Rent a Girl / Aroused / Help Wanted Female

Rating:
Summary: If nothing else,
Review: it's strange enough to hold your interest to wonder how much worse it can get. These are sort of like soft-core Bettie Page stuff, although there is real-life, honest to gawd nudity ... although when they turn around (yes, the rear view), some of these women have no business undressing! The plot in them is pretty much non-existent (except Aroused; that tries harder); more or less of an excuse to show nudity. And, every guy apparently makes love without ever taking off his pants. Cheap thrills, 60s style. The acting in the final whipping scene in Rent is to die for. As a matter of fact... and that makes no sense either, given why it happened. You'll understand when you see it.

Rating:
Summary: Murder, Prostitution and Black Lace Panties
Review: This Something Weird Video triple feature has the binding themes of prostitution, murder and black lace underwear. It's a winning exploitation combo, though not all the movies on this DVD are winners. The first movie, "Rent-A-Girl," made in 1965, is the least interesting. The flimsy story is told in flashbacks as the heroine recounts how she became witness to the murder of a wealthy client after getting involved with a brother-and-sister-run "modeling agency." Along the way there's a little bit of whipping, a little bit of lesbianism, an extended body-painting sequence, and branding. Though it has higher production values than the Olga movies or the twisted features of Michael and Roberta Findlay (the closest comparisons for this movie), "Rent-A-Girl" lacks an intriguing screen presence like Audrey Campbell or the enjoyably sick outrageousness of the Findlay films. It's a roughie with a limp whip.

Far superior is the 1966 movie "Aroused," which plays like a real movie--that is to say it has something of a plot, some full-fledged (if cliché) characters, decent acting, stylish direction (by Anton Holden) and even some moments of real suspense. This briskly-paced, trashy thriller revolves around the hunt for a "sex killer," with hardened hooker Ginny (Janine Lenon) out for blood and tortured cop (Steve Hollister) out for an arrest. It's still exploitation, so there's lots of sex, nudity and gore, but it's all done a lot more imaginatively than other movies of this type. This is the best of the three.

The title of the last movie, "Help Wanted Female," has little to do with the actual film, but that only makes sense in this nonsensical movie from 1968. The bulk of the movie centers on Sebastian Gregory (as Sebastian Gregory) dropping acid and telling the hooker he's hired for the evening about two murders he's committed, the loony details of which are revealed in flashback. The hooker, a toothy blond who looks a cross between Doris Day and Martina Navritolova, does lame striptease routines and tells Gregory she doesn't believe a word he's saying--until she discovers blood in the bathroom and a foil-wrapped head in the fridge. It's silly but fun to watch, especially Gregory (think Ray Liotta made up to play John Ashcroft in a TV movie), who's dancing scene is almost as embarrasing as Charlotte Rampling's boogying in "Swimming Pool." There's even a "Weekend at Bernie's"-type sequence when Gregory inexplicably takes one of his dead victims to the beach.

Not many extras on this one, just a trailer for "Aroused," a gallery of stills and a bondage short, "Lesson of the Strap" (five minutes of a bound woman in her underwear being spanked by another underwear-clad woman--in short, a Madonna video circa 1992). Still, this one gets four stars on the strength of "Aroused" and "Help Wanted Female." If "Rent-A-Girl" was as entertaining as those two movies, I would've given five.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good SWV offering
Review: This SWV DVD includes three b&w titles from the 60s. Rent a Girl was pretty good but I felt that it was too short. A young woman sits in the seventy something year old New York DA's office and recounts the sad tale of how she arrived in NYC with her hopes and dreams and came to grief. She found an apartment and a good, well-to-do boyfriend, but no job. When her boyfriend gets cold feet about their relationship she decides to go and investigate the strange, orgy-like sounds that come from the apartment upstairs. The occupants are a young brother and sister who run a phony modeling racket that is really a front for a call girl operation specializing in satisfying the perverse appetites of rich but decadent people. Of course they offer her a job and she is soon on her way to depravity. There follows a series of episodes involving the girls and their clients. Darlene Bennett fans will be pleased to know that she appears in this movie (not as the lead character) in a couple of kinky scenes as she does in many other SWV titles. In one scene she is dressed in a summer dress and teeters on high heels in a basement with her hands tied above her head with a rope from the rafters while an old creep squirts her with water from a hose. In another she plays a strip poker version of billiards with some other party girls. There are party scenes where many other familiar faces from SWV titles are also present, like Gigi Darlene. I liked it. The second movie Aroused was the weakest of the three. Some sicko stalks and murders a young prostitute in her NYC apartment. The straight-laced detective working on the case develops sympathy for her live-in girlfriend, an older, more mature prostitute, even though it soon becomes clear that the two women were a lesbian couple. The two women worked out of a small Manhattan bar where the owner, a middle-aged man, is basically a pimp with a bunch of girls who he employs. The detective has a nice wife who he worries about because he knows how bad the sicko situation is. The rest of the movie was pretty run-of-the-mill for this genre and forgettable. The third movie Help Wanted Female was easily the most interesting. Two young attractive blonde women are best friends in LA or thereabouts. One is a karate instructor who supplements her income by occasionally picking up out-of-town businessmen at the train station or wherever and then rolling them for their dough. She looked really good in her short summer dress and naked. Her girlfriend is a dyed blonde professional call girl with an established clientele. She goes to a private home to see one of her regular customers, a middle-aged man with jet black dyed hair combed greaser style who apparently hires her about once a month to do a regular routine of striptease dances and role-play, etc. He pops sugar cubes into his mouth (LSD used to be taken that way) and tells her an eerie story about how he and a young woman friend were bored and decided to pick up a teenage girl off the street who they then murdered for kicks. He claimed that he then decided to murder his girlfriend as well and then partied for a while with her dead corpse. This guy was such a joker that the prostitute just assumed that he was full of BS until she happened to go in the kitchen and found some strange bones and what appeared to be a head wrapped in tinfoil in the refrigerator. She soon panicked and ran for it into the protective presence of her martial arts expert girlfriend. He follows her home where he then grapples with her friend who brags to him that she is capable of ripping him apart. Nevertheless, he gets in a good blow that sends her sprawling and rubbing her jaw. She exclaims, "I can't place your fighting technique!" to which he replies, "I don't have a technique, I just fight dirty." That was a great line and a pretty good movie.