Pretty Maids All in a Row Blu-ray Review: Exploitation with a Social Conscience

From a certain angle, it seems absolutely bonkers that a film starring Rock Hudson, Telly Savalas, Angie Dickinson, and Roddy McDowall, written by Gene Roddenberry, and directed by Roger Vadim could be this skeezy. But then, when you think about it, Roger Vadim is most known for …And God Created Woman, in which he made his then wife Brigitte Bardot a sex kitten, and Barbarella, in which he turned his then wife Jane Fonda into a sexy sci-fi goddess. Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, a series that is nothing if not horny. Telly Savalas and Angie Dickinson are no strangers to B-movies that border on exploitation flicks. So yeah, when you think about it, this kind of sleaze from them is not that strange.

When you add in that this film was made in 1971, a time when Hollywood was starting to push the boundaries of what could be shown on screen, it all makes sense. The Production Code had died just a few years prior, bringing in the era of the rating system, when a film could be rated R, allowing it to show sex and violence only appropriate for adult audiences. Deep Throat would be released the following year, making actual porn chic for a time. This film is very much a part of its era.

It is a very sleazy film and hard to take at times. But it is also so goofy that a lot of its sleaze just slides right off. It helps that it has a satirical edge, making you realize the film isn’t really condoning its more awful acts.

It opens with nerdy, high-school student Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson) walking to school. He can hardly stand up straight for all the beautiful women nearly surrounding him from every angle. The camera is full of his gaze, zooming in on the women’s bodies in their tight jeans, tight shirts, and short skirts. Then we meet Michael McDrew (Rock Hudson), a man so handsome, so strong, so virile, everyone calls him “Tiger.” He is the vice-principal, an English teacher, the school counselor, and most importantly, the football coach. He’s also sleeping with practically every girl in the school.

When Harper comes to Tiger with a sexual problem, Tiger misunderstands, thinking he’s impotent (when in fact his problem is that he’s constantly getting an erection). Tiger instructs the new substitute teacher, Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson), to help Harper out. She shouldn’t sleep with him because that would be inappropriate, but maybe she could get him to relax or something. She invites him to her house and thinks she’s worked a minor miracle because he gets an erection pretty quickly (because she’s played by Angie Dickinson and she’s wearing a tight shirt). Naturally, she’ll sleep with him before the film’s over because a sleazy film does what a sleazy film does.

But first, Harper will discover a dead cheerleader in the bathroom. She’s bent over the toilet with a note attached to her bottom saying “So Long, Honey.” Harper runs to get Principal Proffer (Roddy McDowall), who brings half the student body with him, trampling all over any evidence. He seems more concerned with the fact that this means they are down one cheerleader and what it will do to this week’s game than with a student having been murdered. Police Chief John Poldaski (Keenan Wynn) doesn’t seem all that concerned either; he spends most of his time talking about football. Through the chaos, the only one actually interested in preserving the crime scene is Harper. Eventually, State Police Captain Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas) will arrive, and he actually seems to know what he’s doing.

A couple of other girls will get murdered. All of them have similar notes written on them. All of them call the girls “Honey.” Surcher will find some letters written to one of the girls, where the writer used the word “Honey” a lot. He figures he’s got his man. The trouble is the writer of those letters was an African American, and this is the 1970s, he doesn’t want to come off as another racist cop. That feels like a very Gene Roddenberry moment. There are quite a few bits in the film like that. Scenes that feel somewhat modern in their takes on racism and policing. It satirizes how small towns are more concerned with the football team winning than with the actual well-being of their students. But then a girl will take her clothes off and leave Coach Tiger a sexy note. It’s exploitation with a social conscience.

The film never takes itself too seriously. Like I say, it is too goofy for me to get mad. It finds a strange balance between utterly inappropriate and actually quite entertaining.

Warner Archive presents Pretty Maids All in a Row with a new 4K restoration from the original camera negative. The only extra is the film’s trailer. I wish they’d added in a commentary track or perhaps just some interviews that unpacked all that the film is doing and how it fits into its particular time frame in Hollywood history. The film deserves some academic treatment that can parse out the exploitation elements from the satire. But for now, we’ve got the film looking as pristine as it has since it was released, and that’s a good thing.