Director: Robert Vincent O’Neil
Cast: Cliff Gorman, Susan Tyrell, Dick Shawn, Donna Wilkes
Have I Seen it Before: Never. Before the all-night filmfest that had this as second batter (behind MaXXXine (2024)), I had never even heard of the film. Not to knock the lineup of that night, but I had the hardest time remembering the movies that were on the list, which really couldn’t be a great sign. Long story short, I had a hard time admitting I had heard of the film right up until the moment it actually started.
Did I Like It: God help me I enjoyed this film a whole lot. I enjoyed it certainly more than I might have thought I would have enjoyed a film about a straight-A teenager who moonlights as a prostitute in order to afford the private school that will get her off of Hollywood Boulevard.
This is an exploitation movie through and through. A scene involving the killer (John Diehl) and a raw egg goes on for long enough that you’re laughing uncontrollably at the end, but I’m also wondering if Stallone suffers from a lack of ambition when he was playing Rocky Balboa.
The film rises above its trappings by making us care about the characters immensely. We have wall-to-wall eclectic characters including a Chaplin-esque Yo-Yo performer (Steven M. Porter), a drag performer with an acid tongue and a heart of gold (Dick Shawn, stealing every scene), and a man who might be senile, but might actually be a cowboy movie star long past his prime (Rory Calhoun). No spoilers, but: When one character eventually dies at the hands of the killer, it is impossible not to feel sad. The crowd I saw it with voiced their objection. When another character nearly dies but survives at least long enough to bring the killer to his appropriate fate, we all cheered. That’s all you need out of a movie whether or not there’s a child prostitute in it.
You want to know how much I enjoyed the movie? The distributor of the remastered blu-ray had a shop set up in the lobby of Circle, and I immediately bought a copy. There are two more films in the series? I’ll probably end up watching those, too.
That was not how I thought the evening would end.