I don't know why this isn't a cult film. Rock Hudson plays a psychopathic sex killer (a heterosexual one). Angie Dickenson is a substitute teacher who deflowers a teen virgin. Telly Savalas and Keenan Wynn play cops. Roddy McDowell is the the principal. Heck, even Barbara "Vampirella" Leigh and James "Scotty" Doohan have a small roles. Not only that but take a look behind the camera--this movie teams up the French New Wave director who discovered Brigit Bardot with the creator of "Star Trek"! I always suspected that the strange appeal of the latter program for it's very sexually repressed fans was due to the fact that all the girls, human or alien, all wore miniskirts up to their tailbones--well, the Trekkies ought to take a gander at this big screen Rodenberry effort. ("Damnit Captain, that skirt just can't ride up anymore! They can't take it! They're going to blow!")
OK, maybe I shouldn't enjoy a film that spends so much time looking up the skirts of teenage girls, or showing them in nude clinches with Rock Hudson (who plays a VERY progressive guidance counselor and popular football coach), or lying face down dead with a note pinned to the back of their underwear. But only in the early 1970's could a film this completely irresponsible be made, let alone attract such an all-star cast. Not only that, but this film is historically significant in that it is the "missing link" between all the later teen sex comedies where an awkward male virgin (here given the perfect name, "Ponce de Leon")loses his virginity to an older woman, and the teen slasher films where slutty teenage girls pay for their promiscuity with their lives. Of course, this is horribly sexist and hypocritical, but it has clearly been a pattern in teen-oriented comedies and horror movies over the last thirty years. This movie at least seems to be aware of it's own absurd contradictions.
This is not only one of the rare sex comedies that is actually both funny and sexy, but it also adds a strong dose of black comedy into the mix. And the whole thing works wonderfully. Highly recommended.
OK, maybe I shouldn't enjoy a film that spends so much time looking up the skirts of teenage girls, or showing them in nude clinches with Rock Hudson (who plays a VERY progressive guidance counselor and popular football coach), or lying face down dead with a note pinned to the back of their underwear. But only in the early 1970's could a film this completely irresponsible be made, let alone attract such an all-star cast. Not only that, but this film is historically significant in that it is the "missing link" between all the later teen sex comedies where an awkward male virgin (here given the perfect name, "Ponce de Leon")loses his virginity to an older woman, and the teen slasher films where slutty teenage girls pay for their promiscuity with their lives. Of course, this is horribly sexist and hypocritical, but it has clearly been a pattern in teen-oriented comedies and horror movies over the last thirty years. This movie at least seems to be aware of it's own absurd contradictions.
This is not only one of the rare sex comedies that is actually both funny and sexy, but it also adds a strong dose of black comedy into the mix. And the whole thing works wonderfully. Highly recommended.