Going through the movie listings for a good flick to bring a date to I saw George C. Scott...wow! My date was a very conservative young lady from Taiwan, that took nearly a month to get permission to date. I was stunned at the subject material of this film, Incest, Masturbation, Murdering a father to have sex with his mother. The plot takes off at that awkward point in Swiss Family Robinson where Mrs. Robinson brings up the fact they have three sons on an island with no other women, then goes straight for a pervert fantasy plot line. This movie should have been rated X at that time. This was truly a "car crash" spectacle, no one could look elsewhere. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. I read somewhere that Scott was embarrassed of this film, I might add that he had better have been. This was not what I expected in my wildest nightmares. First date-Last date...period.

An ugly little film with no reason to be ugly. Let's use some logic here. In circumstances such as these, if there were absolutely no other women around except his mother, it is quite likely, perhaps even understandable, that a young man would start to develop sexual feelings for her. Instead of truly examining this, the film opts instead for completely unsympathetic characters, including portraying the young man as a wild animal (the "savage" of the title) who plots to kill his father and rape his mother. Nice, eh? The filmmakers might have made their point better (assuming they were trying to make a point at all) by adding a little sympathy to everyone's plight. Maybe they could have had the young man feel some horror over his desire for his mother? Maybe mom could have agonized over whether or not she owes something to her son under these extreme conditions? Any of this would have made for a better movie. Instead, the boy is a stalking predator while mom runs around the movie shrieking about how fearful she is of him. Too bad; there was promising subject matter here, boldly ignored by George C. Scott and writers Max Ehrlich and Frank De Felitta. A real waste.

when it came out. I was 20 years old (I am now 51 years old). I've never forgotten this movie in all these years. Now looking back, this was a subject matter that took a lot of guts to touch on way back then. Heck, incest would be a touchy subject matter even now! I saw it with my 2 sisters and I remember walking out of the movie 31 years ago just dumbstruck. Wow, what a story! I've never seen it in video stores and have never heard anything about it nor have I ever met anyone else that saw it back then when I did. (What did we do before the Internet?) If you ever get the chance to see it, do. I wouldn't watch it with any children under the age of 18. It's pretty graphic from what I can remember. And the ending, well, you just have to see it.

This movie provides a family the basis for discussions regarding eternal human behavior usually impossible to begin with teenagers, male and female. While not a "remake" of Oedipus, teenagers will better understand the essence of their tensions from this experience.You are warned to view this movie first as parents without the siblings. Then, if you are prepared to begin the transition of establishing an open relationship with your teenagers at an adult, not parental, level, view it together.