Saw this film on AMC last week and it still holds up. I first saw this film in 1977 as a college student living in a one room apt away from home for the first time, and it had a major impact on me. Diane Keaton made the move from the comedic heroine to the troubled Theresa Dunn, a sensitive, caring teacher by day, looking for love in all the wrong places at night. Her inner turmoil from her childhood disfiguring disease; to the relationship with her hard-nosed, Notre Dame loving, Irish Catholic father; to subsequent lovers is heartbreaking. Her search for the male attention and acceptance that she didn't receive at home is portrayed with honesty and depth by Keaton. Richard Kiley skillfully plays her father, who is of a different generation, where women knew "their place". He would rather turn and look the other way than face some hard family truths. It's evident that Teresa has a love/hate relationship with him when she refuses to accept the nice guy social worker, James, as a suitor mostly because her father admires him. She would rather engage in dead-end conquests than have a committed, romantic, relationship. Tuesday Weld was nominated for a Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as Kathryn, Teresa's high-flying, stewardess sister; who can do no wrong in her father's eyes. Richard Gere's energy is electric and frightening during his scenes with Teresa. He has the raw male sexuality and danger Teresa finds exciting yet she is clearly his intellectual superior. Interesting stuff. Tom Berenger is great as the sociopathic loser, and look for a split-second role for Brian Dennehey as a doctor. This movie can serve as both a cautionary tale and a history lesson....the sexual revolution never seemed so scary.

Starring Diane Keaton in a wild movie of debauchery and rabidness, "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" is certainly no bore of a movie. Directed by the late Richard Brooks, and transferred from a novel this movie moves along and sometimes feels repetitive, probably because the Keaton character keeps looking for the wrong types of men and getting more than she can handle. She is the good girl unfulfilled and always going for the bad-boys. The movie features a jazzy, 70s track and delves into sexual content thoroughly. Richard Gere, is in for a bit in precursor role to his American Gigolo stint a few years later. (spoiler) Without giving too much away, the end certainly surprises, and is as well done as it is disturbing. Totally frenetic and worthy watch - 7/10

Directed by Richard Brooks, "Looking for Mr Goodbar" stars Diane Keaton as Theresa Dunn, a school teacher who seems prim and proper by day, but has clandestine sexual encounters with men by night. Brooks offers a number of trite explanations for Theresa's obsession with sex, but only one is interesting; as she suffered from Polio as a kid, Theresa believes that she is unable to give birth to a healthy child. Denied motherhood, she thus embarks on a kind of hedonistic night-life. When it was released 1977, many viewed "Looking for Mr Goodbar" as a supremely reactionary film. This is a flick about sexually liberated women who turn their backs to Catholic and conservative values, have lots of sex and are then beaten and stabbed to death by men. Gay men, meanwhile, are portrayed as sexually confused brutes who stab women as a means of assuaging their impotency around women. The supposed message: don't sleep around and stay away from crazy gays!Indeed, upon release, a number of Catholic priests praised "Looking For Mr Goodbar" and took out newspaper spreads promoting the film. To believers, "Goodbar" was touted as a "stern warning!" Brooks himself structures the film as a descent into hell, Theresa's basement apartment becoming increasingly dark and dingy as the film progresses. The film then ends with Theresa being killed in the shadows, Brooks focusing on a creepy freeze-frame of her darkness shrouded dead face. It's like an image out of "The Exorcist".But whilst "Goodbar" may be reactionary in some regards, Brooks also complicates things. His male characters are uniformly violent/disgusting and several sequences seem designed to bash conservative America (see Brooks' masterpiece, "Elmer Gantry"). The film seems less like a condemnation of the sexual revolution, than a nihilistic repudiation of everything, including sex; any of the men Theresa encounters could be killers.Elsewhere the film undermines anyone who might embody a traditional normality. University professors cheat on their wives and exploit female students, Theresa's own family unit is fractured, sustained by repressive illusion, and her father is a brute. Meanwhile, the men Theresa sleeps with dance with phallic switchblades or are ignorant of her needs. The film's gay murderer is himself not "crazy because he is gay", but because social forces won't allow him to be gay (he juggles a wife and an offensively portrayed, stereotypical gay lover). Theresa also echoes the gay character in complex ways. She is excluded from a normal life because of a hereditary disease, and is the victim of a society that assigns people fixed roles, imposing on them notions of what a "real man" or "real woman" should be. For Brooks, normality seems like a ideological construct, and violence arises more out of a cultural situation than individual responsibility. Complicating things further, the film's "love scenes" are shot to emphasise Theresa's pleasure and the bars she frequents are positively portrayed, and not hive's of debauchery.Regardless of the film's message, "Looking for Mr Goodbar" is a dull, repetitive film. It features a number of jarring flashback/fantasy sequences, is sensationalistic, flaunts its grime, is overly proud of its sleazier elements and wastes a strong performance by Diane Keaton.6/10 - Worth one viewing.

About half way into the picture, and after seeing Theresa's Janis Joplin poster on the wall enough times, I started wondering to myself, 'Is she going to wind up dead"? That seemed to be the path Diane Keaton's character was on, a descent into a self inflicted depravity that eventually spiraled out of control with her final singles bar encounter. Theresa telegraphs her eventual fate by stating at one point that "I don't believe in a future", as her father (Richard Kiley) rails against her free-wheeling lifestyle. The picture uniquely contrasts Theresa's outwardly responsible life as a teacher of deaf children with her nightly cruising of the bar scene looking for the next more challenging high.With a Seventies backdrop the picture is somewhat dated, though it accurately captures some of the more depressing aspects of the era, the increasing emergence of meaningless relationships, the ease of getting and using social drugs like pot and cocaine, and probably the worst of all, disco music. Very much a downer. I did get a kick though out of the not so subtle reference to Theresa's reading material, a copy of The Godfather, and Richard Gere's response to seeing the movie. Since he mentioned Al Pacino, I wonder why he didn't notice Theresa's striking resemblance to Kay Adams.