A men's magazine with beautiful women nude... a deranged killer who fights in the name of modesty. What happens when he gets their names and traces their private numbers? As you can imagine, bloody mayhem. And this is all before the hippies and rapists show up..."Centerfold Girls" (known some places as "Girl Hunter") is a strange film... not visually strange, not strange in its telling... but strange in that the plot shifts in ways you will not expect it to at first. We seemingly follow Jackie, a nurse and former model, as she befriends Linda and stays lodged out of town... confronted by wild, rapist hippies (including one who wears a Coors box for a hat). But despite all this, Jackie is not the main character... we don't see much of her after the first half hour.This film has a style that is hard to dislike. The murders are simple but effective, with the killer being a truly likable character with horn-rimmed glasses and saddleback shoes. (Don't worry, I'm not giving away anything -- he stands in the open throughout the film.) And the cast and crew is largely unknown, at least today. You may have heard of Aldo Ray or Ray Danton, but I doubt this. The director (John Peyser, mostly known for television work) and writers (Bob Peete and Arthur Marks) are obviously talented, but not household names in the world of horror.Even the "star" (if one can call him that), is largely a television actor with bit parts. Andrew Prine, who plays killer Clement Dunne, is the glue that holds this entire movie together. Yet, as much as I loved him, I'm hard-pressed to name another movie he's in. Okay, that's not entirely true. The mid-70s saw him not only in "Centerfold Girls", but also in the now classic "Town That Dreaded Sundown" and "Crypt of the Living Dead" (directed by Ray Danton, and available in certain public domain horror collections).My one concern, and this has been raised by other reviewers, is the lack of background on Clement Dunne. What does he do for a living? What made him want to kill women, and why did he pick the particular magazine he did? How does he track down the addresses and phone numbers for his victims? This lack of information did not take away from the picture, but makes me wonder. A sequel would probably have worked well, but it's a bit late now.The box calls this a movie from the "sleazy" 1970s, an "exploitation" film in the "grindhouse" tradition. Now, I don't know if this is grindhouse, but they are dead-on with the exploitation and sleaze comments. Nudity abounds in this film, and if more than five minutes go by without someone getting topless (often for no reason), I'd be surprised. And then the (attempted and successful) rapes... not just one, but more like three. In one movie! Dark Sky Films offers a nice, crisp picture and sound on this disc, while still capturing the gritty quality of the original film. While the special features are somewhat lacking (an audio commentary would be nice), the 15-minute featurette "Making the Cut" offers a great look back and really puts the picture in perspective. That, and a "musical cues" feature, which makes sense to me since the music was very unique and apparent throughout the picture (next to Prine, the music of Mark Wolin is my favorite thing about this film -- and this was his only work). I would encourage anyone to give this title a fair chance.

First off, let's deal with the pinhead sect who are dissing this movie for daring to give them EXACTLY WHAT IT PROMISED -- A sleazy, disturbing, voyeuristic movie about a deranged psycho who murders centerfold models with a straight edge razor. Since nobody in the free world holds a gun to someone's head and forces them to watch a particular movie (aside from Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, that is), anyone who went out of their way to see this movie and were horrified to find out that it actually had the **balls** to give them exactly what it was advertised as has nothing to complain about. Other than maybe sleeping in on the morning they were handing out working brains. They got theirs after all the good ones were gone, I guess, and had to make do with an addled mind that can't grasp basic concepts ... like trashy exploitation movies actually being trashy, and exploitational. How stupid can people get? If you want art, rent or buy art, and stay away from the gutter, which is where this movie deliberately set out to be.With that scolding out of the way, CENTERFOLD GIRLS is one of the purest, most startling and twistedly imaginative examples of the Grindhouse Exploitation & Sleaze Film as I have ever encountered. Packed wall to wall with glorious female nudity, gory killings, and punctuated by yet another brilliantly twisted performance by Andrew Prine as yet another bizarre psychopath, this movie dares to give viewers exactly what they are looking for in such entertainment: Garbage.And not just your standard run-of-the-mill so boring 'cos we've seen it all a million times garbage, but garbage that keeps one guessing. Not as to the identity of some masked killer hacking their way through a supporting cast of unlikeable morons, but guessing in terms of just where the movie is going from one given moment to the next. There was one murder that was so abrupt, so uncalled for, and so absolutely brilliant in how it was staged that this film should actually be "Required reading at the Academy, Mr. Spock" material for anyone who's interested in making a low budget amoral slasher film. It is still a vibrant, shocking, and sensationalistic masterpiece of exploitation thirty-five years after it was made.Yes, there are vulgar, lurid moments that degrade the women who agreed to participate in the film, and none of the characters -- including the sexy women who's murders the film celebrates in such an unflinching manner -- are truly redeemable individuals. Even the usually heroic Aldo Ray comes off as a despicable monster, something that isn't easy to do, and his villainy is one of the film's great curve balls thrown mercilessly at the viewer. The one thing that impressed me more than anything else about the film was how it so specifically defied any formula for how psycho slasher horror films are "supposed" to be plotted out.There are two keys to the equation of its success: The first are the women themselves, all of whom actually were (or could have been) the girlie magazine pin-up celebrities that the movie depicts them as. They are all stunningly beautiful, with nary a silicone implant to mar their natural female forms. None of them apparently had the slightest qualm with being undressed & paraded before the camera for our amusement to the sole function of any other role in the film. They don't exist as "people" so much as the exist to be Ms. April, Ms. May, Ms. June, Ms. July, and Ms. August. Their names & personalities are exactly as important to the plot as the models gracing the pages of a girlie magazine, existing only to be stalked, terrified, and slaughtered by the psychopath.Is it misogynistic, regrettable, vile and sleazy? OF COURSE. But then again, what girlie magazine isn't? Don't blame the movie for telling things like they are, and indeed if you look at one of those kinds of magazines the first thing printed on the inside cover is a disclaimer pointing out that the habits, lifestyles and personalities of the models depicted in the magazine are not to be taken as actual representations of those people. Here is a movie that understands this concept, and uses it to great advantage.The other key is Andrew Prine, who should have been nominated for some form of an Oscar years ago (I say it should have been for SIMON - KING OF THE WITCHES, but take your pick, really: All of his performances are universally marvelous). With his geeky glasses, Sears Roebuck catalog puritan's suit and complete resolve to see his mission through, Prine is the perfect embodiment of the psychopathic killer who slaughters women in an effort to "help" them, as he explains to more than one of his victims. The old Rambler station wagon he is given to drive is also a perfect extension of his character, and while there is some truth to the criticism that his is the only character in the film that is actually developed that's just part of the stacked deck. You can't fault it for being effective at what it set out to do, and once again Prine's acting stands out amidst a sea of dreck that would otherwise smother any other performer.It is of course wrong to objectify women with pornography, and even more wrong to seek out & murder them for having taken part. But if every psycho killer movie were as honest about their intentions as CENTERFOLD GIRLS were maybe we wouldn't have such a low collective opinion of the idiom. It's the poseur films who wouldn't dare to go as far as this one do that give the form it's bad name. This one gets it right.8/10, and then some.

Superb exploitation nasty. I loved this one. Real dirty and gritty and fast moving. Well-directed with some nice performances.Andrew Prine is perfectly cast as a saddle-shoe-wearing nerd who is out to "save" all the calender/pin-up girls he can ("save" as in split their head open with a razor). And he really goes about his business. With his ultra-skinny physique and creepy/quirky demeanor he projects kind of a low-rent Norman Bates quality.Film has three (or is it four?) different stories, each following a girl that Prine is tracking down. The killing is ruthless and quick and somewhat unsettling. Also unsettling is that the girls bounce from one horrific situation to the other like pinballs (ALL the men in this movie are creeps - and most of the women, too!!!).If you get a chance, and if exploitation with a sharp-edge is your bag check this one out, you might like it.

A moralistic serial killer with a straight razor is carving up girls who have posed nude for a men's magazine. If this seems like pretty weak motivation for a killing spree, it also makes for a pretty weak plot for a movie. This one is all over the place. The first part focuses on a nurse staying at an isolated motel in the mountains (shades of "Psycho")who is abused both by the sleazy hotel owner and a Mansonesque group of hippies, and this is before she runs into the killer. In the second, and most preposterous, part the killer somehow follows a whole group of nude models and photographers to a deserted island where he kills the whole lot of them. In the third part the killer stalks a stewardess from her swinging singles apartment to northern California where her car breaks down and (after she gets picked up and raped by two sailors)the final showdown takes place.This movie is VERY sleazy. All the girls are brainless sluts who don't even seem to get too upset about being drugged and gang-raped. Every single guy meanwhile is only interesting in assaulting, molesting, or otherwise taking sexual advantage of said women. Incredibly, the deranged killer is the most well-developed and likable character in the whole film. There are only two reasons to recommend this movie. One is Andrew Prine playing one his memorable psychos (he doesn't so much chew the scenery as just gulp it down whole). The other is the truly jaw-dropping collection of early 70's drive-in actresses on display including Tiffany "The Candy Snatchers" Bolling, Jennifer "Tinotera" Ashley, Connie "Black Sampson" Strickland, Janet "Slumber Party '57" Wood, perennial 70's TV actress Jamie Lynn Bauer, and Penthouse Pet of the Year/mafia moll Aneka De Lorenzo. (The only ones missing here are Candice Rialson and Claudia Jennings). Of course, all of these actresses appear au naturel at some point, and in these pre-silicone days they were, of course, all au naturel. So I guess if you REALLY like Andrew Prine or you REALLY want to see a lot of naturally impressive breasts, this movie might be worth watching--otherwise avoid.