[4] The movie was reportedly inspired by the 1958 film The Defiant Ones in which Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis are shackled together similarly to Grier and Markov.

Set in an unspecified Latin American country (referred to only as "the island"), the movie was shot in the Philippines for budgetary purposes.

The pair finally bonds, despite their initial hatred for each other, until they are ultimately freed by the rebel leader Ernesto (Zaldy Zshornack).

The movie culminates in a violent shootout involving Cheng and Ruben's henchmen (who are rivals), Ernesto's guerrillas, and the army.

[9][10] Margaret Markov, who plays Karen Brent, had appeared in The Hot Box (1972), which was also a Latin American prison film.

The Country Buggy was produced locally in the Philippines as the Sakbayan, using VW power plants sourced from either Brazil or Mexico.

Karen Brent is a guerrilla fighter and Lee Daniels masterminds a scheme to screw over the misogynistic pimp, Vic Cheng.

James Robert Parish and George H. Hill state that Pam Grier is "an intriguing mixture of pugnacity and femininity, with a heavy dose of world-weary cynicism"[5] despite, according to Bob McCann, the movie itself being "somewhat listless",[16] and the strength of both women outshine most of the male characters.

[citation needed] Yvonne Sims states that "it became evident very quickly that Grier's screen presence overshadowed the one-dimensional roles that focused on her physical attributes and the weak storylines in AIP [American International Pictures] productions.

Cultural critic Nelson George notes, "Pam Grier was a cult figure who was even embraced by many feminists for her ball-breaking action movies.

She remains one of the few women of any color in American film history who had vehicles developed for her that not only emphasized her physical beauty but also her ability to take retribution on men who challenged her.

"[18] Therefore, "Grier...brought a new character to the screen that was instrumental in reshaping gender roles, particularly those involving action-centered storylines."

The revenge that Lee Daniels gets on her former pimp is nothing short of Black Power, and "1973 marked the first time that audiences saw African American women in non-servitude roles.

As a "Killer Dame" (along with Tamara Dobson, Teresa Graves, Jean Bell, et al.), "It was a goodbye to the headscarves worn by Mammy and the wavy hair of the Exotic Other, and a refreshing and political greeting to the woman with a natural hairstyle modeled, according to [film scholar Cedric Robinson], from civil rights heroines such as Angela Davis."

Karen, on the other hand, readily submits to the matron's advances so that she does not have to work in the field, placing a greater burden on the other prisoners.

This line of thought is not pursued further, but the scriptwriters (one of which was none other than Jonathan Demme himself, who later won an Academy Award for directing The Silence of the Lambs), were clearly making the connection between revolutionary actions occurring in Latin America and the Black Power Movement in the United States.

Josiah Howard writes in Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide that the movie was "a lively and well-done women's prison yarn", but that it "somehow never really hits its mark", largely because "the filmmakers do little to distance themselves from the tired trick...of having key characters shackled together for almost the entire length of the picture."

Howard comments, "Harry Bett's superior ambient music soundtrack (available on CD) is much more sophisticated than the movie that it was created for.