Cast:
Ayn Ruymen (Cheryl Stratton), Lucille Benson (Aunt Martha Atwood), John Ventantonio (George Atwood), Laurie Main (Reverend Moon), Stanley Livingston (Jeff), Charles Woolf (Jeff's dad), Ann Gibbs (Judy), Len Travis (Mike), Dorothy Neumann (Mrs. Quigley), Gene Simms (First policeman), John Lupton (Second policeman), and Patrick Strong (Artie) Directed by Paul Bartel (#955 - Eating Raoul, #2231 - Death Race 2000)
Review:
"If you wish you hadn't seen it, it's bad bad taste. If you feel you were brought dangerously close to the edge, but at the end you were made to laugh or learn something, then it's good bad taste."
It really is a terrible thing to be called Private Parts, if you think about it, so imagine if that was your film debut. This was the case for one Paul Bartel. Born in Brooklyn but raised in Manhattan and New Jersey, Bartel had an interest in film from a young age and apparently spent time assisting cartoonists at UPA, as one does when fascinated with marionettes before they turn 10. He studied at UCLA and made short films that got him a scholarship to study film in Rome. The Secret Cinema (1966), a short detailing a woman being secretly filmed by manipulators around them, was his first prominent short film. Gene Corman served as producer of the movie, a cheapie meant to be for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The working title of the movie was "Blood Relations" before MGM president James Aubrey suggested the change. Go figure: local newspapers saw "Private Parts" and said, nope, too shocking to print, which defeats the whole purpose of a title (in some places, they just called it "Private Arts"). The movie was written by Philip Kearney and Les Rendelstein (screenwriters of this, Strange Invasion [1965], and nothing else), who apparently knew a few oddballs in the underworld of Los Angeles; they were UCLA guys around the same time as Bartel, who apparently did some re-writes to the script. Premier Productions was the distributor of the movie, but actually it was just a subsidiary of MGM, who apparently was embarrassed by the sex and violence but wouldn't just sell it to someone who actually cared. Well, given that they were in the business of doing a horror movie, what exactly were they expecting, Rosemary's Baby?* Bartel appeared in a variety of movies (cameo or supporting, as one expects from a character actor) while often appearing his own directorial efforts, of which he made a total of nine movies before he died in 2000 at the age of 61.
It's a neat little sleazy movie that happens to have a change in mood right around the climax that Bartel stated had an impact with why test audiences were not as big on it as you might expect. He once stated that you had to "be detached from the film and not take it seriously" in order to appreciate it, which may prove fascinating for a movie that does seem pretty relevant more than ever. Sure, some people probably know who their neighbors are (anonymity is the goal but not expected), but there are likely some secrets best not worth knowing everything about; basically, this is a movie for those who like to pair their movies with Psycho or Peeping Tom. It has a few moments of gore but is also just as amusing in the weird spaces that you see for 87 minutes. This is the first and only credited movie for Ruymen, who had done a handful of theater productions and even getting on Broadway with Neil Simon's The Gingerbread Lady*. She did a handful of television appearances over the next few years and has mostly spent time directing for the small stage. She pulls off an interesting performance here, mainly because she has the fascinating challenge of playing eager youth without just being a final target. She does pretty well in balancing that tightrope, doing so with a certain shaky type of charm to go with the foibles of youth that can make one chuckle just as much as grimace. Undeniably, Benson shines the best among the cast, proving to be unsettling without having to strain to make one get the idea as one might expect from a character depicted going to funeral to take photos. You know something is a bit up with her from the jump but you are entranced at the self confidence that comes in that type of belief of self-righteousness about the nature of men and women. It also happens to be the only movie for Ventantonio, who is fairly unsettling, albeit for a movie that relies plenty on having an unsettling feeling on what one is allowed to see. You get plenty to see in images and other things in the landscape two-fold: a person we first see observing someone having sex and a person we soon see observing others from their abode while you also get some side moments with eccentrics (one of them played by Bartel, naturally) to remind you that there can be just as much unease without bloodshed. Uneven or not, there is at least something for everyone even for a slasher film that likes to show a mirror at the world and chuckle a bit at what we see in malaise. Look, there are people who don't respect horror and then there are those who are willing to believe that comedy just doesn't work with horror. But Private Parts (1972) is a neat little movie that happens to dwell in the macabre with eccentric energy that might be right up your alley for a strange time in the horror season.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
*Hey, we don't hate Rosemary's Baby here, I just think it's funny to rag on it. Or Hereditary. Or people who call Sinners anything other than straight horror. No it isn't a musical, stop lying to yourself.
*The play actually lasted just five months on Broadway. The only other movie with Ruymen in it was Jaws, she played a nurse and didn't get screen credit.
*I do find a bit strange Wikipedia terms it as "LGBTQ-related film", since we are talking about a movie where someone injects blood into an inflatable sex doll full of water. Not exactly something you'd want to fly the flag for, you know?
