The Yum-Yum Girls on AllMovie

Barry Rosen, director of the cult favorite Gang Wars, made this confused sex comedy about New York models. Michelle Dow plays the naive Melody, who comes to the Big Apple from Duncan Falls, Ohio, to pursue her dream. Inevitably, this dream leads to casting-couches, frightening nightmares, rape, and suicide, but there is much humor in the interim. Rosen tries to graft episodic screwball comedy bits involving bad auditions and backstage cattiness onto what is essentially a grim 1930s-style cautionary tale, and it doesn't quite work. The end result plays like a demented hybrid of Showgirls and Valley of the Dolls in which Melody's horrible abuse at the hands of sleazy producers alternates with semi-nude models pulling each other's hair and elderly Edna Thayer croaking "I'm a Big Fat Mama" to a dismayed casting director. The fact that two of the models are played by Judy Landers and Tanya Roberts may interest some viewers, but overall this disjointed soap-opera is unsatisfying and trite. Production manager Mik Cribben went on to direct the intriguing Beware! Children at Play, while assistant cameraman Domonic Paris directed Dracula's Last Rites and the cheerleader comedy Splitz.