Great Moments in Movie Staches

Give it up for Rock Hudson serving hard 70s porn coach in Roger Vadim's exceptionally bizarre 1971 movie Pretty Maids All in a Row. Anybody seen this? For some reason its name crossed my social-media a couple of times recently which i took as a sign to watch it. So I did that last night and, uhh -- what the fuck was that? It's basically Porky's as a giallo film... or perhaps a giallo film as Porky's is more apt. It's a broad sexploitation comedy where the high school teachers are fucking and murdering their students. Before you run out thinking, as I did, "Oh my god I have to see this!" please know it's not a "good" movie. For all the WTF-ery going down it's somehow still plodding and pointless and mean. It's 1971 so of course it's profoundly misogynistic but even so, having that expectation going in, it manages to seem extra gross. Angie Dickinson plays a teacher opposite Rock and you can tell she was just bone-deep exhausted having to play this role, which demands she be dumber than hair. 

There's a proto-Heathers thing going on -- the movie's one great joke is about the school having a "moment of silence" for the murdered cheerleaders during the big game -- but I think that might be the only time it actually wrung a laugh from me. Probably the most fascinating thing is watching the closet-case Hudson get his Psycho moment, turning a big campus hetero-stud into a figure of menace. But to be honest the movie doesn't seem terribly interested in making his character legitimately scary -- you basically get the feeling that the movie's still on his side after it reveals he's the killer very early on, and that those sluts and bimbos really had it coming. And remember, do keep in mind -- this is all (in theory) being played for wacky laughs! Laughs that never land. Still (in theory) it's interesting, and we do get to see big strapping Rock Hudson walking through a locker-room full of stripping football players, and it co-stars Telly Savalas AND Roddy McDowell, and the movie is deeply obsessed with the unrelenting boner of its main character, who for some insane reason is named "Ponce de Leon Harper" (played by the unconventionally adorable John David Carson). If you're ready to be offended and bored by a nevertheless fascinating mess I suppose I recommend this. But also I warned you.