Mad Cowgirl is like a film version of The Bell Jar, but with a few more decapitations and disembowlings and a little more kung fu.
A woman is in the throes of mental illness and nearly everything that happens here is a “may or may not” in that you never know for sure what’s real or what she might be imagining or hallucinating. She—wispy brunette Sarah Lassez, who has a sexy young schoolteacher’s sultriness—appears to work as a meat inspector. The first cases of Mad Cow Disease are discovered and the news follows her around constantly via TV and radio. After work, she typically sits at home alone, devouring steak every night, drinking, and watching television, carrying a fixation on a martial arts show called The Girl With the Thunderbolt Kick.
After those (possible) facts, things get iffy. She may or may not be sleeping with a creepy televangelist, played by a pushing-70 Walter Koenig, who eventually dumps her and leaves her miserable. She may or may not be dying of a brain disease. She may or may not be doing the horizontal incest tango with her brother who runs a meatpacking plant. She may or may not eventually go on a killing spree inspired by her kung fu heroine. And so on.
Mad Cowgirl drifts in a fractured and hallucinatory way. Expect the B-movie fun that the blood-splattered poster and DVD art sets you up for and you’ll likely be disappointed. This one belongs on the shelf next to films like Ganja & Hess and Santa Sangre, “horror” films that are actually surrealist art films.