''Trucker's Woman'' (also released as ''Truckin' Man'') is a 1975

action film Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...

directed by

Will Zens Frederick Willard Zens (June 26, 1920 – March 27, 2013) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter and soundtrack composer who worked on mainly low budget films from the 1960s through the 1980s. Biography and filmography Following se ...

and starring Michael Hawkins.

Plot

The film centers around a middle-aged man who drops out of college to go undercover as a truck driver in order to solve the mysterious murder of his trucker father.

Production

The film was shot over three weeks in November 1974 in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

and

Society Hill Society Hill is a historic neighborhood in Center City Philadelphia, with a population of 6,215 . Settled in the early 1680s, Society Hill is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia.The Center City District dates the Free Soc ...

South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

Release

The film was originally called ''Truckin' Man'', and was screened under that title for the first six months of its theatrical release (appearing on a double bill with ''

Hot Summer in Barefoot County ''Hot Summer in Barefoot County'' is a 1974 comedy film directed by Will Zens and produced & distributed by Preacherman Corporation. The plot involves an undercover agent who is sent to a small southern town in order to uncover an underground mo ...

''). The distributor felt that changing it to ''Trucker's Woman'' would result in higher box office returns.

Home media

One of the home media distributors was

Troma Entertainment Troma Entertainment is an American independent film production and distribution company founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974. The company produces low-budget independent films, primarily of the horror comedy genre. Many of them pla ...

, in 1983 on

videocassette Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocassette ...

. The cover of this release (below), featured new photography of models not resembling the actual actors in the film.

Legacy

In 2018, the film was subject to a comedic running commentary by

RiffTrax RiffTrax is an American company that produces scripted humorous commentary tracks which are synced to mostly public domain feature films, education shorts, and television episodes. With the talents of former ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (''M ...

's Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and

Bill Corbett William Daniel Corbett (born March 30, 1960) is an American writer and performer for television, film and theatre. He was a writer and performer on the cult television show ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (''MST3K''), for which he voiced the r ...

. ''Trucker's Woman'' also contains a mysterious, random image of a pepperoni pizza lying on a wooden deck that appears for a single frame in the middle of a brake line checking scene, at 1:08:38 (or 1:00:51 in the RiffTrax version, which, based on the shorter runtime and lack of R-rated material, seems to be based on a television edit). Due to the

vignetting In photography and optics, vignetting is a reduction of an image's brightness or saturation toward the periphery compared to the image center. The word ''vignette'', from the same root as ''vine'', originally referred to a decorative border ...

effect which was applied to it, it appears that the insertion of this frame was not accidental, but rather was an attempt to subliminally influence audiences to buy pizza (e.g. from

drive-in theater A drive-in theater or drive-in cinema is a form of movie theater, cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor movie screen, a projection booth, a concession stand, and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers ...

concession stands).B&S About Movies
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References

External links

*{{IMDb title, id=0260440, title=Trucker's Woman
Excerpt
1975 films 1970s crime films American independent films Trucker films Troma Entertainment films Films directed by Will Zens 1970s rediscovered films Rediscovered American films 1970s English-language films 1970s American films