coronaries induced during extreme sexual excite- ment—thus, as one character puts it, “coming and going at the same time.” Total abstinence seems the only defense, and the locals are none too happy about that. There’s something funny, too, about sexy bee researcher Anitra Ford—look at the way she empties 10 packs of sugar into her coffee—but almost too late does government investigator William Smith suspect her of caus- ing all the trouble. In her hexagonal laboratory, she’s been transforming all the women in town into lust-crazed bee girls by covering their nude bodies with thousands of bees. The subjects then take to wearing Foster Grant sunglasses (their eyes tend to turn pitch black) and obsessively mate with any man they can find, causing them to die like drones. Smith is able to blow up the lab and save girlfriend Victoria Vetri from a fate worse than DDT. “But I still don’t understand their motivation,” says puzzled sheriff Cliff Osmond, and the doubletalk explanation he gets proves the filmmakers didn’t understand it either. Even so, the transformation scenes are quite nice, en- hanced hugely by Charles Bernstein’s eerie mu- sic, and the cast is somewhat better than average, with Osmond and Miss Ford registering strongly. Gary Graver’s fuzzy cinematography tends to make the production look tackier than it really is.
1973. Centaur Pictures (A Sequoia Production). Color by CFI. 85 minutes. William Smith. Victoria Vetri, Anitra Ford, Cliff Osmond, Wright King, Ben Hammer. Directed by Denis Sanders.
Though currently out-of-print, this was recently available on VHS from MGM Home Entertainment.
THE POSTGRADUATE
Typical intercourse-illustrated sexploiter will satisfy easily-amused voyeur market. Good B.O. value for appropriate situations. Rated X.
THE POSTGRADUATE, another explicit sex- education foray, takes the format of a professor lecturing a class full of psychotic-looking students on various sex techniques. The coupling is, as usual, absurdly prolonged and as often the real thing as not. The Kariofilms release is par for this genre, which means sweaty amusement for the voyeur market and crawling boredom for anyone else. After the familiar 20m redeeming social value lecture, the professor (John Dugan) shows some dirty slides and the students eye each other hun- grily. Several have fantasies about each other, acted out with much clitoris caressing, penis
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fondling and real and simulated intercourse, over which the professor grumbles about archaic sex laws repressing sexual freedom. The music mix frequently drowns out the ends of such memo- rable comments as “Variety is the spice of love.” Jerky camerawork, bad color and a grade-Z rock score move things along lugubriously. Among the performers are two boys who fornicate under the watchful eye of a Robert Redford wall poster but, surprisingly enough, there’s no lesbianism. A three-couple hippie orgy tops off the prof’s lec- ture, but the film itself concludes with an ersatz short on venereal disease which rather resource- fully blames the rise and spread of syphilis on the Vietnam war. Though mostly padded with home movie shots of people at the beach, it does include some mildly revolting views of infected organs and is a guaranteed turn-off. And thus THE POST- GRADUATE becomes the first sex film equipped with its own built-in chaser to clear the house.
1970. Kariofilms. Inc. (A Haljay Film). Color. 82 minutes. Produced by John Flanders. Directed by Harold Kovner.
film under the full title of POSTGRADUATE COURSE IN SEXUAL LOVE and designates it as a documentary with director Kovner playing “himself.” Evidently, the film underwent a later title change to make it sound less textbookish.
The Internet Movie Database (
www.indb.com) lists this SLEEPER
Futuristic comedy by and with Woody Allen is bright fun to draw and amuse escapist-minded audiences of various stripes. Best in sophisticated and college markets, but entertaining enough to perform nicely most anywhere. Rated PG.
You don’t have to be a Woody Allen devotée
to find SLEEPER lots of fun. This science fiction comedy, the comic’s fourth fling as writer-direc- tor, retains the usual Allen unevenness and the hilarity remains intermittent, but it’s far more successful as a total entity than any of his previ- ous films. There are fewer dead spots than ever and the screenplay (by Allen and Marshall Brickman) is clever enough to maintain a con- sistent level of amusement even when a gag is not working. The Allen fans in sophisticated and collegiate markets will turn out in force and like what they see, while the escapist-minded public in general should find the United Artists release enjoyable enough to recommend to friends. Busi- ness in selective urban and most suburban first runs looks solid.
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