Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971)

Perfect cast and a good story

hyped garbage

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Before dismissing this as a piece of FILTHY, FROGGY, PORNOGRAPHY, we ought to watch it because it's pretty clever. We don't need to call Roger Vadim's direction a reflection of the French New Wave because that was underway a decade earlier. Vadim has his own style. It consists mainly of slapdash plots and lots and lots of female nudity or semi-nudity. It has the usual 1960s social commentary too. A dozen students are milling around the hall just after a murder. "Hold it, Mister. Where do you think YOU'RE going?", says the cop, grabbing the sole black kid by the arm.This has a prominent place, then, in Vadim's ouvre. If it was Brigitte Bardot in 1956, it's Angie Dickinson who is uncovered here. Not all the way, but enough to get the job done. There is also a good deal of teasing from the other female cast members. You have never seen so many upskirt shots.I think I'll mostly skip the plot because it's not worth much effort. Rock Hudson, looking fine, loves his wife and kiddie but can't help banging the high school chicks, all of whom have crushes on him. He strangles them so they don't squeal on him. And -- well, it's not just the students that are overwhelmed by Rock and his pheromones. While discussing someone's problem with Angie Dickinson, he says something like, "I wonder if you could handle what I'm about to throw at you." "Oh, YES," she replies breathlessly.Not that all the jokes are about sex. The first verbal gag is this. Roddy MacDowell, the principal of Oceanfront High School, is having an argument with one of the teachers. A student rushes in and announces that a girl has just been found in the men's room. "See?," says the teacher, "It's just what I was saying about morals." The student says, "No, it's okay. She's dead." I admire Lalo Schifrin's musical score too. We get to hear a little Bach, a Mozart sonata, a coy imitation of Duke Ellington's "Prelude to a Kiss," and the school song of Cornell University. His taste is pretty eclectic.An important point is that this movie really IS influenced by European film making. It's about sex, not violence. Nobody is murdered on screen and there isn't a single drop of blood. Little emphasis is on the mystery, nor need there be. It's more of a slice of time, one of those snapshots in which everybody is standing on his head, a home movie in which the subject makes gargoyle faces at the camera.It occurs to me that if you enjoyed "Lord Love a Duck," you'll probably get a slight charge out of this movie too.

After years of only knowing about this movie, I finally saw it on the Dailymotion site. Since it's directed by Roger Vadim, I wasn't too surprised it showed many teen girls in sexually provocative poses. It's slightly a bit more surprising Gene Roddenberry-the creator of "Star Trek"-was the writer and producer, though the fact his series had plenty of pretty women might have been a sign. Rock Hudson is the school guidance counselor and coach who manages to get many of the female students in his office for recreation. Angie Dickinson is a substitute teacher who gets one unlucky boy-played by John David Carson-in a lucky mode, if you know what I mean. Their scenes are perhaps the funniest in the movie while much of the rest of it is only slightly amusing like principal Roddy McDowell describing one of the dead girls as a "terrific little cheerleader"! Keenan Wynn plays the not-very-bright sheriff and Telly Savalas is the detective who seems to get closer to nabbing the killer. Also of interest is one former "Star Trek" player-James Doohan-is also in this but not in his Scottish accent! I watched with bemusement throughout so on that note, I say Pretty Maids All in a Row is worth a look.

This picture takes the theme of perverted school personnel long before the media began focusing their attention on such people in their never ending attacks on school employees.Correction: Rock Hudson is not a teacher in this film. He is an assistant principal, coach, and guidance counselor all in one. He starts to have relations with some of the female students and murder and mayhem result.Roddy McDowell is the typical figure-head like principal in this mess. His secretary sounds and looks like Betty Boop.Yes, this is 1971 and Angie Dickinson looks more beautiful than ever. Telly Savalas is the chronic smoking detective and Keenan Wynn is a dumb officer who meets a bad fate when he accidentally stumbles on to what Hudson has been doing.The ending is ludicrous but so is the entire film.

This takes place in a school for models...? All the pretty maids in rows, that's for sure! Then there's some big names added to the bill for good measure, and off we go...I didn't exactly know what to expect from 'Pretty Maids...', but in retrospect this just hád to be intended as a sexy, black comedy wherein certain things come full circle. I was waiting for suspenseful scenes and brutal killings, but hardly any of that occurs - not one kill do we see, just bums with notes on them (not bad, I'm not denying). Instead there is Rock Hudson as the school guidance counselor who seduces knockout beautiful girls and has the philosophical bull to back himself up. He even gets the beautiful Angie Dickinson as a teacher to seduce a troubled student who he sees as his successor, in time. Observing and investigating is Telly Savalas as a detective, who seems to knów all, but just doesn't have the proof yet... Will he get it?Okay, so I expected more thriller and drama to go with this, but the fun stuff isn't really that funny and the free spirited statements that might have worked well in those early seventies, are somewhat stale to today's standards. Still, the film is beautifully shot and possesses undeniable charm, not in the least because of pretty maids all in a row.Barely(...) 7 out of 10, but who knows, when I'll have watched this again with fairly adjusted expectations...