Angelica: The Young Vixen (1970)

Angelica: The Young Vixen is a low-budget sexploitation movie made by an outfit called Vega International. This company had a brief and confusing history and of the half dozen or so movies they planned to make some were completed and some weren’t. One of the partners in the company was Oliver Drake, a prolific director of B-westerns who helmed several of Vega’s films including The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals. He’s credited as director of Angelica: The Young Vixen but it was in fact directed by another guy who had taken the name OIiver Drake.

Vega were active from around 1968 to maybe 1971 and Angelica: The Young Vixen seems to have had its original release in 1970. It was considered a lost film until very recently when Severin got hold of a very battered but complete release print. They have included it as an extra on their Blu-Ray release of The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals.

Angelica: The Young Vixen falls vaguely within the hicksploitation sub-genre (a sub-genre I dearly love).

Ned Hurley (William Johnson) is the overseer on the farm belonging to Judge Blaine (Lou d’Jena). Cute blonde nymphet Angelica (Dixie Donovan) is one the field hands. She’s shacked up with a gypsy named Nick (Vincent Ricco) but she’s been playing around with Ned as well and that’s already led to the two men trading punches.

We then get a sex scene, a threesome, which was a later insert and has no connection whatsoever with the rest of the movie but presumably a distributor thought the movie needed to be spiced up. It adds a bizarre touch because we have no idea at all who these people are.

Then, in a slightly surreal scene, Nick drags the two illicit lovers, sleeping bag and all, to a tree where he tries to string them up. The final result is that Ned is charged with murder. It was really an accident and the dropping of the charges is just a formality but the judge has to figure out what to do with Angelica. She’s a material witness. And she’s 17.

The judge’s daughter Marlou (Josie Kirk) suggests that Angelica can come stay with them.

Marlou has an ulterior motive. She likes girls. She likes girls in That Way. Especially cute blonde sexpots. Angelica isn’t into girls in That Way but she figures it would be wise to play along.

Angelica is still sleeping with Ned. And she’s started sleeping with Judge Blaine. And with a lawyer attached to the judge’s court. Angelica is a very friendly girl. Very affectionate.

There’s a perfect setup here for some overheated melodrama and that’s what we get and it’s done reasonably well and it’s quite entertaining. The script is perfectly adequate.

The acting on the whole is pretty basic but Dixie Donovan (who made a stack of sexploitation movies in her very brief film career) is a lot of fun as Angelica. Maybe not a conventionally good actress but she knows how to do the seductive dangerous sex kitten thing to a tee and she clearly had no inhibitions about taking her clothes off. And she’s very easy on the eyes.

There is nudity, including frontal nudity, in copious quantities and numerous sex scenes but there is still plenty of time for the outrageously overcooked plot to keep simmering along.

The print has some very major print damage which was obviously why Severin decided to throw it in as a freebie. It was a good decision. This is a thoroughly enjoyable slice of classic American sexploitation. I liked Angelica: The Young Vixen but then I do like this sort of thing quite a bit.

And they’ve included an audio commentary for it! Which makes this a fine double-header Blu-Ray release.