By Don L. Stradley
My heart raced a bit when LaShonda, Cinema Retro’s
inter-office mail carrier, dropped off a new title from Vinegar Syndrome this
morning. Those fellows specialize in long forgotten’70s sleaze, and while most
of their titles should probably remain forgotten, their latest "lost
treasure" was the enticingly titled Game
Show Models. The models, I imagined,
would frolic in bikinis and enjoy a few pillow fights before revealing their
true identities as secret agents, or something along those lines. I thanked
LaShonda, locked the door, and plunked the disc into the machine.
Game
Show Models, to my dismay, isn't even about models.
It's about a young man named Stuart Goober (John Vickory) who left his girlfriend
to pursue his vague dreams of success. She’d
seemed like a decent, free-loving sort, the kind of young woman who paints her
face and dances in the street for money, but Goober has given himself a
five-year plan and time is running out, baby. As written, Goober is one of those Sweet Smell of Success schemers who
wants to scratch his way to the top, but director/writer David Gottlieb cast
Vickory, a soft spoken, Peter Fonda/Michael Sarrazin type. Vickory isn’t fiery
enough to make us believe he gives a damn about making it big. He seems more
like a coffee shop hippie.
Things pick up a bit when the aptly named Goober gets a
job with a Los Angeles public relations agency. The firm’s latest client is
Cici Sheridan (Diane Sommerfield), a young rock & roll singer surrounded by
family members and a stone-faced posse, each determined to protect her from the
dangers of show biz. After quizzing the agency goons on the names of the seven
dwarves from Snow White, Cici
inexplicably falls for Goober. Well, so
much for the models.
One of the original tag-lines for the film read:
'You've seen them give out the prizes on Daytime TV - Now see the Goodies they
give out at Night!' Yet, there's not
much model action here. There is some
nudity and some sex, including the opening scene where a guy makes his model
girlfriend wear a Japanese mask while they make love (similar, incidentally, to
the mask in Kaneto Shindô's Onibaba, a
great 1964 movie you should watch instead of this one). Full disclosure: I'm not a great judge of sex
scenes. Even the best of them look dumb to me. The only sex scene I've ever
really liked was a five-second lesbian scene in The Last Emperor. In that
one, the girls looked like they were having fun, and it didn't go on for so
long that they ran out of ideas. In Game
Show Models, we get a lot of grimacing, and groping, and of course, the Onibaba mask.
By the end, Goober is disillusioned by show business
and seeks out his old girlfriend, the one who danced in the street. Naturally,
she's already shacked up with someone new, but she invites Goober to join in on
one of her interpretive dances. Cue the bittersweet theme music, roll the final
credits, and get us the hell out of here.
Game
Show Models is an uneven mess, but it isn't entirely
without merit. The film has a nice,
‘Vaseline on the lens’ mid-70s look, thanks to cinematographer Alan Capps, and
there’s a lot of great LA scenery. The game show set, loaded with brilliant
pinks and yellows, is a kitschy marvel, as is the PR firm, which is an explosion
of craggy men wearing ugly neckties and gemstone rings the size of dinosaur eggs.
The supporting cast is pretty interesting, too.
Well-known character actors Dick Miller and Sid Melton steal every scene they’re
in. Diane Thomas, who would go on to become a successful screenwriter before
her death in a 1985 car crash, is touching as Josie, Goober’s dancing
girlfriend. LA Times entertainment
editor Charles Champlin has a funny cameo as himself. Meanwhile, Cici's
entourage includes Thelma Houston, whose career had skyrocketed in 1976 with
her Grammy winning recording of ‘Don't Leave Me This Way,’ and Willie Bobo, one
of the top Latin jazz drummer/bandleaders of the era.
Did this colorful cast know what they were signing on
for? Maybe not, for as we learn in the DVD's commentary track, Gottlieb didn't
set out to make a skin flick. He originally intended to make an artsy film
called The Seventh Dwarf about his
own experiences working in a public relations firm. It was Sam Sherman of Independent
International Pictures who suggested Gottlieb add some dirty stuff so he’d
“have something to latch onto.†It was
also Sherman, who’d made a successful career out of producing such exploitation
fare as Blazing Stewardesses (1975),
who suggested the game show angle. Gottlieb, who hadn’t wanted to make an
exploitation film, agreed. It was either
that, or continue lugging around giant film cans and being turned down by
distributors.
Vinegar Syndrome’s 2-disc set features anamorphic
widescreen (1.85:1) transfers of both cuts of the film. The Seventh Dwarf is a bit more dog-eared, and the Dolby Digital
2.0 mono tracks are hissy at times, particularly at the beginning of both discs.
The outtakes (7:56) feature some additional game show footage, some frames from
the opening sex scene, and some unexpectedly overt (not hardcore) moments in the
bedroom scene with Goober and Cici. Gottlieb, evidently, was going for broke in
order to get his film shown. A gallery of stills is also included, plus a
rather tedious conversation between Gottlieb and Vinegar Syndrome’s Joe Rubin. Ultimately,
this film that Vinegar Syndrome is marketing as “a mind bending blend of art
house drama and drive-in sleaze,†is neither artsy enough or sleazy enough. Gottlieb fumbled in trying to serve two
masters.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the film (both versions)
is that Harriet Schock's lovely 'Hollywood Town' serves as the film's
unofficial theme song. Indeed, the song,
which was the title track of Ms. Schock’s 1974 debut album, feels out of place
in the film, like a butterfly landing on a busted open garbage bag. But the song does lend gravitas to the film, and
fits in with the theme of LA being, “where the lost and found come to find
their way.†Schock, who wrote the Helen
Reddy hit, ‘Aint No Way To Treat a Lady,’ and recorded several top selling
albums of her own, told Cinema Retro that she had no idea her song was featured
in Game Show Models.
“Somehow I missed that,†Ms. Schock said. “The publisher probably kept the sync fee and
I simply never knew about it.â€
Since she didn’t mention Game Show Models in her on-line bio, I’d wondered if she distanced
herself from the movie. It turns out she’d never even heard of it.
“Is it porn?†Ms. Schock asked, curious as to how her
song was used. “Should I be worried?â€
I’m sending her my copy.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON