Mark L. Lester's 1975 ‘hot chick and an outlaw dude' movie Bobbie Jo And The Outlaw will always be famous to a certain extent as the movie that Lynda Carter shows her breasts in. Wonder Woman fans the world over will be eternally grateful for the few fleeting seconds of topless nudity she offers here, but outside of that, is the movie really any good? Not really, but it has its moments.

When the movie begins, a hood named Lyle Wheeler (Marjoe Gortner) is annoyed when his car breaks down. He solves the problem by carjacking a Mustang which results in a quick chase scene that ends when he runs the cop off the road. He heads to a small town to lay low for a while and flirts it up with a curvy carhop named Bobbie Jo Baker (Lynda Carter). But Bobbie Jo, but she's not interested… at least she doesn't think she is. Once she leaves work and goes home only to get into a spat with her hard drinking mom (Peggy Stewart) she decides that maybe Lyle's not so bad after all. If nothing else, he's a ticket out of this one horse town. The two of them jump into his Mustang and hit the road, driving out into the desert where Bobbie Jo sings Lyle a bad country song, talks about Linda Rondstadt and tells him about her dream of making it big in the world of country music. Lyle, on the other hand, tells her all about his love of Billy The Kid and then proceeds to teach Bobbie Jo how to use a gun.

With that out of the way, the two hit the sheets and get it on and then they hang out with Bobbie Jo's pal, Essie (Belinda Balaski). After that they take some magic mushrooms and get pulled over by a yet another cop, at which point Lyle decides it's time for them to go on the lam. Bobbie Jo figures her sister, a stripper named Pearl (Merrie Lynn Ross), can help them out so they head to New Mexico where they visit Pearl and her boyfriend, Slick (Jesse Vint). Lyle and Slick wind up in trouble when Slick tries to pull off a robbery which results in Lyle having to kill a man and Slick getting wounded. When the girls hear about the crime on the radio, all involved figure it's only a matter of time before the cops catch up with them. And they're right, as all the while the tension mounts among the group as Lyle tries to talk Bobbie Jo into splitting with him and robbing a bank.

Bobbie Jo And The Outlaw is entertaining enough drive-in fare, so long as you keep your expectations in check. It hits most of the prerequisite drive-in movie criteria of the era, offering up some topless ladies and a good bit of violence towards the end of the movie. Director Mark Lester throws in a few good car chase sequences and makes the most out of the film's dusty locations and some of the stunt driving in these scenes is pretty impressive, more impressive than this writer remembers it being after watching the movie a few years ago. There isn't a whole lot of character development here, though Vernon Zimmerman's script does offer opportunity for lots of it, making it unfortunate that the film just never really capitalizes on that. We know Bobbie Jo's home life isn't so hot and dreaming of stardom and an easy way out of that does at least make sense, but we aren't given a whole lot more than that for our female lead and our male lead really doesn't fare much better. The two main characters are stereotypes.

There are also continuity problems galore (watch Carter's top change from one shot to the next), plenty of logic gaps, and the score is too repetitious for its own good. Still, the film has a bit of folksy charm thanks primarily to the cast. Carter is beautiful as the female lead but the film relies far more heavily on Marjoe Gortner than on her. He's not bad in the part and has a likeable sense of recklessness to his character, but he's never been the most charismatic of leading men and he's not particularly dynamic here. The movie is nicely shot but not very well put together from an editing stand point, which results in choppy storytelling and head-scratching moments that just don't make a whole lot of sense. This can and does take us out of the movie. As entertaining as it can be at times, Bobbie Jo And The Outlaw is also pretty dopey. Thank God for celebrity skin.

Video:

Bobbie Joe And The Outlaw is presented on Blu-ray in 1.85.1 widescreen in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer and generally speaking it looks very nice. There are a few small scuffs and scratches evident here and there but overall the picture is quite clean. The increase in detail is frequently very impressive when compared to the previous DVD release from MGM while texture and depth are strong throughout as well, though this does vary periodically (the scene shot in the strip club looks a little hazy compared to the scenes shot outside in bright daylight, for example). Black levels are solid while shadow detail is quite good as well. There is no evidence of any noise reduction or edge enhancement nor are there any compression artifacts.