1971 movie
Rating: 13/20
Plot: A possibly perverse serial killer is on the loose at a high school while an awkward kid does what he can to lose his virginity.
This strange little movie ended up on Quentin Tarantino's list of the top-ten films ever made a few years ago, and with a lack of style and a dull score, it's hard to imagine why. It's got this subversive quality that is nearly interesting with these concurrent stories of a violent lothario and a perpetually-bonered virgin. Their narratives criss-cross in ways that might have more meaning that I was able to discover. I'm not sure what Roger Vadim has to say about the sexual revolution or whatever it's trying to say something about, but it's clear that it's saying something, so this one is probably on me.
If this excels at all, it does it in a few performances. The fetching Angie Dickinson brings this mystery to her character that I thought was intriguing. Rock Hudson plays the manliest of men as he woos teen girls, shows off his sense of balance, walks on his hands, and sports a mustache. And Telly Savalas reminds everybody about how cool bald men are as the detective trying to catch the murderer. Along with John David Carson who plays the wonderfully named Ponce de Leon Harper, they're almost stock characters, but they've all got these shades of strangeness that make them slightly off.
Maybe Tarantino likes this movie because it's a movie about sex and violence without really showing any sex or violence. Anyway, I didn't like it as much as him.
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