My review of the most "inappropriate" film of all time.
Most films reflect the popular culture are of their time, and while the really great stuff turns out to be transcendent, such as REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, much of it starts to show its age, and very soon. That’s the case with PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW, the Roger Vadim directed, and Gene Roddenberry produced, dark sex comedy from 1971. A box office disappointment at the time for MGM, it nevertheless made quite an impression on those who did seek it out back in the day, its reputation growing with the years, even becoming a favorite of Quentin Tarantino. And of course, the reason why it made such as impression is the truly salacious content of PRETTY MAIDS, something every reviewer of the film makes plain. This is movie with a fine eye for the female form, and it showed it off every chance it got, which was a lot. But more than the skin, it’s the attitude of the film, which seems to express the world view of Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine, circa 1969. In short, PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW just might be the most “inappropriate” movie of all time. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The story centers around affluent Oceanside High in Southern California, which has a problem: members of its nubile young cheerleader squad keep getting strangled to death. One unlucky young lady is discovered in a toilet stall in the film’s opening. But this serial killer business is reduced to a subplot, as much of the movie centers around multiple sexual relationships between teachers and students. The uber popular football coach, Tiger McDrew, is regularly getting it on with young ladies in his office, which is decked out like a swinging bachelor pad. Tiger takes more than a paternal interest in his student assistant, oddly named Ponce de Leon Harper, who discovered the murder victim in the bathroom. Poor Ponce has no game with women. Worse, this plight has left him in a state of near constant arousal. Taking Ponce under his wing, Tiger arranges for him to be tutored by Miss Smith, a substitute teacher, in more subjects than one. Meanwhile the State Police have their hands full as the bodies pile up, and eventually, Ponce catches on that his benefactor may have more to hide than a bunch of illicit relationships with dead girls.
Roger Vadim was the French director who made Brigitte Bardot a household name, and later married Jane Fonda; together they made BARBERELLA, the kinky scifi classic. This film was his first American directing job, and he really nails the early ‘70s with its mini-skirts, denim jeans, and Afros. He also got great work out of a cast of pros, which remains one of the films strongest points. Rock Hudson brought all of his charm and screen presence to the part of Tiger, and used it effectively to disguise a character who is not who he appears to be. Angie Dickenson is one of the most gorgeous women to ever grace a movie screen, and she manages to be believable as Miss Smith, a character who otherwise might have been nothing more than a male fantasy. Everyone points out that Telly Savalas seems to be auditioning for Kojak; he plays the state police investigator who is no dumb cop. Keenan Wynn trots out his irascible old coot routine as a dimwitted Sheriff’s deputy, while Roddy McDowall is the picture of befuddlement as the school principle, who even has the standard glasses wearing secretary. James Doohan, Scotty from STAR TREK, plays one of Savalas’s investigators, and it is strange to hear him speak without an accent. I think the best performance is by young John David Carson (previously the voice of Dino Boy on Saturday morning cartoons) as Ponce, whose character arc goes from wide eyed and frustrated to Lothario, something he pulls off with ease. Amy Eccles, Brenda Sykes, and Joy Bang play some of the young ladies who are crazy for Tiger.
A lot of fans have asserted that Vadim and Roddenberry (who also wrote the screenplay) were just dirty old men indulging themselves by making a film where nubile teenage girls are panting after a middle aged man, a film where there we see a lot of female anatomy, but male nudity (Hudson and Carson) is implied or barely glimpsed. I think it is simple: they did it for the money. Vadim wanted to make a hit film in America, and Roddenberry wanted to establish himself in the film business after STAR TREK, and on paper, PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN ROW looked like a sure fire hit. By the late ‘60s, the Hayes Office was history, censorship was gone, and Americans were flocking to see films with sex and violence, the more gratuitous the better. MGM had fallen on hard times financially, and put some big bucks into the production; Rock Hudson had fallen off the Top Ten Box Office star list some years earlier and surely figured this was the kind of change of pace role that would put him back up there. But while sex sells, the public’s appetite for prurience has its limits, and the film did not find an audience. Bad timing might have had something to do with it, I think if PRETTY MAIDS had come out in 1968, it would have fared better at the box office, as titillating sex comedies had reached saturation levels by 1971. Younger film goers had little interest in going to see an R rated film starring an actor their mother’s found dreamy back in the Eisenhower Era. A bad marketing campaign didn’t help, as dark comedy has always been a tough sell to American audiences. In the years after its release, the film all but disappeared, showing up infrequently on TV as it was hard to edit for network standards in the ‘70s and ‘80s. There was a VHS and then a DVD release, but they could be hard to find. Only recently has a remastered DVD been available.
So what to make of a film that flaunted the changing morality of the Sexual Revolution of the late ‘60s in the 21st Century? It seems that PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is still a problem, for what was subversive against the Ozzie and Harriet America that preceded the upheaval of the ‘60s, is still subversive today, just for different reasons. It’s still a film where female sexuality exists only to gratify the desires of men and boys; where multiple sexual relationships between students and teachers are winked at, if not encouraged. The scene where Tiger “stimulates” Miss Smith is a felony pure and simple, but it’s treated like a joke here; many would accuse the tone of the film as being downright misogynistic. There is so much that is utterly and completely wrong in this movie that it would make the usual suspects – the ones who thrive daily on online outrage culture – heads explode in unison. Today, PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW subverts an entirely different morality, one, at its worst, can be just as puritanical as the one of more than half century ago now. It’s worth noting that Oceanside High, with its randy teachers and students, was not only part of Nixon’s America, but Ronald Reagan’s California, and is a perfect example of the kind of “permissiveness” the Gipper furiously attacked throughout his political career.
I think PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is part of a very special subgenre: the black high school comedy. It would make a good triple bill with MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH and HEATHERS. It’s also worth noting that three of the film’s stars, Hudson, Dickinson, and Savalas, landed on their feet, and went on the star in hit TV detective shows in the ‘70s. And I bet The Osmonds’ agent didn’t read the script before inking the deal where one of their songs would be sung over the opening and closing credits.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
https://bit.ly/47dOR5N
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
The story centers around affluent Oceanside High in Southern California, which has a problem: members of its nubile young cheerleader squad keep getting strangled to death. One unlucky young lady is discovered in a toilet stall in the film’s opening. But this serial killer business is reduced to a subplot, as much of the movie centers around multiple sexual relationships between teachers and students. The uber popular football coach, Tiger McDrew, is regularly getting it on with young ladies in his office, which is decked out like a swinging bachelor pad. Tiger takes more than a paternal interest in his student assistant, oddly named Ponce de Leon Harper, who discovered the murder victim in the bathroom. Poor Ponce has no game with women. Worse, this plight has left him in a state of near constant arousal. Taking Ponce under his wing, Tiger arranges for him to be tutored by Miss Smith, a substitute teacher, in more subjects than one. Meanwhile the State Police have their hands full as the bodies pile up, and eventually, Ponce catches on that his benefactor may have more to hide than a bunch of illicit relationships with dead girls.
Roger Vadim was the French director who made Brigitte Bardot a household name, and later married Jane Fonda; together they made BARBERELLA, the kinky scifi classic. This film was his first American directing job, and he really nails the early ‘70s with its mini-skirts, denim jeans, and Afros. He also got great work out of a cast of pros, which remains one of the films strongest points. Rock Hudson brought all of his charm and screen presence to the part of Tiger, and used it effectively to disguise a character who is not who he appears to be. Angie Dickenson is one of the most gorgeous women to ever grace a movie screen, and she manages to be believable as Miss Smith, a character who otherwise might have been nothing more than a male fantasy. Everyone points out that Telly Savalas seems to be auditioning for Kojak; he plays the state police investigator who is no dumb cop. Keenan Wynn trots out his irascible old coot routine as a dimwitted Sheriff’s deputy, while Roddy McDowall is the picture of befuddlement as the school principle, who even has the standard glasses wearing secretary. James Doohan, Scotty from STAR TREK, plays one of Savalas’s investigators, and it is strange to hear him speak without an accent. I think the best performance is by young John David Carson (previously the voice of Dino Boy on Saturday morning cartoons) as Ponce, whose character arc goes from wide eyed and frustrated to Lothario, something he pulls off with ease. Amy Eccles, Brenda Sykes, and Joy Bang play some of the young ladies who are crazy for Tiger.
A lot of fans have asserted that Vadim and Roddenberry (who also wrote the screenplay) were just dirty old men indulging themselves by making a film where nubile teenage girls are panting after a middle aged man, a film where there we see a lot of female anatomy, but male nudity (Hudson and Carson) is implied or barely glimpsed. I think it is simple: they did it for the money. Vadim wanted to make a hit film in America, and Roddenberry wanted to establish himself in the film business after STAR TREK, and on paper, PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN ROW looked like a sure fire hit. By the late ‘60s, the Hayes Office was history, censorship was gone, and Americans were flocking to see films with sex and violence, the more gratuitous the better. MGM had fallen on hard times financially, and put some big bucks into the production; Rock Hudson had fallen off the Top Ten Box Office star list some years earlier and surely figured this was the kind of change of pace role that would put him back up there. But while sex sells, the public’s appetite for prurience has its limits, and the film did not find an audience. Bad timing might have had something to do with it, I think if PRETTY MAIDS had come out in 1968, it would have fared better at the box office, as titillating sex comedies had reached saturation levels by 1971. Younger film goers had little interest in going to see an R rated film starring an actor their mother’s found dreamy back in the Eisenhower Era. A bad marketing campaign didn’t help, as dark comedy has always been a tough sell to American audiences. In the years after its release, the film all but disappeared, showing up infrequently on TV as it was hard to edit for network standards in the ‘70s and ‘80s. There was a VHS and then a DVD release, but they could be hard to find. Only recently has a remastered DVD been available.
So what to make of a film that flaunted the changing morality of the Sexual Revolution of the late ‘60s in the 21st Century? It seems that PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is still a problem, for what was subversive against the Ozzie and Harriet America that preceded the upheaval of the ‘60s, is still subversive today, just for different reasons. It’s still a film where female sexuality exists only to gratify the desires of men and boys; where multiple sexual relationships between students and teachers are winked at, if not encouraged. The scene where Tiger “stimulates” Miss Smith is a felony pure and simple, but it’s treated like a joke here; many would accuse the tone of the film as being downright misogynistic. There is so much that is utterly and completely wrong in this movie that it would make the usual suspects – the ones who thrive daily on online outrage culture – heads explode in unison. Today, PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW subverts an entirely different morality, one, at its worst, can be just as puritanical as the one of more than half century ago now. It’s worth noting that Oceanside High, with its randy teachers and students, was not only part of Nixon’s America, but Ronald Reagan’s California, and is a perfect example of the kind of “permissiveness” the Gipper furiously attacked throughout his political career.
I think PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is part of a very special subgenre: the black high school comedy. It would make a good triple bill with MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH and HEATHERS. It’s also worth noting that three of the film’s stars, Hudson, Dickinson, and Savalas, landed on their feet, and went on the star in hit TV detective shows in the ‘70s. And I bet The Osmonds’ agent didn’t read the script before inking the deal where one of their songs would be sung over the opening and closing credits.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
https://bit.ly/47dOR5N
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
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