Score (1973)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I have watched lot of 70's films of late and have enjoyed European titles across a number of genres. This film however was a great disappointment on many levels. The acting was laughable. The script was even worse. Not only was this trash but it was dated trash. The "sex" scenes contained lots of writhing and moaning but were just about as un-erotic as you could possible imagine. The gay characters dressed as a sailor and a cowboy and I hooted out load at times!! Dialogue was full of clangers and frankly boring, if not worse. Please do not waste your time or money with this film unless you want to see just how bad a bad film can get. Put it like this I would rather watch an episode on "On The Buses". That's how awful "Score" is.

Predatory seductress Elvira (an excellent performance by the stunning Claire Wilbur) and her equally calculating photographer husband Jack (smoothly played by the handsome Gerald Grant) are an extremely liberated and uninhibited swinging couple who make a bet with themselves that they can seduce sweet and naive newlywed Betsy (a fine and appealing portrayal by the adorable Lynn Lowry) and her boyish ecologist spouse Eddie (a likable turn by strapping blonde hunk Calvin Culver) during a week-end get together at their luxury Riviera villa. Director Radley Metzger and writer Jerry Douglas expertly craft a sharp, witty, and utterly intoxicating tale that frankly addresses such bold adult topics as role playing, bisexuality, and open relationships with an admirable elegance and intelligence which lifts this film well above the level of your garden variety smutty skin flick. Moreover, Metzger astutely nails the blithely carefree try anything sexual experimentalism of the 70's and masterfully creates a deliriously erotic atmosphere that's both enticing and arousing in equal measure. The sensual set pieces are smoking hot stuff; the lengthy and strenuous lesbian session between Betsy and Elvira in particular delivers one hell of a scorching punch. Wilbur, Grant, and Lowry all do sterling work in their roles while Carl Parker ably acquits himself in a supporting part as cocky macho telephone repairman Mike. Frano Vodopivec's sumptuous cinematography makes the most out of the gorgeous seaside Croatian locations. Robert Cornford's jaunty and jazzy score hits the tuneful spot. Highly recommended.

Being a woman, it's hard to find erotic entertainment that doesn't insult my gender or rely on the simple tastes of men (sorry guys, you know it's true). It's also very hard to find erotica where women come out on top, much less their needs even acknowledged. While het-porn is happy to explore girl-on-girl as long as she ends up with a dude at the end, god forbid there's guy-on-guy action for the rest of us to watch. Happily, Metzger is the exception: always presenting strong beautiful women, and adding style and substance along with the erotic bits. And in "Score" he evens the score (pardon the pun) by including vulnerable males, bisexuality, and more.If you're reading this you're probably already a Radley Metzger fan or fell in love with his glossy erotic dramas like "Camille 2000" or "Carmen, Baby" and are looking for similar, but "Score" marks a turning point in Metzger's career from romantic tragedies to a full-on nudie comedy. It's still obviously a Metzger film, set in some unspecified Euro rental, with attractive people and another groovalicious soundtrack, but in "Score" the budget seems to have plummeted. Little or no time is wasted on rehearsing the actors, or dressing the sets with Metzger's signature mod furniture. The overall feeling is chintzy compared to his earlier efforts. The actors spend as much time naked as clothed -- it's not as explicit as today's porn, but it's clear that Metzger has abandoned his high concept orgies and classic 19th-century novels for full frontal nudity and frank sex talk.But I'm not knocking "Score", it is a sparkling example of campy 70's porn. Compared with the icy "Camille 2000" or the pretentious "Lickerish Quartet", "Score" is a tongue-in-cheek party film! I watched it with my favorite gay and we howled with laughter-- more often WITH it than AT it. The hokey dialog is deliberate, and the conversations so over the top it almost lampoons adult movies. I've fantasized more than once about turning the script into an off-off-Broadway play....THE PLOT: A married couple (Elvira and Jack) scoff at middle class morality, but she's become bored with the kind of easy swingers who've answered their ads in sex magazines. Seeking a challenge Elvira invites unsuspecting vanilla newlyweds over for dinner, drugs, and seduction (not necessarily in that order). As the young couple proves hard to crack due to a smorgasbord of immature sexual disorders, Jack bets that he can score before she does. Think "Lickerish Quartet" meets "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" with the script from "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and you start to get the idea. It's extremely campy, and refreshingly unrepentant. The sex is only simulated, but kinky and fetishistic, and it does not embarrass by being overly graphic or banal. The actors are reflected in sheets of mylar and other psychedelic touches (although Metzger has done better), and the editing inter-cuts between men's and women's bodies mirroring at times their positions and movements. There is a lot of nudity but it is never clinical. Metzger gets creative in the men's sex scenes: an undone belt is grasped as if it were an erection, and other phallus-shaped objects stand in for oral (including an amyl nitrate cartridge -- ooh, it's SO decedent!). Metzger attempts to keep even the straightest guys aroused during the guy- on-guy action with lots of abstract tension and no scary erect penises, meanwhile the women play complex top/bottom roles exchanging rapid fire dialog that draws you into their psychological games.If you have friends who consider themselves the decedent type who might throw on a porno for laughs, try sneaking this one on them as a campy swingers movie and see who you can turn bi. Or make it into a drinking game (everytime they take a drink or smoke a joint in the movie, you do too! har har.) I give it 7 out of 10 stars: although the production is sad compared to earlier Metzger films, the result is a Trojan horse of a too clever script disguised as a trash-fest. "Score" makes you laugh and holds your attention, delving gleefully into taboos, drugs, and nudity that no "legit" movie could touch.

SCORE Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound format: MonoA sexually liberated couple (Claire Wilbur and Gerald Grant) set out to seduce a young newlywed couple (Lynn Lowry and Calvin Culver).Having explored familiar heterosexual obsessions in well-regarded softcore dramas like CAMILLE 2000 (1969) and THE LICKERISH QUARTET (1969), director Radley Metzger upped the sexual ante with SCORE, a good-natured bisexual romp which crosses the boundary into hardcore territory popularized in US theaters by the likes of DEEP THROAT and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES (both 1972). Based on a play by screenwriter Jerry Douglas, SCORE pits a couple of worldly, uninhibited predators against naive, conservative-minded 'virgins' during a weekend get-together at Wilbur and Grant's luxury Riviera villa. Having plied the hapless duo with drink and soft drugs ("I'm not a very good junkie!" Lowry complains) and dressed them in costumes which tally with their sexual fantasies (cowboy, nun, sailor, etc.), Wilbur and Lowry pair off for a lesbian encounter, while Grant and Culver descend into the basement bedroom for a full-blown gay seduction.Artfully photographed by Metzger himself and veteran cinematographer Franjo Vodopivec on location in Yugosalvia, and framed as an adult fairy tale (the delightful opening narration locates the action "...in the lush little land of Plenty, in the enviable state of Affluence... deep within the Erogenous Zone"!), the movie is distinguished by clever dialogue which removes outmoded notions of sexual parameters from the outset. When asked how she differentiated between sexes during the orgies she's attended in the past, Wilbur replies: "First you don't know, then you can't tell, then you don't care!" The plot is wafer-thin, and the acting is merely OK (the women fare best in this regard), but Douglas' script - played out for the most part in a single interior set, with only a handful of outdoor sequences - allows Metzger to build slowly and surely to the climactic double seduction, using reflective surfaces (amongst other devices) to convey sexual dualities within the characters. Viewers hoping for a non-stop flesh-fest may be irritated by the long narrative preamble (punctuated by Wilbur's rough-house tumble with studly repairman Carl Parker), but there's still plenty of uncompromising nudity, and the film manages to stimulate the brain whilst simultaneously tickling your, er... fancy. Great music, too, including an ultra-groovy (and uncredited) theme song! The film exists in two separate versions: Metzger is said to prefer the softcore edition (85m), but the all-important sex scenes are seriously compromised by jarring edits and obvious gaps in the soundtrack. Try to see the full-on hardcore print (92m), which includes rather more graphic detail during the gay sex scenes.'Calvin Culver' is actually gay porn performer Casey Donovan, star of groundbreaking titles like BOYS IN THE SAND (1971) and THE OTHER SIDE OF ASPEN (1978), though he later re-teamed with Metzger for the director's hetero masterpiece THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN (1976). Co-star Grant only appeared in two other films - Metzger's NAKED CAME THE STRANGER (1975) and Umberto Lenzi's EATEN ALIVE! (1980) - and it's sad to report that both he and Donovan have since passed away. Wilbur featured in the original stage version of SCORE, but her only other screen acting credit appears to be TEENAGE HITCH-HIKERS (1974), while the beautiful Lowry has since pursued a career in mainstream movies, including THE CRAZIES (1973), SHIVERS (1975) and CAT PEOPLE (1982). Writer Jerry Douglas adopted the pseudonym 'Doug Richards' and made a name for himself in gay porn, writing and directing a number of celebrated productions, including THE BACK ROW (1973), BOTH WAYS (1976) and MORE OF A MAN (1991), the latter featuring Joey Stefano and Chi Chi LaRue, while SCORE's production manager Branko Lustig has since become a major Hollywood producer, with titles like SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) and GLADIATOR (2000) to his credit!