A hypocritical, sleazy evangelist named Preacher Fallows (Bill Rogers) rolls into a sleepy, tight-knit community preaching righteousness while practicing anything but. He sets his sights on Emily (Lee Holland), the local small-town free spirit labeled by the judgmental locals as a shanty tramp. Fallows assumes he can easily add her to his list of conquests, but his plans are completely derailed when Emily rejects his advances. Even worse for the fragile ego of the faux-holy man, she prefers the company of a young black man, Daniel (Ray Aranha), who treats her with actual human decency. Consumed by bruised vanity, raging hypocrisy and deep-seated malice, Fallows weaponizes the prejudices of the local townspeople when Emily’s dad catches her in bed with Daniel and cries rape, whipping them into a frenzy and stirring up a vicious mob against the couple.
Clocking in at a brisk 71 minutes, Shanty Tramp was engineered specifically to play the late-night slot at gritty drive-ins, where independent filmmakers could push social boundaries and tackle taboo subjects that mainstream Hollywood studios wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole in 1967. It was distributed by K. Gordon Murray, a legendary figure in movie distribution who made a fortune bringing bizarre oddities, foreign imports, and exploitation features to drive-ins across America, and directed by Joseph P. Mawra, a fascinating figure in the realm of outsider cinema, also known for cranking out wild exploitation titles like Miss Leslie’s Dolls, Savages from Hell and Fireball Jungle. Under the name José Prieto, he was the assistant director of Alfredo B. Crevenna’s Santo and Blue Demon vehicle Las Bestias del Terror and the William Kerwin-scripted Six She’s and a He.
Murray cast local non-actors in Miami through a newspaper ad. For the shanty tramp role, he claimed that the part would include nudity. He picked Eleanor Vaill because, unlike all of the other actresses who undressed and then got immediately dressed, she stayed naked the whole time. The very same year as this movie, Valli was in A Taste of Blood and The Girl, the Body and the Pill, as well as serving as the script supervisor for Blast-Off Girls.
This was an early Bob Clark job, too, as he was the assistant director. As for the bikers, they were played by members of the Davie Police Department and a bunch of them got fired. When the circus comes to town, right?
You can watch this on Tubi.
