By Richard Winters
My Rating: 0 out of 10
4-Word Review: Having a father fixation.
January (Deborah Raffin) is the college-aged daughter of wealthy Hollywood producer Mike (Kirk Douglas) who spent time recovering from a motorcycle accident in Europe and now returns to the states excited to see her father of which she adores immensely. Unfortunately things have changed since she’s been gone. Mike no longer has the clout, or capital that he once did and now can’t get any of his projects off-the-ground. He’s married rich socialite Deidre (Alexis Smith) simply as a way to get his hands on some money as he no longer has any of his own, but she’s more into her lesbian affair that she’s having with Karla (Melina Mercouri). Feeling dejected at how things have turned-out January falls into the arms of Tom (David Janssen) an alcoholic semi-successful novelist who suffers from impotency. When Mike learns of this relationship he becomes enraged as Tom has long been one of his biggest adversaries and so he goes to the apartment where the two are staying determined to have it out with the both of them.
The film is based off of the final novel written by Jacqueline Susann who became famous for having penned the popular Valley of the Dolls 7 years earlier. This book, like her two other ones, shot-up immediately to the top of the Best Seller’s list and she became the first author to ever have her first three novels achieve this, but her ability to savor her success was short-lived as she was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the book went to press and she never lived to see it made into a movie.
The book, like her other ones, was widely panned by the critics, but this movie here does it no justice. When compared to Valley of the Dolls this thing has absolutely no zing and nothing that’s truly salacious or tawdry, which were the main elements that gravitated folks to read Susann’s books in the first place. The only ‘shocking’ moment comes during the lesbian segment, which was considered ‘pushing-the-envelope’ at the time, which shows two older actresses kissing each other on the lips, which by today’s standards will be seen as quite trite and forgettable. The other potentially spicy moments never come to play and it ends flatly making you wonder what were they thinking when they made it.
Raffin, a former model, is quite beautiful and the best thing in it, but her character is too innocent to be believed. She’s a virgin despite being raised in the fast lane of Hollywood, which seemed hard to believe. Supposedly this is because she’s so infatuated with her father she’s subconsciously ‘saving herself’ for him, but a person could have sex outside of a romantic context and I’d think since most of her other friends would’ve have likely done it she’d be at least curious enough to try it out. The same goes for her inexperience with drugs, alcohol, or even dealing with womanizing men such as George Hamilton’s character who fills her glass to the brim with brandy and when she asks why he says so he can ‘get her drunk, so she’ll lose her inhibitions’ and she’s shocked to hear this, but any young women living in L.A. during the swinging 70’s should conditioned and prepared to this age-old ploy and having her so taken aback by it makes her too painfully naive to be believable. Instead of being a producer’s daughter she seems more like some nun snatched from a convent she’s been living in her whole life and completely out of whack with her surroundings.
Douglas is a complete bore and I can only imagine he took the role simply because he was on a career decline and needed the work, but despite being center stage during the first half, his character slowly fades out and is completely forgotten by the end. Alexis Smith, whose acting work had also been in a downward spiral, this was her first movie role in 16 years, and was only given the part because Lana Turner, who was the producer’s first choice, turned it down as she objected to having to do the lesbian kissing scene, is sufficiently bitchy, but overall wasted.
Brenda Vaccaro won accolades for her performance and was even nominated for the Supporting Oscar for her work, but I was a bit surprised. I’ve always found her an impressive actress, but playing some jaded California gal that likes to openly sleep around isn’t that interesting and her character lacked depth. The part where she tries to quickly clean-up her cluttered bedroom before letting a new man into it was kind of amusing, but otherwise her presence, like all the others, was quite tepid. I did though enjoy Hamilton, this marked his last serious role before he then began to venture into comedy, not so much for his acting, but more because I felt this role most closely resembled his true personality. Janssen has some potential as this brash, abrasive guy, but then having his lifelong impotency suddenly and magically ‘cured’ after seeing Raffin nude in the shower is just downright laughable.
Spoiler Alert!
The biggest letdown is the unexciting ending. In the book January gets into acid and then partakes in a sex orgy only to eventually walk into the ocean and drown after seeing a vision of her dead father. The movie though, in an attempt to be ‘hopeful’, doesn’t show any of this. It just has her walking around the city in a daze and that’s it. A movie like this needs, especially with this type of soap opera material, some sort of salacious pay-off and seeing a once innocent, naive girl in an acid driven orgy would’ve been just the ticket, so for the filmmakers not to give the viewer even that much makes this whole vapid thing pathetic beyond belief.
My Rating: 0 out of 10
Released: June 20, 1975
Runtime: 2 Hours 1 Minute
Rated R
Director: Guy Green
Studio: Paramount
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 