'Gator Bait

Playmates often appeared in T-and-A drive-in fare, with Playmate Claudia Jennings even earning the honorary title "Queen of the B's" for her starring roles in such Seventies exploitation fare as Deathsport and The Great Texas Dynamite Chase. Though Jennings never found her way out of the exploitation ghetto, she became an underground heroine in raunchy drive-in filler like The Unholy Rollers. In that flick she played a fiery factory worker who tells her boss to take this job and shove it, then becomes a hotshot in the violent world of roller derby. A female action star before Linda Hamilton and Sigourney Weaver, Jennings specialized in tough-as-nails roles. One of her most memorable turns was that of Desiree, a swamp girl and alligator poacher trying to outwit a legion of murderous rednecks, in 'Gator Bait.

Another regular on the exploitation circuit was Miss April 1978 Pamela Jean Bryant, who starred in more than a dozen B-pictures. "Basically they were leading roles with a lot of scenes where you were totally naked," she told Playboy.com. Today, Bryant jokes, "My friends used to say I starred in Private Hot Box Lunch Wagon Lessons!" in homage to her roles in B-pictures like Private Lessons, Lunch Wagon and H.O.T.S. (which also featured Playmates Susan Kiger and Sandy Johnson).

H.O.T.S. (1979)

Like Jennings, Bryant was often featured prominently in female-centered story lines, like the Animal House-inspired H.O.T.S.. This knock-off campus caper told the story of a renegade sorority of call-the-shots college girls who stage "jockstrap raids" and engage in a heated rivalry with the snobbish Pi sorority. Bryant counted herself lucky to find film roles as a young actress in Hollywood. "I am happy that I ever got a job," the 41-year-old massage therapist and artist told Playboy.com. "It was so difficult to break into the film industry. To look back on my career and say I starred in 12 films, and did almost 100 TV shows -- that's huge."

Bryant has only one regret: "Had I been the wise woman that I am today, I would not have done all the B-movies with all the nudity in them. I would have held out for little cameos in the big films."

Cyndi Wood found similar disappointment in the limited choices offered to Playmates. "Back in the Seventies if you were a model or if you appeared in a men's magazine no one would take you seriously."

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