Swamp Women (not rated)
IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: none that I know of

This came out in 1955 (twenty years before I was born). I watched it in 2015, because it was included on a DVD of four movies, which I had basically just bought for one of them, The Little Shop of Horrors. (The other two are Tormented and The World Gone Mad.)

It starts out at Mardi Gras, where an oil wildcatter named Bob Matthews is making out with a woman named Marie (I'm not sure if she's his girlfriend or fiancée). It's implied that she's only really interested in him because of his recent success, though her father is rich, so it's kind of weird for her to be a gold-digger, but whatever... I didn't get the impression he really cared that much about her, either. Anyway, he tells her about his latest project, which is somewhere in the bayou, and she wants to go with him to check it out.

Meanwhile, there's a police lieutenant named Lee Hampton, whom I was pleased to see treated with complete respect by her captain. (Particularly since I've recently been watching a show called Aquarius, which is set twelve years after this movie came out, and one of the ongoing plotlines is about a female cop who is treated with no respect at all by most of her colleagues.) Anyway, Lee has a plan to have herself sent to prison, in order to infiltrate the Nardo gang. The leader is Josie, who seems to be not only the toughest, but the smartest and most reasonable member of the gang. The most troublesome member is Vera, who often gets into fights with the third member, Billie. And once Lee joins them, Vera immediately takes a dislike to her, too. Part of Lee's plan is for the four of them to break out of jail together, so that Josie can lead them to a stash of diamonds the gang had stolen a few years ago, which Josie had hidden somewhere in the bayou. Meanwhile, throughout their journey we occasionally see cut-scenes of the police captain on the phone, directing all the forces who are waiting for Lee to find the diamonds, so they can move in.

Naturally, the four women soon have boat trouble, and they just happen to encounter Bob and Marie, whose boat they decide to steal. Vera kills their guide, which leads to more trouble between her and Lee. And the four women take Bob and Marie hostage (which was Lee's idea, to prevent the others from killing them, too). I must say, I liked the idea that the movie is about women who are completely in control of the situation. I thought, hey, this could actually be kind of feminist. But of course, the women all end up taking a liking to Bob, as if he were the only man in the world, or something. Which, I suppose for the criminals, it's been a few years since they've seen a man- except for one guy who was mentioned but never seen- but still. Even when Bob is totally at their mercy, and knows it, it's just annoying that the movie had to go there. But it's not like the movie would have been particularly good, anyway. It's just disappointing because it could have been a little better than it was. Anyway, I won't spoil the ending, not that it matters....