Everybody’s got the hots for nightclub D.J. Juliet Prowse* in this low-rent indie so eager to titillate it teeters on camp. Just don’t get your hopes up, implied masturbation is about as far as you could go in ‘65. Dance crazes fill the gap: the Frug, the Pony, the Watusi (what, no The Locomotion?). All because Prowse got the heebie-jeebies after a few ‘ghost’ phone calls. Or was that faint heavy breathing at the other end of the line? Comedian Jan Murray has a rare dramatic turn as a detective who seems a bit too interested in this victim. Sympathetic club owner Elaine Stritch is way too sympathetic . . . if you get my drift. So when doe-eyed club go-fer Sal Mineo shows up at her public swimming pool (fit as a freestyle gymnast), Prowse is open for a friendly relationship . . . just not the kind he wants. Yikes! How many hands does a girl have to fight off in this town? Occasional feature film director Joseph Cates captures some of the rapid decline in ‘Fun City’ Manhattan thru mindless club life and dank under-lit street corners (kudos to D.P. Joseph Brun), but he’s all thumbs on plot mechanics and suspense in what is essentially a prurient stalker pic. Unique for the time, which helps explain its current cult following.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: 1965's indie New York film scene wasn’t only sleazy drama. See the sit-com stylings of A THOUSAND CLOWNS, bringing similar visual æsthetics to cozy/acerbic family dramedy in an era when sincerity was tabulated by the level of visible grain on your film stock. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/02/thousand-clowns-1965.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *After debuting with a featured dance role in CAN-CAN/’60, Prowse next co-starred with Elvis Presley in G.I. BLUES the same year. All downhill from there.
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