WARNING: THIS POST IS GOING TO BE A LITTLE MORE EXPLICIT IN NATURE THAN THESE POSTS NORMALLY ARE, SO THIS IS A WARNING, IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY SUCH FRANK TALK, PLEASE PASS THIS RANT BY AND COME BACK ANOTHER DAY.
No, this is not going to be a Rant against Common Core, nothing like that, nothing like that at all.
Every once in a while, I like to alert those who flock to my daily column about films that are available on YouTube, films that are somewhat off the beaten path of movies ... and movies that are free for the taking at the site.
The latest one that I stumbled on is called "Guess What We Learned In School Today?" a 1970 exploitation film directed by John G. Avildsen, just a few years before he hit gold with "Rocky."
Well, everyone has to start out somewhere, and for Avildsen, this was it.
The film is a mish mosh focusing on the growing sexual freedom that we were "enjoying" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, whether in the bedroom or at the cinema.
It looks at small town America, and how even away from the big cities, things were changing, and changing fast.
It is hard to even describe the plot, because the movie really is a conglomeration of themes, all related to the sexual explosion that was going on at that time.
It focuses on a small town, evidently right outside of New York City, where mores are changing, men are uptight, and women are ready for the plunge, so to speak.
It focuses on sensitivity sessions, men and women with sexual problems, heterosexual and homosexual behavior, and even camps for children, preparing them for the growing sexual awareness that they are too young to understand.
Honestly, I was pretty shocked by what I saw in this film, and I am sure people were just as shocked in 1970 as they might be now, and that is one reason why it pretty much is one of those forgotten films of that period.
And yes, it features nudity galore from both men and women--mainly women, and all the women are pretty, shapely, and well, let's just say they are attractive as all hell, even by today's standards.
I mean, this IS an exploitation film, you know.
There is one absolutely disturbing scene, one that really defies explanation, but I am going to try to do this in a friendly, PG-rated manner.
A woman who has rapidly growing sexual tensions with her husband--he is supposedly impotent--has set up her son to be, well, deflowered by her comely neighbor. The woman crawls into the boy's bed, and does what she is doing, and the mother peeks in to see what is happening, and is getting, well, turned on herself, and then her husband comes to see what all the commotion is about, and the husband and wife, for the first time in ages, well, do the nasty, let's say.
And that is the only way I can describe this scene in all of its repulsiveness.
Yes, the movie pushes the envelope, even for 1970, when movies were becoming much more stark and frank about sexuality, mirroring the times.
And this R-rated movie, which at times is done in documentary style, really pushes that envelope, and I honestly could not believe what I was watching at times.
The film--which, by the way, starred a bunch of nobodies who probably had their careers halted right then and there by being in this film--generally received negative reviews, and faded from memory, only to be resurrected to a certain degree by its placement on YouTube, which doesn't police its postings as much as it says it does, case in point this film.
Did I like the movie? I don't know. I love movies that examine different time periods, provides wus with a window on these times periods--in particular this time period, the late 1960s and early 1970s--and I generally enjoy exploitation films, because they are so totally bizarre.
And yes, this one is just that, totally bizarre.
It is also so "for the times," the late 1960s-the early 1970s, that it gets at least one or two stars from me for being just that, a movie that could not have been made during any era in our history.
So, I would probably give it two and a half stars, a half for the women in the film, who were obviously chosen for their charms.
If you enjoy these types of films, I would look it up on YouTube and give it a try.
What the film does do, and does do pretty successfully, is that it provides a 90-minute glimpse of a world that we are so far removed from that it is hard to believe that we once lived in such a world.
And looking back 46 years since it was made, I guess that is the one, single reason to watch this film.
Things have changed so much since then, but we need to look back on occasion to see where we've been, and "Guess What We Learned In School Today?" allows us to do just that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjji4dAyIFQ
It is difficult to believe that the 1970s offered more explicit sex then is done today
ReplyDeleteI am not talking about an "adult" movie, or a XXX movie here--I am talking about a film that was made for mainstream theaters, and I was kind of shocked by what I saw in this movie, which really straddled the line, a real hard R-rated film that had several scenes, including the one I described, which were kind of shocking, in particular for a movie that could have played at your local cinema during the day.
ReplyDelete