Parents are in a wadded-panty uproar over Ms. Barrington (Pamela Rhea) teaching their high schoolers the birds and the bees and the birth control pill in class. Meddling complaints to the pushover principal (Otto Schlessinger, Flesh Feast) force Ms. B to stop dispensing carnal knowledge or face the school board’s wrath.

But if mum’s the word, “mom” will result, Ms. Barrington reasons. Her solution is to hold the S-E-X lectures at her home on Friday nights, as long as the students have parent-signed permission slips. She’s so naive, mass forgery doesn’t even cross her well-intentioned mind.

Meanwhile, good girl Alice Nichols (Kay Ross) is madly in love with a classmate (James Nelson). He’s an upstanding young man, as his sport coat’s professorial elbow patches signal; nonetheless, Alice’s ill-tempered pop (Bill Rogers, Love Goddesses of Blood Island) is like a junkyard dog on 24/7 hymen protection.

Meanwhile meanwhile, ever the hypocrite, Mr. Nichols is having an affair with the trampy single mother (Valedia Hill) of trampy student Randy (Nancy Lee Noble, Loose Shoes). Randy’s secretly stealing her mom’s birth control pills and subbing them with saccharine tablets on the regular. So you know what happens next, right? Pat yourself on the back if you guessed “couch abortion.”

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, a 40-something senior (Roy Collodi, The Gruesome Twosome) is so hormonally supercharged after weeks of absorbing the hot Ms. B’s hot syllabus of hot sex talk, he tries to rape her.

How is Herschell Gordon Lewis’ The Girl, the Body, and the Pill not held in high esteem like his Blood trilogy? Its soapy, dopey mix of teensploitation and sexploitation proves irresistible to me, but I suspect its lack of imagery to trigger an R rating has something to do with that. By this point in his career, Lewis had, for example, removed a woman’s tongue in gory detail. In contrast, this film is as harmless as How to Make a Doll, another Lewis premise that sounds readymade for showing you things you hadn’t seen.

Regardless, this not-bitter Pill does more than its share of onscreen envelope-pushing. Louise Downe’s script is boldly progressive for its time (and, I would argue, today’s regressive times). Consider this a feature-length version of the postwar era’s classroom shorts designed to scare students into abstinence, but without the shock photos of, say, syphilitic genitalia in all their weeping-sore glory. —Rod Lott

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Creeper-peeper boobie movies abound in regional ’60s sinema. Charles Romine’s Behind Locked Doors, however, is unique, if only because the roughie’s villain resembles what would happen if Henry Kissinger crawled into Seth Brundle’s telepod without noticing Isaac Asimov curled up in the window.

The hypothetical result is Mr. Bradley (Daniel Garth), a former mortician turned sex researcher. We’re not talking legit and credentialed like Kinsey or Masters and Johnson, but suspicious and self-studying like that one cousin or uncle your family pretends no longer exists.

We meet the binoculars-equipped Mr. Bradley spying on a barn of hipsters frugging to what sounds like Neal Hefti’s Batman TV theme song. In the hayloft, Mr. Bradley saves the pretty, pert Ann (Eve Reeves) from beatnik rape by whacking the guy with a pitchfork. Ever the gentleman, Bradley even re-hooks her brassiere!

When the party ends, Ann and lesbian co-worker Terry (Joyce Danner) find their convertible mysteriously drained of gasoline. Good thing Mr. Bradley lives nearby so they can stay the night! It’s good only for him, so Ann and Terry can unwillingly participate in his science experiment. It entails being tied to a bed, whipped and subjected to eugenic inquiries such as, “What nationality were your parents?”

Bradley’s unstated hypothesis is if he removes his Hef robe, oils his carpeted chest and Pooh belly, then forces intercourse upon the women … I dunno, they won’t die? And if they do, well, that’s what the basement dungeon is for. There, previous subjects eternally pose topless in unconvincing rigor mortis. Upkeep on their corpses, like daily dusting, falls to the property’s requisite handyman of questionable IQ (Ivan Agar, Shriek of the Mutilated).

With Romine (the Bill Shatner-hosted weirdumentary Mysteries of the Gods) customarily packing in extended sequences of rug-cutting and breast exploration, this horror-tinged Harry Novak production (Hitch Hike to Hell, Rattlers, Kiss Me Quick!, et al.) goes the route of the rote, save for two surprises. One being that, in contrast to the sinister doings, Behind Locked Doors is shot with bright colors; the dungeon is especially vibrant, as if Orgy of the Dead were being shot 10 feet away. The second is Reeves isn’t more voluptuous without clothing. That’s exploitation for you. —Rod Lott

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At 17, the cute and comely village gas station attendant Carol (Janet Lynn, In the Devil’s Garden) is desperate to move to London to parlay her recent beauty contest victory into a modeling career. Her bored friend, the butcher’s assistant Joe (Robin Askwith, Queen Kong) seizes the moment, lies about having a big job lined up there, invites her and off they go!

I forgot to mention Carol’s also an exhibitionist. They fuck on the train.

Livin’ it up in London, they quickly run out of cash and begin to starve — nothing a quick dip into sex work can’t fix! Joe becomes her de facto pimp as “just this once” soon snowballs into a not 100% consensual train ride of another kind: five guys, some with unruly eyebrows thicker than my thumb. Luckily offscreen, the encounter is icky … and then possibly worse when the depressed, defeated Carol makes Joe the caboose after he professes his love to her minutes later. Dude, read the room.

As odd as this sounds — and as nude as Lynn often is — the sexploitation aspect of Pete Walker’s film seemed secondary to me. I got really invested in these two crazy kids. Both are likable, even with every stupid step they take.

Cool It Carol! captures Askwith just before he became a huge UK box-office draw with the four-flick Confessions series of sex comedies. This is the first time I’ve seen him in action. I was prepared to hate him based on his atrocious haircut alone, but I gotta admit, he had something. His face suggests Mick Jagger shagged Matt Damon. No telling from whom he inherited the hairy ass. —Rod Lott

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With Tales of a Salesman, we have a piece of unheralded cinema history: The lone movie shot in “Nudavision” and “Lusticolor.” To clear up any potential confusion, those labels just mean one thing: lotsa tits.

This nudie cutie follows Herman’s first day on the job as a door-to-door toilet brush salesman. Luckily, the milquetoast nerd gains unexpected help from a poltergeist who helps such paid-on-commission vendors. That’s both awfully specific and uncharacteristically kind for the spirit world. All this means is the poltergeist (read: the camera) sneaks peeks at the nekkid housewives on the block and makes horndog comments (via a wisely uncredited narrator).

So while Herman (David C. Reed, What’s Up Front) engages in tired pratfalls outside, the poltergeist scopes out a bare-breasted blonde struggling to move a couch, a skinny-dipping brunette, a sunbathing redhead and a brunette baking in her birthday suit. Then Herman, goaded by his supernatural guide, calls upon each woman and sells absolutely zip, due to mishaps like vacuuming a towel off a would-be client’s body or squirting cream on another’s face.

Finally, in a surreal dream sequence that shows no glimpse of the greatness in cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond’s near future (aka winning an Oscar for Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Herman goes on trial for all these misdeeds. As punishment for one guilty verdict, the ladies (all topless, of course) inflate him like a bowtied, horn-rimmed Violet Beauregarde.

But did I mention there’s a poltergeist? Stupidity, inanity, nudity: They’rrrrre herrrrre … —Rod Lott

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As box-office returns for The Housemaid demonstrate, America is horny again! Whatever the reason for the erotic thriller’s comeback, if more turn out neither erotic nor thrilling like Bight, that resurgence could quickly go flaccid.  

Following a miscarriage (of fetus, not justice), Atticus and Charlie are in a rut. Played by Cameron Cowperthwaite and Maiara Walsh, both likable, the spouses hope for a distraction at a party thrown by their couple friends, Sebastian (Mark Hapka) and Naomi (Maya Stojan). Tension follows Charlie and Atticus through the door, because last time they were all together, things got weird. Meaning, they shared a foursome. 

There’s no party — ’tis all a ruse by Sebastian, a pompous art photographer, to coerce his emotionally fragile pals into posing nude for his latest work. This involves — after a round of drugged tea, of course — Atticus and Charlie facing one another and tightly bound in red ropes while Naomi flings paint on their bodies and Sebastian shouts orders (in a manner not unlike the photoshoot scene in Austin Powers: “Burrow! Burrow! Make an interconnected series of tunnels like the Viet Cong!”). 

Until its tail end, Bight is a movie of conversation over action, and such talks are often interminable. Each character says a lot without saying anything of consequence, e.g., “Apologies aren’t weak. What’s weak are the people who don’t say them.” Arguably worse, they speak as if their lines require delivery with a degree of reverence, as if orating Shakespearean monologues onstage at the Globe. You be the judge:

Atticus: “I didn’t know there were rules to exploring, but that first one sounds made up.”
Sebastian: “Well, all rules are made up.” 
Naomi: “We’re the ones that give them power, but fear not. Rules, whether they’re made up or not … are there for a reason.” 

In addition to writing the screenplay with onscreen hub Cowperthwaite (Bury the Bride), Ms. Walsh (Mean Girls 2) calls the shots helming her first feature. She makes Bight look good — even great at times. The problem remains their script. In addition to aforementioned deficiencies, it’s not even clear why the characters get so worked up (not sexually speaking) over certain situations or how they choose to react.

Bight’s most appealing parts are the opening and closing credits, credited to one “Yori X,” who executes both in the style of 007’s celebrated title sequences. But with sex ropes. —Rod Lott

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