Journey Among Women (1977)

Anyone who has pursued a love of cult movies will have at some stage in the course of that pursuit come cross some spectacularly bad movies. And if you fall into this category it’s likely that at some point you have considered the perennial question - what is the absolute worst movie ever made? I can now provide you with an unequivocal answer to that question. The worst movie of all time is Journey Among Women.

This 1977 Australian film has every possible qualification for this exalted title. It has artistic pretensions without any actual art, it has cringe-inducingly crude political content, the acting is ghastly, it looks horrible, the plot makes no sense, the direction is inept, and most of all it’s boring.

Some time in Australia’s early colonial period, presumably in approximately the first decade of the 19th century, a group of women convicts endure harsh mistreatment by the Wicked British Military Machine. They rebel and escape, and form a kind of lesbian separatist commune in the bush. At first they find survival a struggle, but then they meet some Indigenous Women and bond with them, and soon learn to live in Harmony With Nature.

But of course the forces of patriarchal oppression can’t allow them to live in peace and oneness with the land because soon all the women of the colony would run off into the bush to join them. The stage is set for a showdown.

Every single male character in the movie is a rapist and a Wicked Patriarchal Oppressor. The women are all virtuous because, you know, they’re women. They’re also very spiritual and in touch with the oneness of nature, and they like to set round and form a healing circle. They reject the oppressiveness of the evil patriarchy by taking their clothes off a lot.

While it’s supposed to be the early 19th century the women all look, speak and behave like
unwashed 1970s hippies. They also paint themselves so they can be more like the Wise and Virtuous Indigenous Women. There are no Indigenous Men, because the overwhelming Political Correctness of this movie could not have coped with the conflict between the known facts that all Indigenous Peoples are Wise and Virtuous, but all men are Rapists and Wicked Patriarchal Oppressors.

The women spend most of the movie wandering about the bush naked celebrating their oneness with the landscape and their deep spiritual links with the land and with the Indigenous Women.

Ironically in view of the fact that this is the most Politically Correct movie ever made, its box-office success in Australia was based almost entirely on the almost non-stop nudity and the frequent lesbian rompings.

A tedious, angry and monumentally uninteresting movie.

Amazingly enough this dreck has been released on DVD. It doesn’t even have enough curiosity value to justify a purchase.