But maybe nothing quite as warped as this one.......a perfect storm collision of disparate actors, writer and director who normally would only collaborate with one another in an alternate, bizarro universe......
Believe it or not, it happened in this universe.......and all under the auspices of early 1970's MGM, a studio that was already in drastic self-destruction mode to keep itself afloat.......
So what the hell is it, anyway? A sex comedy? A thriller? A satiric snapshot of America as a new decade kicks off? Soft porn for pervs who salivate at the sight of nubile teen girls?
All of the above.......or, no.....maybe none of the above. We've no idea about anyone's intentions here.........by the time this thing squished out of the MGM sausage grinder, it resembled a rogue episode of some TV sitcom/cop show hybrid......
Consider the creative participants........the writer-producer was none other than the great guru of 'Star Trek' Gene Roddenberry. And directing fell to, of all people, that sultan of softcore Euro-Trash Roger Vadim, whose grossly inflated reputation came from his films celebrating the physical assets of his various babe-o-licious wives (Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, etc, etc.....)
On the surface, the storyline aspires to be some kind of sick, dark social satire, a spoof on the immoral depraved rot festering behind our All-American sunny optimism........(which David Lynch would later plumb the depths of in "Blue Velvet".)
We're guessing that's what Gene Roddenberry tried to accomplish in the script......mixing comedy tropes with dead bodies......and maybe an American director with a deadpan wit and a sharp eye on the zeitgeist, a Robert Altman or a Mike Nichols could've turned this into a real movie..... maybe.
What they got was Roger Vadim, whose one and only interest lay in his slobbering obsession with young girls' tits, asses and long, long legs.........and who lacked virtually every single filmmaking skill, except where to point the camera when a hot cutie passes by.........
The story? Rock Hudson plays a beloved high school football coach and guidance counselor who's actually a serial pedophile killer. He suavely plows his way through every willowy, luscious girl student in the school, occasionally murdering a few of them if they get too clingy. But he does dearly love his beautiful wife and adorable little girl........
For dirty old men in the audience who prefer older woman, the film offers Angie Dickinson as a substitute teacher enlisted by Hudson to....uh.....befriend, so to speak, a frustrated virgin (John David Carson). Her technique mostly involves rubbing her cleavage across his face. ( and viewed in hindsight, the concept of Rock Hudson as a rampant ravisher of underage girls may stand as the film's most perverse gimmick......)
Sick gags and jabs at self-obsessed American culture pile up routinely.....but just lie there under Vadim's typically slack, energy-free direction. He knew nothing of America and it shows in his indifferent handling of scenes meant to have a satiric bite. It doesn't take long to figure out what he's really interested in.........and it ain't the jokes, folks.
Since the film's bereft of any pacing, visual storytelling, humor, or even a point of view, it leaves a viewer plenty of time to realize what an ugly, dumb waste of time it is.........
And if the 'woke' cancel-culture hordes ever got a look at this movie's treatment of women, or ever made aware of its existence, they'd be howling for cremation of all the available prints.
(Not that we'd blame them........but then they'd have to start tossing Doris Day and Sandra Dee movies in the bonfire too and that we'd never tolerate.....)
As your faithful curator of the strangest, craziest movies we can dig up, we didn't mind a return visit to 'Pretty Maids' for the purposes of this blog........but now it's time to bury it forever and always......Zero stars (0)..
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