assault/Shockwave (2006), Cry of the Winged Serpent (2006), Bone Eater (2007), The Breastford Wives (2007), House on Hooter Hill (2007), Cleavegefield (2009), Fire From Below (2009), Vampire in Vegas (2009), Monster Cruise (2010), Dinocroc vs Supergator (2010), The Hills Have Thighs (2010), Camel Spiders (2011), Gila (2012), Piranhaconda (2012), Hypnotika (2013), Scared Topless (2013), Sexually Bugged (2014), Shark Babes (2014), Water Wars (2014), Scared Topless (2015), A Doggone Christmas (2016), Nessie & Me (2016), Nessie & Me (2016), Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre (2016), Cobragator (2018), Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl (2022), Bigfoot or Bust (2022), Giantess Battle Attack (2022) and Murderbot (2023).