Roger Vadium, the man who wrote the screen play Barbarella, Queen of The Galaxy which made campy soft porn a shameful delight directs this one for MGM with a bigger budget than the Jane Fonda affair. The surprise is the script from Francis Pollini's novel has a screen play here written by Gene Roddenberry who is much better known for Star Trek than for this film. Vadium is a more of a sort of cult figure in the US and did a few films in his native France. Still he is the right choice to direct this soft porn movie.Rock Hudson plays Tiger, a high school Football Coach and Guidance Counselor who is really a modern Casanova. Pretty young maids are always winding up naked in his office for after school activities after football practice. John David Carson( who much later has a role in Julia Roberts Pretty Woman),plays Ponce, a young man who sees all these attractive women around him in high school and is having trouble controlling himself. As a football assistant, Ponce gets befriended by Tiger who finds out about this problem.Ponce's biggest problem begins in class when a substitute teacher, Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson), shows up one day and drives his youthful urges crazy. He tells Tiger about this and Tiger has a few meetings with Miss Smith and sets her up to be Ponce's first conquest. While all this is going on, there is a problem with young girls showing up dead at the school. Ponce finds the first one with a note attached to her butt in the boys room at school, dead. Surcher (Telly Savalas aka. Kojak) shows up at school to investigate the murder. He suspects something is going on with Tiger, but can not prove anything (this is in the days before modern DNA evidence). Tiger's motive to kill the pretty young maids is that after seducing them is that they all threaten to tell his beautiful wife they want her man. Roddy McDowall is Proffer, a principal who expresses sadness about the first murder because she was a "good little cheerleader."The real subplot here is soft porn. Sometimes referred to as T&A, this film is more about the "A" as Vadium manages to get plenty of them in the film from the very first scene. There is some topless stuff too but the most shots are below the waist with all the women clad in miniskirt's. This does tie with the original Star Trek as a lot of mini-skirts dominated that series, though 1971 is more than 3 years after that mission ended.There are some ironic scenes in this with Coach Tiger (Hudson) looking very much at home in the teams locker room with sweaty young men. Vadium almost certainly as a Hollywood Insider, knew by then about Hudson as even the times with Tiger and Ponce together almost reflect another relationship though not according to this script.Spoiler- when the movie ends, with the death of Tiger, there appears to Surcher whose vain pursuit of Tiger appears to have ended, a chance that Tiger is not dead, and went to Brazil. Meanwhile, Ponce has assumed Tiger's role as the ladies man with young ladies as Miss Smith has moved on to a man her own age. This film is really quite short and an oddity in the writing and casting.One of Roddenberry's daughters, Dawn, is one of the pretty maids in this, her only role outside of being a little blonde girl on Star Trek in 1966. James Doohan (Scotty) is Follo, working with Surcher trying to solve a string that goes to 3 young girls and a campus policeman. At least there are still lots of girls left, though it is a good thing Tiger is finally stopped at the end of this one.

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.

On his way to Southern California's "Oceanfront High School", 17-year-old Los Angeles senior John David Carson (as Ponce de Leon Harper) can't escape the constant barrage of sexy girls in tight shirts, shorts and mini-skirts. When horny substitute teacher Angie Dickinson (as Betty Smith) sticks her butt in his face and rubs her breasts on him, Mr. Carson has to run for relief in the boys' lavatory. There, he discovers the dead body of a shapely cheerleader with a farewell note on her panties. This is the start of a serial murder spree at the high school. Meanwhile, guidance counselor and football coach Rock Hudson (as Michael "Tiger" McDrew) is copulating – he takes willing girls into his office and turns on the "Testing" light...Carson is the water-boy for Mr. Hudson's football team and asks his coach for advice about sex. We're not privy to exactly why Carson, an attractive guy, is unable to find an interested partner. His haircut is funny, but certainly not a deal breaker. Hudson decides to help Carson by setting him up with Ms. Dickinson. Pretty in pink, she nips the problem in the bud. Meanwhile, Hudson continues to bed beautiful young women as bald detective Telly Savalas (as Sam Surcher) investigates their murders. He, Hudson and Dickinson went on to star in successful 1970s TV series ("Kojak", "McMillan & Wife" and "Police Woman") in spite of this trash. This film was brought to you by producer-writer Gene Roddenberry and director Roger Vadim. Their "Pretty Maids All in a Row" does not boldly go where no man has gone before – but, it has charms...The highlight of this film is Mr. Vadim and Charles Rosher's arousing photography of young woman in and out of their clothing. The soft core antics of an admirable cast and what looks like dozens of casting couch cuties has no real substance – at least, not in this telling. The visual candy makes up for a silly story. The best shots are of the girls showing off their upper thighs and panties. Those who always knew "Here Comes the Brides" downer Susan Tolsky was secretly hot will see proof. While older than the others, Dickinson more than holds her own. Other than that, it's just strange to see this cast and crew team up – as a stupefying bonus, you get The Osmonds' chirping theme song "Chilly Winds" (a non-hit B-Side).***** Pretty Maids All in a Row (4/28/71) Roger Vadim ~ Rock Hudson, John David Carson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas

One of the most politically incorrect films of all time, Pretty Maids All In a Row is easily Roger Vadim's most audacious film. Scripted by Gene Roddenberry it focuses on the strange happenings taking place at a California high school. To better understand this film, you need to know more about Roger Vadim. He was by all accounts a unrepentant womanizer. He wrote not just one, but two books concerning his love affairs with Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Annette Atroyberg, and Jane Fonda. The filmmaker practically invented the modern day sex film in 1956 with And God Ceated Woman. In 2005, Jane Fonda went public with allegations claiming that Vadim forced her to have threesomes with other women. Director Roger Vadim obviously loved women. The way the camera takes in the female form in this film shows that this guy truly enjoyed this cast of beautiful high school girls who are dropping out of school in the most unfortunate manner: they are being murdered. The first body is found by student Ponce. He discovers the nude body in the boy's washroom. After discovering the body we are introduced to the detective assigned to the case as well as an amoral guidance counselor named Tiger (played by Rock Hudson) who also happens to be sleeping with his students in his office.  The investigation goes and we discover that the murdered girls happened to be sleeping with Tiger. Despite of all the heat pressure placed on him, Tiger doesn't seem worried that he'll get caught. He continues coaching the football team, eventually setting Ponce up with a sexy new teacher (Angie Dickinson), and of course carrying on affairs with the students.  In his autobiography, Vadim recalled the casting of the students in Pretty Maids All in a Row: "...I had auditioned over two hundred boys and about the same number of girls. Most of the girls who applied in the roles of high school alumni were aspiring actresses, though some were local students who merely found the whole thing amusing." For a man recovering from love sickness (Jane Fonda had just divorced Vadim), this succession of young teenage and college age beauties was intoxicating. Vadim specifically ordered the wardrobe department to dress the girls in micro skirts and tight fitting shirts. Notably, a good portion of them aren't wearing bras. Vadim films these young ladies, many of which appear to be underage, in a method that is so unapologetically sexual that you'll soon understand why this film will likely never appear on DVD. With pedophilia being such a hot topic in today's society, no film company wants to risk being accused of exploiting minors by releasing this on DVD. With its nonstop leering shots of teenage body parts and seemingly giddy portrayal of sexual relationships between adults and children, does Pretty Maids All in A Row seem like a celebration of pedophilia? Uh, the correct term is 'ebephophilia' which means 'love of adolescents'. I guess it's a matter of opinion. When I first viewed this film as a teen, the director's constant zooming in on the breasts and buttocks of female high school students was a bit shocking, but had a point to it. I mean, high school is a particularly sexualized place being that many students are entering in relationships for the first times in their lives. Then I read a movie review about how Pretty Maids All in A Row may have been the most widespread female-kiddie-porn film ever seen. The slow, misty shots of the braless pubescent girls in their micro skirts were far too prevalent to be incidental. When I saw this movie again, this time in my late 20s, I had no problem understanding the reviewer's point of view. For example, the opening scene of this movie consists of a closeup of a pair of butts belonging to two female classmates of Ponce. These two, who look barely 18, show up randomly during this movie, and every scene they are in, the camera is fixated so closely on their mini skirts that it's laughable. I can find no reason for so pointlessly including these two girls in the movie other than for the director to showcase their gorgeous bodies with series of gratuitous shots of their crotches and rears. It seems all quite juvenille. Still, I don't think anyone should not see this film just because director Vadim can't go two minutes without fetishizing a sea of young female bodies. To better understand all the blatant voyeurism directed towards these girls, remember that this is an American movie made with a European mentality. The European school of film-making seems to approach the entire feminine image in a different sense than the Americans do; the female body is perceived to be a work of art in itself, that it is graceful, elegant, beautiful and sensual, an aesthetic object with erotic power. Presenting it in the proper manner makes one marvel instead of blushing and turning away--that seems to be the attitude this director takes, and it causes the frequent nudity in the film to be not so much dirty, obscene, and debaucherous, as being instead a presentation of a thing of beauty. The acting in Pretty Maids is first-rate. The cast is by far the film's strongest asset. These are all truly courageous performers, and the acting is so good, it's scary. The standouts are probably Rock Hudson and John David Carson. Not surprisingly, Telly Savalas as a Kojak-style detective steals every scene he is in. Angie Dickinson is great, but I was distracted by her aesthetic qualities. Pretty Maids is a good movie that has quite a few shocking moments. It's quite implausible and uneven, but I recommend seeing it. It's one of those movies where you just HAVE to see it, you know? Not because it's some great masterpiece of cinema, but because there's a lot there to talk about. Check it out.