1971 - PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW, welcome to the 1970's

A nubile bunch of coeds are dying at Oceanfront High School in California.  A young man who isn't doing well with the teenage girls in his class is about to get an education from substitute teacher Angie Dickinson.   Rock Hudson is the football coach/guidance counselor who is bedding about every other short skirted teenage girl who comes into his office. Finally Telly Savalas basically playing his Kojak detective character is brought in to sort out exactly what is going on at this rather horny high school.  Oh yea, throw in Roddy McDowell and Keenan Wynn and you have this strange AIP studio like sex exploitation film made on a big budget by MGM no less.

 Gene Roddenberry the creator of Star Trek and French director Roger Vadim are responsible for this film if you can call it a film.  Both Roddenberry and Vadim had reputations to put it mildly as men who weren't above exploiting women in front of the camera.  In fact Vadim was quoted as saying the casting of the film was his favorite part of making the film.  Since the film is basically a parade of mini skirted young women you can see where Vadim's interests lie.

 

If anyone comes off decently in this film it's probably Savalas and Roddy McDowell as the clueless principal.  Angie Dickinson was apparently cast as a replacement for Brigitte Bardot.

 

I suppose it goes without saying that this type of film wouldn't be made today but then again can anyone be sure about that nobody went broke underestimating the taste of the movie going public.

 Gene Roddenberry wrote the script and the running time is 95 minutes.

1967 - SPIRITS OF THE DEAD or Histoires Extraordinaires, Edgar Allen Poe stories by European directors

Another European anthology film, three sort of based on Edgar Allen Poe stories sexed up for film audiences and filmed by three major European directors.

Metzengerstein directed by Roger Vadim, features his then wife Jane Fonda in her 60's Barbie doll persona. Vadim dresses her up in a lot of questionable medieval costumes for the apparently  sole purpose of showing film audiences what a hot piece she is.  In other words, this is a typical Vadim film.

The story has something to do with Fonda falling in love with a horse who is the reincarnated spirit of her cousin ( played by her brother Peter Fonda).  She gallops around like a mad woman bare back, (on the horse, not the cousin).  Pretty unsubtle eroticism and pretty stupid.

William Wilson, directed by Louis Malle, stars Alain Delon as a soldier named William Wilson who is being followed by a doppelganger also named William Wilson.  This segment features a phallic cigar smoking Bridget Bardot.  Nothing very special here that hasn't been seen on an old Twilight Zone episode. 

Toby Dammit  directed by Federico Fellini,  is probably the best segment although it appears to be barely based on Edgar Allen Poe.  Toby Damnit is an alcoholic British actor who has traveled to Rome to film a biblical story in a western setting, sort of a spaghetti western religious epic.  The producer tells Toby Damnit that the film's style will be a cross between Zinnemann and Pasolini with a touch or John Ford.  

Fellini is sometimes a director who should be watched in short doses and not taken too seriously, Toby Dammit is one of his best films since it's short and actually funny.

121 minutes.

1960 - Lesbian Vampire Euro Trash: BLOOD AND ROSES

The pictures make it look more interesting than it is. This is junk that was classed up by some excellent photography from Claude Renoir, grandson of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The director is Roger Vadim who believe it or not was part of the famous French New Wave group that included Truffaut, Goddard and Chabrol. Vadim was in the sub division of the New Wave that was dedicated to marrying beautiful women and the sticking them in pseudo porno crap that were pushed off as films of erotic artistic expression.

 

The plot was based on some ancient vampire story called Carmilla except it was modernized and set in Italy where I suppose the idea was to juxtapose the decadence of the Italian aristocracy with the corruption of a sexy lesbian vampire. Or was it just an attempt on Vadim's part to see how far he could get away with having his two leading ladies play kissy face with each other? Vadim's latest wife at the time, Annette Vadim played Carmilla. Carmilla is in love with her cousin an Italian Count who is in love with another woman who seems to be half brain dead. Carmilla gets possessed by the soul of an ancient lesbian vampire, who was released during a fireworks display at the Count's estate. It's pretty easy to guess where the movie goes from that point.

The only interesting part of the movie is a lengthy dream sequence which was clearly influenced by Cocteau.

A good example of the foreign film as nudie peep show masquerading as art during the 1960's.

87 minutes.