PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW (1971) (***)

There are so many elements of this film that make it cult. It's a high school sex comedy that is pitch black. The director is BARBARELLA auteur Roger Vadim and the writer/producer is STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry. The star is Rock Hudson as the football coach who beds his underage female students on a daily basis. Come on you can't write irony better than that.

Hudson is Tiger McDrew, a local hero who just has women fawning over him when he walks into a room. In between sleeping with every hot girl in the school and spending time with his wife (Barbara Leigh, JUNIOR BONNER) and daughter, he takes forever-young football team manager Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson, THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN) under his wing. The boy has a problem; he has a constant erection. Especially in the class of new teacher Miss Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson, RIO BRAVO). So all Tiger needs to do to get the older woman to teach Ponce the sexual ropes is to ask. Oh yeah, the pretty co-heads are turning up dead.

When Capt. Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas, TV's KOJAK) and his partner Follo (James Doohan, STAR TREK) show up, they seem more interested in meeting the school's star coach than catching the murderer. Principal Proffer (Roddy McDowall, PLANET OF THE APES) seems completely bewildered by the whole tragedy. So many of girls end up dead, they have a group funeral... fitted in before the big game. The first murdered girl is simply described as a "good little cheerleader."

PRETTY MAIDS is a time capsule of its era. It's inconceivable to think of the same film being made at a major studio today. It's curious that the statutory rape is more of the problem than the murders. Vadim shamelessly ogles sixteen and seventeen year olds with an opening montage of breasts and up-skirt shots. And every pretty maid with a line shows her breasts or more at some point of another. There is nothing subtle about any of it.

The film works best when it's tone is skewed. A great example of this is when Ponce runs to tell he's found a girl in the boy's bathroom. The secretary gasps with the sexual implications and he responds, "It's okay, she's dead." Depending on how you want to look at it, Tiger's disposal of woman after woman and his easy control over them can be either viewed as sexist or a cheeky satirical poke at the cliché jock stud. With every character in the film a cardboard cutout of stereotypes, I really think the latter is a stronger read of the material. In the end, is the portrayal of the men any more positive than the women? The men are predators of one kind or another and the women are prey. And the flippant attitude toward the prey that ends up dead seems a dark poke at male hero worship.

The film looses some steam as Tiger's conquest numbers start to get racked up. If you've seen him seduce one girl you've seen him seduce them all. But there is one thoughtful moment when Tiger seducing a girl in his car is crosscut with Miss Smith seducing Ponce. Tiger is bold and forceful, while Smith is sexy and sensual. It's moments like this that help alleviate the uncomfortable feelings of the underage seductions. It certainly came from a more open culture. The campy humor and dark satirical jabs make this film more than a T&A exercise. But there is a lot of T&A if that's your thing.