Provacateur & Libertine Roger Vadim’s Dark Satire: Pretty Maids All In A Row (1971): Rock Hudson’s Killer Casanova & The Garden of Earthly Delights – “Wonder why they always seem to die with a smile on their face?”

Pretty Maids All in a Row is a 1971 film directed by Roger Vadim, blending elements of black comedy, sex, and murder mystery. Set in a California high school during the sexual revolution, it follows serial killer Michael ‘Tiger’ McDrew (Rock Hudson), who targets his female students. The film satirizes American high school culture and societal attitudes towards sex and violence.

In this dark sexploitation comedy by Vadim, Rock Hudson plays a beloved football hero/ faculty member who is, in fact, a lady-killer preying on the female student body at his high school!

Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Pretty Maids All in a Row is bathed in hazy colors similar to that of Bosch’s epic triptych painting. I’m starting this post by emphasizing Bosch’s iconic work of art, as it significantly shapes the narrative.

This intricate panel of images appears in the film several times as a motif. Vadim possessed a clear grasp of what he was informing us about. It touches on a vital element and is the fundamental part of the narrative’s soul, yet it bears no resolution for us, the ‘voyeurs’, by the film’s end. Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson) has this painting in her apartment. We see it in several sequences; By framing the object in a tight close-up, scrutinized by the lens, the camera invites a nuanced inspection, underscoring Vadim’s intention to emphasize the painting’s thematic significance.

Read the feature below, which includes an Angie Dickinson overview!

It’s the pictures that got small! – “Good Evening” Leading Ladies of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour Part 1

Bosch’s painting serves as a prominent motif throughout the film.

Close-ups in the film at varying viewpoints of Bosch’s painting.

The painting depicts nude figures in the garden of temptation, ultimately setting them forth unto an eternal dance with damnation.

From Wiki:

The left panel depicts God presenting Adam to Eve, while the central panel is a broad panorama of sexually engaged nude figures, fantastical animals, oversized fruit, and hybrid stone formations. The right panel is a hellscape and portrays the torments of damnation.

“Art historians and critics frequently interpret the painting as a didactic warning on the perils of life’s temptations. However, the intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. 20th-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych’s central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost. American writer Peter S. Beagle describes it as an “erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty.”

One could say that this suburban American High School acts as a similar landscape depicted in Bosch’s painting. The school is ripe for sexual and unconventional anarchy, abound with young flesh, exploring a ‘perfect liberty’ flitting about in micro skirts and no bras, amidst the intoxicating air of youth and temptation.

Tiger McDrew reads Don Juan to his class.

Leaving these young people vulnerable and tempted by devouring demons like Tiger McDrew, who comes and preys upon their alluring innocence. Much like the painting, Pretty Maids has a sense of erotic derangement that turns us into every bit the voyeur. The film is a thought-provoking amalgamation of interrelated questions, ultimately yielding a profound exploration of moral ambiguities and the deeply embedded systemic, hierarchical, and hegemonic complexities and challenges that shape historical narratives.

Add Vadim’s European, self-proclaimed Libertine sensibilities and his view of American culture, and you get a psychopathic Don Juan in Tiger McDrew, with voyeuristic close-ups of supposed adolescent young girls (the actresses were older) and a society that both condemns and perpetuates it.

An alternative title to this blog post – I could say might be this:  “The Americanization of Debauchery, Perversion, Panties, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights transfixed on the modern high school campus. The Socratic Infusion of Free Love & the Sexual Revolution. With traces of Bluebeard, Casanova. Sexism & Misogyny, the POV of the New Wave European Aestheticism of the Female Body as Fetish. Pom Poms, Peace Signs, The Cult of American Hero worship Molière & Lord Byron’s Don Juan with a smattering of Svengali, as a Homicidal Pedagogue in a tight pants.”

In Pretty Maids All In A Row, Ponce (John David Carson) and substitute teacher Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson) both read from Milton’s Paradise Lost. The telling of how Satan fell from grace, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, the angels fought amongst each other, and innocence becomes sacrificed as just part of the epic tale.

PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW – From the nursery rhyme, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.

Rock Hudson was the romantic leading man of the 1950s and 60s.

Tiger McDrew Hudson’s character exerts a subtle yet potent influence, leveraging his authority to manipulate and intimidate with understated finesse.

Roger Vadim, Gene Roddenberry and a few of the Pretty Maids on the set.

The sexploitation, black comedy Pretty Maids All In A Row 1971 was directed by Roger Vadim. (And God Created Woman 1956, Blood and Roses 1960 & his operatic sci-fi fantasy Barbarella 1968). Written and produced by Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, with a film score by Lalo Shifrin.

The film features Director of Photography Charles Rosher Jr., the song Chilly Winds composed by Shifrin, with lyrics by Mike Curb. The Screenplay was written by Gene Roddenberry and based on the novel by Francis Pollini. Produced and scripted by Roddenberry (Star Trek, Have Gun -Will Travel). This was director Roger Vadim’s first motion picture in the United States. MGM was distributing it to appeal to the “youth market.” The late ’60s and ’70s indie films were taking over, and MGM was in financial trouble. Pretty Maids All In A Row was released on April 28, 1971, and did a limited run In Theaters.

Roddenberry shot a lot of short-skirted women as well. Star Trek was a beloved, iconic contribution to the philosophical sci-fi community that dealt with issues of race, class, and war.

The Primary Cast:

Rock Hudson plays the murderous lethario ‘Tiger’ McDrew, Telly Savalas plays the cool and collected Captain Sam Surcher, Angie Dickinson plays the sensual substitute Betty Smith. The film introduces John David Carson as Ponce de Leon Harper. Roddy McDowall is Principal Proffer, and Barbara Leigh plays Jean McDrew, Tiger’s beloved wife. Leigh was cast as the original “Vampirella” and has done two Playboy celebrity pictorials (May 1973, January 1977). She also had affairs with Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley.

B Movie and Cult film favorite William Campbell, who plays Sheriff Deputy Grady (Dementia 13 Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, best remembered by Star Trek fans as the Klingon commander in the iconic “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode.

James Doohan as Follo is best known for his role as ‘Beam me up’ Scotty on Star Trek: the original series. Susan Tolsky is the priggish and neurotic Miss Harriet Craymire.

Telly Savalas, William Campbell, and James Doohan.

There is also the presence of Keenan Wynn, who plays the inept local Sheriff Poldaski, a bumbling hick who manhandles the evidence and winds up being put on traffic duty.

The Pretty Maids:

Cult cutie Joy Bang plays Rita, Brenda Sykes plays Pamela Wilcox, Gretchen Burrell as Marjorie, Joanna Cameron as Yvonne Millick, Aimèe Eccles as Hilda Lee, June Fairchild as Sonny Swangle – the always-laughing student, Margaret Markov as Polly, and Diane Sherry as Sheryl.

Brenda Sykes: Pamela Wilcox. Sykes, primarily active in the 1970s, also appeared in The Liberation of L. B Jones 1970, Getting Straight 1970, The Sheriff 1971, Skin Game 1971, Black Gunn 1972, Cleopatra Jones 1973, and various TV shows such as Police Woman, Good Times, and Harry O.

On the far right is Joy Bang as Rita. Joy Bang was an American actress active primarily in the early 1970s, known for her portrayal of free-spirited hippie characters. Her notable film appearances include Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), Cisco Pike (1971), Play It Again, Sam (1972), and Messiah of Evil (1974)13. Bang abruptly ended her acting career in the mid-1970s and later became a nurse in Minnesota.

Here she is with Peter Duel in God Bless The Children 1970, the pilot for the TV series The Psychiatrist.

Actress Joanna Cameron, who plays Yvonne Millick, is best known for playing the super goddess ISIS on the Saturday morning kids’ show that was part of the SHAZAM hour.

June Fairchild: as Sonny Swangle, the always-laughing student.

Aimèe Eccles was in The Concrete Jungle 1982, a favored cult/exploitation film, Group Marriage 1973, and Gretchen Burrell (Parsons), who plays Marjorie, wound up being the one-time girlfriend of recording artist Gram Parsons.

Pretty Maids All in a Row was the U.S. film debut of French New Wave director Roger Vadim, known for his sensually soft-core eroticism, seen in films like the vividly colorful and adventurous Barbarella 1968. My particular favorite of Vadim’s is the beautiful Et mourir de plaisir or Blood and Roses 1960, based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, starring Mel Ferrer, Elsa Martinelli, and Vadim’s first wife, Annette Stroyberg. This 1960s horror film is a surreal masterpiece within the vampire canon.

Elsa Martinelli, and Vadim’s first wife, Annette Stroyberg, in the surreal vampire tale Blood and Roses 1960.

Vadim and Bardot on the set of And God Created Woman. Bardot was married to Vadim from 1952 to 1957. Despite their divorce, they remained friends and continued to collaborate throughout their careers.

Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim on the set of Barbarella 1968: Fonda was married to Vadim from 1965-1973.

Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin in Vadim’s 1973 exploit Don Juan (Or If Don Juan Were a Woman) 1973. Vadim had an obvious fixation with the Don Juan mythos as he cast ingénue Brigitte Bardot in Don Juan (Or If Don Juan Were A Woman?) 1973. He seems to ponder the question of love and power. Bardot plays Jeanne, a woman living in Paris who believes she is the reincarnation of Don Juan.

However, Pretty Maids All In a Row was not received well upon its first release at the box office. The film reviews were fairly mixed. Part of the controversy is not only for the film’s perceived glorification of underage girls having sex with a predatory adult, but it was also problematic for its inherent misogyny. This provoked intense aversion in many viewers and critics and continues to be a subject of criticism. I happened to catch it when it first aired on television in the ’70s, as it was boldly slated for mainstream viewing. Apparently, Vadim did not return to film another movie in the U.S. for quite a while after the initial reaction to this controversial film.

Let me say this: The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of significant social and cultural change in the United States. Films from this period often reflected these changes by challenging traditional norms and exploring themes of rebellion, social justice, and personal freedom. The “New Hollywood” movement, which emerged during this time, was characterized by innovative storytelling, experimental techniques, and a focus on more mature and complex themes.

Pretty Maids All in a Row is an artifact of its era, reflecting the zeitgeist of the late ’60s & early ‘70s – a period marked by profound social change and cultural upheaval. Like many films of that time, it captures the spirit of rebellion, social commentary, and experimentation that defined American cinema during that transformative period.

Vadim himself bears the refuge of a seductively affectionate exploitation of the female anatomy, to settle on his project as merely a salacious work of fiction does not represent the film’s actual value. It shines a light on several themes, using satire as a reflective weapon. Although Pretty Maids lacks Vadim’s trademark elegant decadence and art-house flavor, such as his Les Liaisons dangereuses (1959) and La Ronde (1964), there is an Americanism about Pretty Maids that fluctuates between satire and plain cruelty, at times tactless, insensitivity, and a growing sense of dis-ease within society.

It is plausible that this unsettling effect was Vadim’s deliberate intention, as it aligns with his reputation for pushing boundaries and challenging societal norms. Despite his efforts to rationalize or minimize the fixation, fetishism, and objectification of women in his films, it is clear that Vadim consistently positioned himself as a provocateur. His work often blurred the lines between artistic expression and exploitation, reflecting both the liberation and the objectification that characterized the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

This is a Pretty Maids promotional shot.

At the time of Pretty Maids’ release, Rock Hudson’s career had sort of come to a standstill, and he hadn’t yet transitioned to television with his hit TV series McMillan & Wife. Tiger McDrew was an interesting casting choice and one against type for the Hollywood heartthrob that once graced the screen with the lily-white Doris Day. Considering this departure for him, he gave a really unselfconscious performance, looking sleazy and drained at times. The irony of his playing this sexist lady-killer is that he was gay. Rock Hudson’s homosexuality was not a well-kept secret within Hollywood circles during the 1950s, despite being hidden from the general public. Many industry insiders were aware of Hudson’s sexuality.

Rock Hudson and his favorite co-star, Doris Day.

Susan Saint James and Rock Hudson in TV’s McMillan & Wife.

Pretty Maids is an obscure dark comedy, a deviant piece of satire, I would say, slightly sexploitation bedroom farce, a light unscrupulous cult film thriller of the 1970s. It’s not just a coolly directed story with a quirky ensemble of glorious seasoned actors; it’s also filled with campy dialogue alongside the gruesome and mischievous aspects of the film.

“I wonder why they always seem to die with a smile on their face?”

– Officer Follo (James Doohan) asks the question.

James Doohan, William Campbell, and Telly Savalas.

The film also has a fantastic musical score and a memorable theme song ‘Chilly Winds. Something is brewing in the breezy Chilly Winds, part honey and part kerosene, that first goes down easy but suddenly disturbs in that really good way as its lilting melody – light and floating – joyful sensibility integrates with the dark storyline.

There’s also an element of nostalgia for me, seeing beloved actors, in particular, Angie Dickinson (probably one of my favorite roles aside from Pepper Anderson in TV’s Police Woman is the lusty Sheila Farr in Don Siegel’s 1964 remake of The Killers with Lee Marvin) and her performance as Chris in the 1967 John Boorman film Point Blank again with Lee Marvin.

Angie Dickinson’s blazing smile – On the set of Siegel’s The Killers 1964.

Great image from MGM promo shot from Point Blank (1967).

Angie Dickinson as Pepper Anderson in TV’s Police Woman (1974-1978)

I want to say briefly that Dickinson’s role as Betty was one of the film’s highlights for me. Her decision to play this character was very bold. She has a heightened libido and deflowers a virginal teenage boy. Ponce calling her ma’am adds a perverse dimension to their impending sexual dalliance.

So if we are to suspend our moralizing gaze and consider Angie Dickinson’s performance as just a kinder, gentler Mrs. Robinson, she manages to balance her playful sex appeal with an elegant sexuality that’s charming, funny, awkward, and, yes, intelligent. She does not play a dumb blonde but a highly educated woman who wonders about the number of stars in the heavens and reads Milton’s Paradise Lost – like it’s foreplay.

At Betty’s tutoring session at her apartment, she tells Ponce to describe Milton. He asks, “Milton, who?” Ponce fumbles around trying to find the words. He describes Heaven in which “Satan was expelled and his evolution into the Devil… by corrupting… his finest creation…Woman, uh, Mankind.”

Betty starts to recite Milton slowly and methodically. Rosher’s camera gives us a close-up of her moistened, full lips as she recites the passage.

“I fled but he pursued though more it seems inflamed with lust, than rage, and swifter far, I overtook his mother, all dismayed and in embraces forcible and foul engendering with me, of that rape begot these yelling monsters that, with ceaseless cry surround me as thou sawest hourly conceived and hourly born with sorrow infinite to me for when they list into the womb, that had bred them, they return and howl and gnaw my bowels, their repast (she pauses)…Isn’t this exciting!“

As Betty’s breasts are at eye level with Ponce, he answers in a heightened level of arousal – slowly in a fevered groan; he utters, “Oh yeah.”

As he slumps down in the chair, Betty asks, “What’s the matter, Ponce?” she says this reminiscent of an adult talking to a little child they’re telling a bedtime story to, “You don’t think I’m going to eat, you do you?” Ponce, sighs…looking up at her, his eyes begging, “Oh yes”, ah… no… Miss Smith.”

.

Don Juan, from Lord Byron’s imagination, also satirizes the educated woman. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, on whom the poem might have been based, after arguing for a better education for women, had to reassure her readers that they need not fear that women would then become “masculine.” Byron’s treatment of the educated woman could be perceived as hostile. He denied any connection to his attitude toward his wife, Mary, from whom he separated after only one year of marriage.

Byron’s ‘Intelligent Woman’ in his poem Don Juan refers to that type of woman feared as ‘masculine.’ You could make the correlation between Betty Smith, a sensual woman as can be, in the same power dynamic/structure as Tiger McDrew with his younger concubine he seduces. Betty faces the perceptions of masculinity due to her assertive approach in a field historically dominated by men. As the aggressor with young Ponce, as the ‘intelligent woman’ she could be perceived as performing masculinity because she is the pursuer.

Betty reads a book on tantric sex.

In April 1971, an issue of Playboy Magazine published an article about the movie, which was co-scripted by Vadim himself. It included a nine-page photographic spread of actresses Angie Dickinson, Gretchen Burrell, Aimèe Eccles, Margaret Markov, and a few other Pretty Maids.

Roddy McDowall, the lovable character actor as Cornelius in Planet of The Apes: 1967 image by Yousuf Karsh.

I also adore Roddy McDowall; he is one of my favorite actors (Legend of Hell House 1973, Night Gallery 1969, Planet of The Apes 1968, Columbo (1971-2003) episode Short Fuse, too many roles in film and television to mention). When he’s not playing a conniving prig, he’s got a urbane sexiness that’s endearing. And you know, I never realized how attractive Telly Savalas was until I started noticing how sensual bald men are. Except for his role as the psychotic Maggot in Aldrich’s fantastic war film The DirtyDozen 1967, Savalas was very androgynous in the role of Captain Sam Surcher, predating his iconic role as Kojak, with his orally fixated lollypop, here in Pretty Maids, it’s his cigarette and ever-present sunglasses that are the props.

Telly Savalas, Aimée Eccles and June Fairchild in Pretty Maids All in a Row 1971.

Rock Hudson, romantic leading man of the 1950s and 60s, invokes the character of the sexy master manipulator, Michael ‘Tiger’ McDrew, All-American Football hero, faculty adviser, groovy high school guidance counselor/guru /Pedagogue at Southern California’s upscale suburban Ocean View High School. He’s a libertine with the veneer of an adoring husband and father, when in fact, he possesses an aesthetic breed of misogyny. I’d compare him to a Svengali for his enigmatic ability to mesmerize. He’s very cool with his calculating manifest and the power to attract worship from both sexes.

He has a discernible fluidity in his ability to control any situation he orchestrates. In particular, he sets his gaze upon the Exceptionally Gifted boys and girls at the high school. McDrew’s got a Master’s Degree in Psychology, which Surcher (Savalas) finds impressive as he lights his ever-present cigarette. This signals to us that Capt. Surcher’s got his eye on McDrew for the murders taking place at the high school.

Molière’s & Byron’s Don Juan Mythos:

While Lord Byron’s poem satirizes the dreaming romantic anti-hero, Molière speaks more to the heart of Tiger McDrew, who does not believe in loving just one beauty, that it would be almost a crime against nature not to succumb to any beauty that presents itself.

From Wiki: “The story of Don Juan first appears in an old Spanish legend concerning a handsome but unscrupulous man who seduces the daughter of the commander of Seville and then, when challenged, kills her father in a duel. In the original version, Don Juan mockingly invites the statue of the father to a feast; the statue appears at the banquet and ushers Don Juan to hell. There are many re-tellings of this story in drama and theatre; Mozart used the story for his opera Don Giovanni. (1787)”

Lord Byron’s poem begins, “I want a hero,” that is, “I need a hero for my story.” Is Don Juan a hero or an anti-hero? Has Vadim done so by reworking the original story? What people say about Tiger McDrew is that he dares to do what he wants. He is a libertine. There is forgiveness for his infidelities, even though he is corrupting force.

In Byron’s epic poem Don Juan (1821), he presents a satirical young lover who is a romantic dreamer. Byron pokes fun at philosophical and metaphysical conceptions of life and love. Byron tells us that we would be better off living in our physical reality, not unlike McDrew’s mentality.

Byron also suggests that ‘Platonic idealism’ is not based in reality, advocating that physical pleasure is the only reality and that such idealized thoughts about devotion to love are again hypocritical, leading to self-deception. Like a mask, you wear it in order to hide your true nature. “Pleasures a sin…and sometimes sin’s a pleasure” – Lord Byron.

It’s a very cynical view of love. Perhaps Vadim, too, was counseling us much in the same way. In reality, love is just a diversion of mutual pretense, leading up to the one true objective, to pleasure one’s self. To feed one’s desire.

The honesty of Byron’s poem is railing against false virtue and his perceived hypocrisy of fidelity. Among the best-known works about Don Juan are Moliere’s play Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre (1665):

From Wiki:

“Don Juan is a rogue and a libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women (mainly virgins) Later, in a graveyard, Don Juan encounters a statue of Don Gonzalo, the dead father of a girl he has seduced, Dona Ana de Ulloa, and impiously invites the father to dine with him; the statue gladly accepts. The father’s ghost arrives for dinner at Don Juan’s house and in turn invites Don Juan to dine with him in the graveyard. Don Juan accepts and goes to his father’s grave, where the statue asks to shake Don Juan’s hand. When he extends his arm, the statue grabs hold and drags him away to Hell.”

Bluebeard:

Bluebeard (French: La Barbe bleue) is a French literary folktale written by Charles Perrault and is one of eight tales by the author first published by Barbin in Paris in January 1697 in Histoires ou Contes du temps passe. The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. Gilles de Rais, a 15th-century aristocrat and prolific serial killer, has been suggested as the source for the character of Bluebeard as has Conomor the Accursed, an early Breton king. “The White Dove,” “Mister Fox,” and “Fitcher’s Bird” are tales similar to “Bluebeard.”

Notice how all the nicknames for Bluebeard bear the moniker of an animal, Fox, Bird, Dove, and of course, our Anti-Hero/Antagonist – Tiger McDrew.

Linda Darnell and John Carradine in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Bluebeard 1944.

McDrew is not just a Don Juan or Casanova; he is a modern-day Svengali,

“The word “svengali” refers to a person who, with evil intent, manipulates another person. The Svengali may use pseudo-kindness, artfully or deceitfully, to get the other person to do what the he desires.”

John Barrymore and his nose in the 1931 picture Svengali.

McDrew is a contemporary Bluebeardesque serial killer who’s mastered the art of seduction yet fiercely loves his wife, Jean, the primary woman in his world. And so will never be at the mercy of his fatal hands. Thus, by nature of self-preservation as not to ruin his perfect family life, he will untangle himself from any young nymphet from the collection of underage high school girls he has sex with, who threaten to expose his duplicity, therefore, ruin his ideal marriage.

Michael ‘Tiger’ McDrew dispatches his victims by strangling them. Leaves dismissive and cryptic notes with quips like “So long honey” and “Keep cool, honey,’ pinned on the pantied asses of the half-naked bodies he dumps in plain sight like fodder from his spoils. Honey is a term used to depersonalize and dehumanize the girls, as they are merely objects for his pleasure.

“KEEP COOL, HONEY.”

“POOR, POOR HONEY.”

Coming out of the 1960s with Free Love and Flower Children, McDrew uses these images of the sexual revolution to reach out to his students. There are images of hip posters hanging on the walls of his office. He makes himself very accessible to all… but in particular, a select group of kids. He’s turned down several university jobs because “This is where it’s at.”

Tiger McDrew takes on a protégé in Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson who has a John Molder Brown baby face like innocence) a neurotic, naive yet very bright nail-biting teenager who is probably the only boy in the school not having sex yet. He must hide his perpetual erections by shielding them with his clipboard and books.

Ponce, a boy who, by the start of the film, sputters on his scooter, and by the film’s end, is riding a motorcycle, the transformation into manhood is complete. He leads the film out with chrome, leather, and a sexy blonde passenger.

Eventually, Tiger sets substitute Betty Smith on Ponce to deflower the youth. He does this by demonstrating to Miss Smith how to make love in an excruciating, taunting mock love-making session that drives the smitten Betty Smith to the brink, only to leave her frustrated, by ending the impromptu lesson abruptly leaving her bewildered at the hands of this master manipulator.

Betty, primed by Tiger McDrew’s calculated seduction, finds herself in a state of heightened desire. Ponce, seizing the opportunity, fulfilled her long-suppressed needs with a passionate encounter. Their liaison served as a release for Betty’s pent-up arousal, skillfully stoked by McDrew’s manipulative advances.

He has also informed Miss Betty Smith that Ponce can not get an erection. Tiger’s manipulation of Betty is every bit a sexual act of power and control, as if he’s the one who took her to bed instead of just fondling her on the desk.

It’s the power that McDrew thrives on.

Jealousy rears its pretty head after Joanne Cameron sees Angie Dickinson coming out of Hudson’s office.

State Police Captain Sam Surcher is called in to investigate the killings of several girls after Ponce discovers the first victim in the boy’s washroom. From the beginning, Surcher suspects that Tiger McDrew has something to do with the murders. The prim Principal Proffer (Roddy McDowall) is mainly preoccupied with appearances and utters the ubiquitous phrase throughout the film: “SHE WAS A FINE GIRL AND A REALLY TERRIFIC CHEERLEADER.”

The rest of Pretty Maids All in a Row reveals to us Ponce’s primal awakening into manhood and the ensuing police investigation of the serial murders at the school conducted by Savalas as the determined Captain Surcher.

As an aside, I believe Tiger’s wife, Janet, knew on some level what her husband was up to. By the film’s end, she becomes part of his sick game, aiding him to elude the police. The film posits her as the only female he considers an equal; we are shown that she beats him at chess, an ‘intellectual’ game of calculation, which could be code for their matched wits, even in the face of his sexual maneuvering with his fan following young girls as a side ‘game’ to their relationship. It’s also obvious the couple has a fruitful sex life.

During Tiger and Jean’s chess match, the music underscores the mood with pared-down single notes glistening from a Fender Rhodes keyboard reminiscent of the dreamy, groovy sounds of the  ’70s.

The film also co-stars Barbara Leigh as Tiger McDrew’s devoted wife Janet.  It’s in her eyes… Janet McDrew.

Essentially, Janet knows where her husband’s allegiance lies. The chess games show her superior mind, the equally powerful one in the marriage, and the respect he gives her. Also, she has a calculating mind, and in the end, she can figure out not only his murderous ruse but also help him with the allusion that he has escaped capture. The film leaves us wondering about a lot of things.

Tiger says to Janet, “Guard your Queen.” And that’s what he does by killing off the girls who threaten his life with her.

Tiger McDrew appears to respect his wife, Janet. She can be considered the only Alpha female to match wits with him and the only woman to whom he is somewhat subordinate. That is why she is the only one he would not kill, the only one he can be devoted to. In this sense, he would always return to his domain, with her as his life’s primary love and lover. She has also bared his child. So, no one must obstruct, threaten, or invade the traditional territory with his chosen mate. A ritual that flies in the face of his libertine philosophy. This is his duality.

Whenever one of the girls demands more than just a secret liaison in his office, or whoever threatens the unspoken contract Tiger has with his wife, the sort of freedom, the secret indulgence he feels entitled to have, objectifying the girls he was meant to mentor, they must be silenced – killed. They are mere ‘honeys’ accessible for his sexual gratification only.

Joanne Cameron as Yvonne Millick. One of Tiger’s eventual victims.

There was something else that started happening in horror films, which I think Pretty Maids All in a Row could easily be tagged as a subgenre: the psychopathic serial killer movie. In the 70s, films started to portray the American family as not necessarily the sanctuary of wholesome goodness and normalcy. The ’70s deconstructed this myth.

Films started to blow the lid off the hidden fact that sometimes the monster came from within and not the invaders that were prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s, which were just code for fear of the bomb, communism, and non-conformity.

The ’50s gave us Don Siegel’s masterpiece Invasion of The Body Snatchers, 1955 – that dealt with paranoia, American hysteria, losing your identity, and the Communist Scare—as the enemy from without and within.

Now, it was a personal expedition to flip the presumption of American family values and subvert it so that it would become nightmarish and threatening. Not since Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960 did a film upend this notion. The early 1970s profoundly took the ball and ran with it.

Pretty Maids is not by itself a horror film. By framing Tiger McDrew as a football hero, devoted husband, and father—roles emblematic of the ideals that underpin the suburban American family—his narrative serves as a stark anomaly. This anomaly is underscored by the fact that his life revolves around a series of deceptions, moral transgressions, and homicidal crimes, which ultimately have a profound impact on the entire community. This juxtaposition highlights that such deviations, though initially perceived as rare, have proven to be more common than previously acknowledged, challenging the traditional notions of family and community integrity.

Culture and community became this reservoir of depravity and indulgence that creates the story’s core narrative. Conventional society breeds monsters that are palpable yet unremarkable people.

The 1970s was the time to subvert the American dream and the ethics of the nuclear family, ripping the covering off the shiny surface and exposing the dark underbelly of society and the not-so-family values. It was time for rebellion from the comfortable Hollywood cinema. After the ’60s exploded with its ‘self-hood’ backlash of Americana 1950s values, which gave rise to the sexual revolution and experimentation with drug use, the ’70s were ripe for its exploration into and subversion of the ‘American Family’ and the ‘Family Man,’ in this case – Tiger McDrew.

Hudson’s McDrew is shown with his family only after we see him in the midst of having carnal knowledge of an underage yet highly developed young high school girl. Unlike Bluebeard, who killed his wives, McDrew strives to balance his secret life romping with young girls and being a devoted family man. It’s only when one of his concubines reaches beyond playful seduction to grasp at a commitment from him that his feeling of being trapped and threatened triggers his murderous nature. In this way, he is a monster of convenience—a monster of necessity, like so many sociopaths to follow.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, an All-American Mama’s Boy.

Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse, and Ruth Gordon is Minnie Castavet. Rosemary is going to have a baby. The Devil’s baby!

From Hearths of Darkness: The Family in The American Horror Film by Tony Williams

From the introduction: Assault in the American Horror Film:

“During the 1970s an unusual event affected Hollywood’s representation of the American family. Generally revered as a positive icon of ‘normal’ human society, the institution underwent severe assault. The antagonist was no external force such as the Frankenstein monster, Count Dracula or Cat Woman: instead, the threat came from within. In Night of The Living Dead 1968, a young girl cannibalizes her father and hacks her mother to death. In Rosemary’s Baby 1968 Satan decides to reverse two thousand years of Christian hegemony by sending his messiah to destroy American society from within. Polanski’s film anticipates an assault that continues in The Exorcist 1973 and The Omen 1976.” continued. ” In The Last House on The Left 1972 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974 and The Hills Have Eyes 1977, typical American families encounter their monstrous counterparts, undergo ( or perpetuate) brutal violence, and eventually survive full knowledge of their kinship to their monstrous counterparts. All these depictions contradict normal idealized family images in mainstream American film and television. They disrupt the ideological norms of family sitcoms such as Father Knows Best, and Leave It To Beaver.”

Here in his Chapter Sacrificial Victims, he writes:

“Family horror films of the seventies reveal intense contradictions.” he continues by saying this very relevant piece – “Michel Foucault’s definitions of discourse and power-knowledge formations, horror film monsters are defined according to a particular set of institutional guidelines as ” abject” due to their antagonistic protest against family restraint.”

THE DEVIL’S SMILE…

To Tiger McDrew, women only excel as objects for sex. Meanwhile, boys could expand their imaginations and flex their masculinity and prowess in sports and intellectual endeavors. He mentors the unique boys who are meant for greatness in leadership or show athletic skill. As McDrew reigns over the students, he is a self-proclaimed Socratic – teaching them about sexual freedom. The boys should tap into their – as he puts it-  ‘animal’ selves. The girls are merely chosen for one thing. The one thing they excel at, in his mind, is offering up their bodies for sexual pleasure.

We see this in McDrew’s interactions with his students. It appears very black and white in his fundamental understanding of gender roles. Gender is a construct. In Vadim’s film, gender is seemingly a binary function.

Pretty Maids All in a Row presents a complex and mordant view of sexual dynamics during the sexual revolution of the 1970s. The film juxtaposes two contradictory ideas: the traditional notion that men are in control and entitled to sexual gratification from women as objects and the emerging concept of women’s sexual freedom and empowerment characteristic of the 1970s.

This contradiction appears to be a deliberate satirical commentary by Vadim on the societal tensions of the era. The film explores the risks women faced in pursuing sexual independence, highlighting the dangerous power imbalance that persisted despite the sexual revolution.

Vadim, known as a provocateur and Svengali of the New Wave Cinema of Sensuality, uses this film to critically examine the sexual politics of the time. The character of Betty Smith, an educated woman acting as the aggressor, challenges traditional gender norms and embodies the complexities of women’s newfound sexual agency.

His approach aligns with broader cultural discussions of the era. The sexual revolution was not just about sexual freedom but also about challenging traditional power structures and gender roles. Vadim’s work seems to engage with these ideas, using the film’s dark humor and provocative scenarios to highlight the contradictions and dangers inherent in this cultural shift.

In the 1970s, coming of age in a post-Free Love society was like the metamorphosis of butterflies. Ponce also starts as an innocent (fountain of youth), a ‘Chrysalis boy’ before he morphs into a womanizing male by the film’s conclusion. What’s interesting to note is that the environment, the atmosphere of the high school campus with these young nymphets fluttering about like butterflies, Vadim’s work appears to highlight the paradoxical relationship between the male exploitation of the female body and the women who actively embrace this exploitation as a form of empowerment, asserting it as their right and freedom to do so. It is an intricate system of archetypes and not an easy one to disassemble.

The ’60s and early ’70s were a time when there was an urge to ‘find oneself’ in a period of societal change. Political and social groups were trying to influence and shake up the status quo.

While the hedonism left over from the sexual revolution of the 1960s bled into the suburban pall, the uncomfortable friction and hostility of conformity vs freedom to express oneself led to the backlash of self-indulgence in an unforgiving cultural undercurrent of conservatism.

There was a ravenous appetite for autonomy. Kinsey, Masters & Johnson, the emancipating ‘pill’ and changes toward sexual attitudes created an environment for an even more sexual exploration and indulgence. There was a dramatic shift in traditional values relating to sex and sexuality. Freud had already peeked into our bedrooms, even though sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. There were profound shifts in behavior and institutional regulations. People were starting to become more expressive about their sexuality.

Tiger in his office with Hilda, letting it all hang out.

The institutionalization of young girls. The high school cheerleader!

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, given the counterculture movements and the availability of the birth control pill, women were offered a chance to shed their chains of moral confinement. Women had permission to seek sexual pleasure for themselves. Of course, this was still within the parameters of the institutionalization of ‘heterosexual marriage’, patriarchy, and suburban conformity.

“And the regulation of man’s sexuality in public. D.H Lawrence may have shocked an earlier generation with Lady Chatterley’s extramarital sexual independence, but it was not until the 1970s that women’s sexuality outside marriage became widely accepted.”  – From Sexuality & Modernity: The Sexual Revolution of the 60s.

Also implicit in the film’s narrative is how Vadim extracts the satire by showcasing the insanity of putting sports before the safety of the girls and the slayings taking place at this upscale high school in suburban California. This is Vadim’s very obvious vilification of American customs and traditions. It’s a dark commentary on the priorities of American culture, the middle class, and the observances we honor ruthlessly, like Michael ‘Tiger’ McDrew, strangling the neck of humanity.

Roger Vadim seamlessly weaves the eloquence of the classic suspense film within the dark satire, gearing up to its conclusion with a sangfroid and well-humored calm that grows darker ever so subtly to the open-ended question of the institutionalized male ascendency in society and the making of the mainstream suburban monster. Hudson’s comfortableness in the role lends to a realism that makes the film spare, at times sullen and capricious. I think of how the film also predates the revelations of a society that engendered the likes of  Ted Bundy or the BTK Killer.

One of Tiger’s pretty maids left in a public toilet.

The film doesn’t merely condemn the era’s newfound sexual freedom and promiscuity; in the way it presents a nuanced examination of the consequences and contradictions inherent in this cultural shift. The film’s satirical approach challenges viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about institutional failings and personal biases, and it also pokes fun at the educational system.

The film opens with the breezy song Chilly Winds, a deceptively whimsical piece with an underlying darkness to it. The music was written by Lalo Shifrin, lyrics by Christian songwriter Mike Curb, and sung by the Osmond Brothers.

Yes, I admit it. I had a crush on Donny Osmond and owned every 45 records and album of theirs. I saw them in concert at Madison Square Garden, too. I played Chilly Winds over and over again on my little record player. Go ahead, have a good laugh. You probably still have some old Back Street Boys lying around in the back of the closet in a dusty plastic crate from Target.

A DARK COMEDY OF DESIRE & DECEIT BEGINS:

The film opens with our young protagonist Ponce riding his scooter to high school. He is bombarded with images of nubile girls, emerging into their ripening butterflyesque womanhood, wearing tight-clad skirts, showing off their blossoming figures, full breasts and asses peaking out of panties that hemlines hardly obscure.

We and Ponce are inundated with images of rising sexuality, yet he is still quite a young milk-fed boy who cannot control what is happening to his body. The turbulent hardening of his penis at the mere sight of the opposite sex. He seems insignificant amongst these girls who are obviously, in reality, actresses who are older than high school age. He seems less apt to grab a young girl’s attention as he is clumsy, invisible, and lacking the necessary confidence, so much so that he might just fade away in the throngs of students buzzing around him.

Vadim and Rocher’s fetishized camera close-ups and perspectives are obsessed with flowing female hair, breasts, legs, and asses. We are being shown that these girls are ripe for the picking. Ponce is an outsider still, on the threshhold of maturity, with no sense of his own masculinity.

Interesting that the choice of name for our protagonist is Ponce, based on Ponce de Leon, the Spanish explorer who was associated with the legendary Fountain of Youth. Ponce Harper does exhibit a certain perpetual innocence, or youth, amidst the rest of his classmates, who are far more sexually energetic and developed.

Juan Ponce de Leon 16th century explorer.

Vadim’s cheeky double entendre.

Vadim’s tongue-in-cheek use of his characters’ names is playful and obvious. Tiger is just that, a predator, and Detective Sam Surcher (Savalas) is a seeker of the answers to the mystery of the killings—the only character asking the right questions. Even Angie Dickinson’s character, Betty Smith, is the most mundane and generic all-American woman’s name, as she represents the growing number of women in the 1970s who began the pursuit of their own sexual freedom and gratification.

Set the scene: We are now in class. The substitute teacher, generically and innocuously named Miss Smith sticks her ass in Ponce’s face, then turns and asks what his report is on. He tells her that it’s about John Milton. She is impressed “Ah, Paradise Lost” (allusions to innocence dying ) just to torture him further, as she walks over to the next desk brushes her ass and breasts against his face.

Ponce has trouble with constant erections, so we can see by his face that he is struggling. He excuses himself to go the bathroom, holding his notebook over his crotch to hide the bulge in his pants. While sitting in the stall, we see his boots resting next to a pair of legs. They are the chalky white, lifeless feet of a dead girl.

Sensing someone in the next stall, he asks who’s there and goes to investigate. The camera gives us a very depersonalized angle. This film eschews the typical thrills and emotional intensity of its genre, instead presenting a sterile and realistically stripped-down portrayal that focuses on authenticity over sensationalism.

The shot is minimalist – viewed from the ceiling, showing us a girl with her dress hiked up, revealing white panties, face down, slumped over the toilet. In this way, it is horrific, lacking that dramatic spirit. It is brutal in its austere simplicity.

A single piece of paper is pinned to her panties. A sparse classical piano piece is setting the pace of the scene. Ponce opens the door to the adjoining stall, asks if she’s alright, and removes the note, as the dead body of the girl slides to the floor. There’s a look of panic on Ponce’s face as he starts to stammer. He begins to call out for the school principal Mr. Proffer (McDowall); Ponce runs through the halls.

Ponce’s panic infuses an otherwise ordinary high school day with a palpable sense of urgency, lending a a heightened sense of veracity and ugliness to the film’s pivotal moment, underscoring the surreal tension that permeates the seemingly mundane halls of Oceanfront High.

Ponce keeps running thru the halls screaming for Principal Proffer. During this moment, we are shown Tiger’s Guidance Counselor’s office door; the orange/pink neon TESTING light is on. ( It might as well say attention: FUCKING). Now, inside the room, there is a naked, silken girl on top of Tiger McDrew. They are having sex.

Ponce barges into the principal’s room, where he is sitting at his desk. Ponce starts screaming.

“In our lavatory, she’s in our lavatory,” Ponce shouts pointing in that direction. Principal Proffer looks only slightly moved by this outburst. In McDowall’s inimitable snobbish manner, he asks, “Who?” Ponce insists hysterically, “Jill Fairbutt, she’s up there in the boy’s lavatory!” Proffer answers, “That is very much against the rules!” Ponce assures him there’s been no breach of ethics, “It’s not that, sir, she… it’s nothing immoral…she’s dead!”

The mousy and fussy Harriet Craymire (Susan Tolsky), Proffer’s bespectacled secretary, says to Ponce, “Mr. Proffer That’s exactly how it started in other schools… a moral breakdown, values completely disintegrated.”

Ponce keeps trying to interrupt her until he finally gets her attention, “Miss Craymire it’s alright, she’s dead…”

The darkly funny, ironic nuance renders farcical the notion that her immorality is justified simply because she has paid the ultimate price—her own death.

Keenan Wynn, who plays the bumbling, simple-minded local sheriff, Chief Poldaski, is on his way. The halls are buzzing with students. An entire crowd of people are now onlookers at the crime scene as Principal Proffer looks inside the stall, staring blank-faced down at the dead girl. Ponce is looking over Proffer’s shoulder. He says to him,  “This is my first murder, but should everyone be crowding in here?”

Proffer emits a response. At first, you would think it is one of concern, but he follows up his confused expression with one of the running commentaries of the film: “I don’t understand this; we’ve always kept our academic averages so high.”

There’s a quick cutaway to Tiger McDrew’s heavy breathing while he continues to make it with one of the young girls, and then we are back to the crowded hallway and the appearance of Chief Poldaski, who is now on the scene. In a very telling moment, Poldaski grabs the first black male student he sees and says, “Just a minute, you, not so fast!” The film has injected racism and bias inherent in law enforcement, assuming that the disturbance must be related to a black student. Another student has to redirect him to the actual crime scene—the bathroom.

Principal Proffer looks upset yet void of compassion; he’s more disturbed by the nuisance of it all. He utters the words that reverberate throughout the film.

“Uh… she was such a terrific little cheerleader.”

Ponce pleads with Proffer, if there’s any evidence, it’s being trampled by all the people in the room. Poldaski comes in, growling like a grizzly bear, ordering everyone to get back as he approaches the stall. He bursts into the stall with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop, causing the door to swing back and hit him squarely in the face.

Proffer, with the aide of Ponce, tells Chief Poldaski, “Don’t you think there’s enough evidence trampling going on here?” Poldaski picks up the cue and makes it his own idea. “Alright, everybody stop tramplin’ on the evidence, and that means everybody… so shut up!” The man is an idiot. Proffer closes his eyes as if pained.

Ponce begins to give Chief Poldaski an account of how he discovered the body. Poldaski walks over, ignoring what he is trying to tell him, and says, “Aren’t you the football water boy?” Ponce tells him he’s the student manager. Proffer corrects Poldaski and tells him the assistant carries the water. Poldaski writes this down. The entire scene is a circus of blunders amidst the seriousness of the situation. There’s a dead girl in the stall with a note pinned to her ass.

The idea of American sports, in this case, football, is invoked, and all other concerns go out the window. We see that Vadim is telling us what the priorities are here. A school that only cares about its appearance as upholding moral values, reverence for athleticism, and the outward look of propriety.

Ponce continues to try and give information and is interrupted once again by the idiot Poldaski who asks how he thinks the team will do against Valley High. Poldaski and Proffer talk about football while Ponce keeps trying to push his voice thru the madness to tell his version of the events that led him to find the dead girl.

Cut to:

Naked, Tiger McDrew is framed from the knees down while we see the languid girl post-coital lounging on the couch. The state police arrive. McDrew looks through the window blinds and remarks that he wonders what’s happened.

In a delightfully absurd moment, Susan Tolsky’s character, Harriet Craymire, finds herself in the arms of Deputy Grady (William Campbell), but not for a romantic waltz. Instead, he’s testing the logistics of carrying a dead body through the hallways to see how quickly the unseen murderer can dump the body in the bathroom. It adds a dash of that dark humor to Roger Vadim’s dark comedy.

Telly Savalas, as Detective Sam Surcher, is cool and keenly aware as he (pre-Kojak) enters the bathroom. We get a ceiling view of the room as if looking down at a cubicle filled with mice in a maze. Again, this is a very antiseptic P.O.V. Surcher asks to get a test for the presence of molestation sent to the lab. He is very serious in the midst of the rest of the people who are trampling the scene with their passive ineptitude.

Surcher tells Ponce to go to Principal Proffer’s office so he’ll be more comfortable when giving his account, but Chief Poldaski tells him he doesn’t need Ponce’s story. He’s got it right there, including the note that was “pinned to her ass.” Surcher looks quietly amazed (with that sexy squint Savalas has) at the utter stupidity of this bungling fool, who now pulls the folded note out from his back pocket. He unfolds it a little, sliding his fingers all over the paper to clean it off from his pocket lint.

A SET OF MAZE-LIKE SHAPES FOR LAB RATS.

Handing it over to Surcher. who rubs his eyes and asks, “Let me understand this.” He grabs a latex glove to handle the mangled note. ” You found this on the girl’s body?” now laughing – with that ironically sardonic cackle of his, “And you removed it?” He continues to jeer at Poldaski, “And then you folded it?” grinning widely. “Carefully.” His voice trails off into a caustic, exasperated vapor.

Poldaski answers, “Otherwise, you might have lost a very valuable piece of evidence… You know I’ve some very good ideas about this killing.” Surcher is mesmerized by this man’s ineptitude. He responds, “And I’m gonna need all the help I can get from you, Chief.” He chuckles to himself. “Starting right now.”

There is a hilarious quick cut to the little silver whistle being blown by Poldaski as he is now assigned to traffic detail.

Tiger McDrew is wrapping up his sexual encounter with the young girl when he gets a phone call from the principal’s office telling him to come down. He acts surprised. Walking through the halls, the kids are asking him if he’s heard what’s happened. They are flocking to him like he’s a patron saint. He heads into Proffer’s office, and again, we hear him on the phone, “She was a fine girl and a really terrific little cheerleader.” Ponce is frustrated by all the inane, insensitive chatter about sports and the significance of cheerleading.

Tiger McDrew is called down to Proffer’s office where Ponce is seated.

McDrew: “Yes, we’ve had quite a run of exceptional young men… and women (with slight hesitation) through here. Jill (the dead girl) was one of the finest.”

Proffer: “She was such a terrific.” Ponce interrupts, “Little cheerleader… dammit, Mr. Proffer, don’t you think she’d want to be remembered for something besides leading a bunch of stupid yells?” Proffer looks surprised. Ponce is twisted into a frustrated pretzel.

Surcher sees that Ponce is agitated and switches to asking about getting the time sequences straight.
“When you looked into the booth, you recognized her… you turned and then you ran for help?”
Ponce: “Well actually I didn’t recognize her at first…( he shifts in his chair uncomfortably) Well I was facing her from sort of an unusual angle… And I didn’t recognize her until after she toppled over.”
Surcher: “Well, how’d she topple over, son?” Ponce hesitates, scratching his chin; his body language gives away his skittishness. “I think I leaned on her.”

The camera pans to Proffer’s bewildered-struck expression.

Surcher, his sunglasses poised atop his striking tan bald head, “You leaned on her… how?” he says with a curious and sarcastic air to the question. Ponce rubs his legs with both hands and says, “When I bent over to read the note.”

Surcher leaning on Proffer’s desk turns his body back in order to look at Tiger McDrew’s reaction and then faces Ponce again. The camera pulls back to give us a wide-angle view of this awkward interrogation. Surcher gets up from the desk and comes to lean in closer to Ponce, cupping his hands. “What are you… What are you so nervous about?” laughing, Surcher’s question breaks away from his satyr-like grin.

Now, the camera frames a serious expression on McDrew’s face. His mind is crafting an artful thought.

Ponce continues to answer, “Because I… keep wondering if… maybe I did it on purpose?” He finally looks up into Surchers; a childlike innocence washes over Ponce’s face, like a little boy asking for his father’s approval.

Surcher calmly follows up, ” Did what?” but William Campbell, as Grady, Surcher’s right-hand man, says morbidly, “Come on kid, tell us what you did to the body,” he says in a low, growling, unsavory way.

Ponce becomes more composed, “I leaned my hand on her bottom as I said… You think I’d do anything else to a dead girl?” His voice grows more forceful, “I haven’t even had a live one yet!” he laughs pathetically.

The scene ends, and now we’re outside with Tiger McDrew and Ponce by the soda machines. McDrew asks him, “Love life problems, huh?” Ponce tells him, “What love life,” he says, acting angry and wounded by the pronouncement and continues, “I’m 17 years old, and I haven’t as much touched a girl’s breast yet.”

“Well, maybe you haven’t found the right girl,” Tiger McDrew asks if anything is bugging him. Supposing he’s worried about acne or bad breath. Ponce begins to tell him about his trouble having constant erections. “Perhaps there is one physical thing I should have mentioned… I have kind of a problem with a… you know… erections…”

Just as he says this, two leggy girls walk by, and Ponce moans in pain. “Is the problem constant Ponce or does it vary?” “No, ah, it’s pretty constant.” he crosses his legs. “Does anything seem to help?” “Yes, they don’t seem to happen as often if I take cold showers.”

McDrew looks amazed as Ponce continues, “When I’m with a girl the only thing that helps is if I do multiplication problems in my head… but that kinda interferes with conversation.” As Ponce is relating this to McDrew, we see Betty Smith walking slowly toward them, a vision of pure beauty as she drifts into view.

Tanned and golden cleavage emerges out of a tight white blouse. She walks over to tell Ponce that it must have been terrible finding that poor dead girl, as she goes to shake hands with McDrew and introduce herself, once again her breasts collide with Ponce’s face.

We see the wheels turning in McDrew’s head. As she walks away, we watch her long legs in her short brown suede skirt carry her out of view.

The scene breaks, and now the orange/pink neon “TESTING” sign lights up again on McDrew’s office door.
Listening to classical music on the radio, representing an intellectual mindset, the students sit at various desks. One young man gets up and tells McDrew he is done and hands in his paper.

“Incidentally… I’m putting your name down for track next semester.” The young Harold says, “Ah, come on now, Tiger, that sports scene is a drag,” he says indignantly, “I don’t know how you got hooked on it.”

Tiger McDrew answers him, “You can’t spend the rest of your life reading a book, Harold.” The boy answers, “Ah, geez.” McDrew pats him on the shoulder. “The animal body needs animal exercise.” Harold says disdainfully, “Right.” McDrew leads him out of his office with both hands planted firmly on the boy’s shoulders.

“I’m gonna teach you to feel, man… to live!”

As Harold departs, McDrew delivers a hearty slap to his back—a gesture laden with significance. This physical act serves as a tacit endorsement of a hypermasculine ideology, urging the male species to assert dominance and claim their perceived birthright as conquerors. McDrew’s doctrine of physicality is, in essence, a manifesto for male entitlement, encouraging the appropriation of power through brute force.

McDrew emerges not merely as a misogynist but as an elitist architect of toxic masculinity. He grooms these young men as if they were scions of an entitled, hypermasculine aristocracy, molding them into disciples of a philosophy that conflates manhood with dominance and aggression and the callous subjugation of others. His teachings reflect a dangerous confluence of patriarchal ideals and social Darwinism, perpetuating a cycle of gender inequality and masculine hegemony.

The remaining student, now, stripping away the outward props – the intelligent shell of herself, paring it down to just a sexual object. Her hair comes down, and her glasses come off. She has symbolically deconstructed the intelligent girl and become a body for the screen.

McDrew closes the door, turns around, and finds her starting to undress. She begins to shed her studious identity and offers herself to this man who is old enough to be her father. The scene concludes with her final act, extinguishing any lingering vestige of her smarts. Not that she loses her intelligence; however, it is symbolic of the character’s transformation, which exemplifies the regressive trope of a woman relinquishing her intellectual agency in exchange for sexual objectification. The scene ends with her taking the last ounce of evidence of her intellect away. She is symbolically, metaphorically reducing herself to an ‘object.’

Cut to:

We are at a beach house; it is here that the polarity of Tiger McDrew’s nature is revealed and that he is a “family man.” The dichotomous role as husband & father/lover and mentor/inspirer and murderer/creator and destroyer.

As he pulls up in his Mercedes Benz, the family dog runs up to him, barking happily. As he says hello to it, we are clued into this Southern California American iconoclast’s separate life as a traditional white picket fencer.

He is about to walk through the wooden door that leads to his backyard. Lalo Shifrin’s score is as easy breezy as a shampoo commercial for that Breck girl’s fresh beauty. Do any of you remember those ’70s commercials? A gayly tune with a male voice sputtering la la’s all over the screen. Reminiscent of the typical 1960s & ’70s far-out, pop culture mood. It is an almost a thematic style that Burt Bacharach could have written that uses the ‘la la’ as a musical phrase. And there are lots of ’70s flutes, shakers, and strummed guitars- in a word, groovy.

Perhaps Lalo Shifrin was giving a nod to his fellow composer because of the presence of Angie Dickinson, who had been married at the time to the iconic (and one of my favorite) composer Bacharach. Remember those Martini & Rossi commercials with the two singing the jingle? Bring on all those groovy ’70s commercials I grew up with! Just a note: Shifrin and Bacharach greatly influenced me as a songwriter.

The film now introduces Tiger McDrew’s wife, who, as stated as if posing in a Breck shampoo commercial, comes swaying up the sidewalk. A buxom beauty, A brunette with shoulder-length hair, breeze-blown and lips pursed. Emerging out of the blue, she looks at him like a seductive stranger, and he looks at her as if he has never seen anyone as beautiful. There is a moment, a flash of romantic mystery. Who is she? La la la…

They walk up to each other. As the music continues, the camera pans around. She looks at us, looking at McDrew sideways, sizing him up. We are circling the screen as she is circling McDrew. A camera technique often seen in films of the 60s and 70s.

“Hello, live around here… can I offer you a drink?” The scene cuts quickly to a little girl who comes running over to them. We are now fully shown the other side of Tiger McDrew: the loving husband, family man, and father.

The musical mood is broken as the little girl shouts Daddy, Daddy! As he picks her up into his arms, they all smile; the American dream is realized. The duality is exposed. He hugs her. His wife asks about the recent murder. “What is school turning into?” He asks, “You heard?” She tells him,” On the news, it’s awful,” he says dryly, “Shocking.” Then he tells her that he’s talked to the police. “They never want to tell you anything. Just questions.” He mumbles about it as they walk off-screen.

On the high school lawn, the theme music, Chilly Winds, is playing. Students are lounging on the grass. It is the Garden of Earthly Delights in Southern California.

The camera once again focuses on bare legs and panties as Ponce is lying on his stomach, most likely holding back or burying an erection, as he watches the girls walking by. One girl bends over, revealing her ass in skimpy panties; as she fixes her shoes, she says to Ponce, “Shopping?” She’s very aware that her tightly clothed, barely covered body is a visual tease or fleeting sight to the frustrated boy.

The girls are armed with provocative clothes and suggestive demeanors, all to titillate only to damn Ponce when he is drawn in by it. The narrative captures the charged atmosphere of adolescence, where self-expression and identity exploration intersect with societal perceptions and expectations. The students’ fashion choices are portrayed as a reflection of their individuality and the cultural trends of the time, while the story might be told through Vadim’s lens, provocatively exploring the complex interplay between female self-expression and societal perception as Pretty Maids critiques projected biases and desires.

This also might suggest that the narrative is blaming the girls for the men objectifying them. While the extreme misogyny on McDrew’s part is reprehensible, Vadim toys around with the idea that the female body is seen as an ‘object’, no matter from whose perspective.

Aimee Eccles as Hilda.

The bell rings, we hear nondistinct laughter, the students still buzzing about, and then we are in a lab room where one of the girls is being questioned. Hilda asks Detective Surcher in a very inquisitive tone, “Was she raped, Captain?”  He tells her that he’ll ask the questions as he coolly lights up a cigarette. He’s got a very smooth air about him and always collected and purposeful.

The criticism, or I should say cynicism, of the whole ‘feel good’ vibe of the ’60s and ’70s sexual revolution is apparent in this case where the girl spouts her free love ideology, asserting,  “I love you,” to Surcher. Then, seeing him blush, she adds,  “I’m surprised that embarrasses you; well, isn’t sex involved in some of the crimes you investigate?”

“Yes, now and then… now, about those boys Jill used to date… Were any of those boys in the habit of calling her Honey?” He turns around to show her the note he is holding in his hand. She laughs,  “Yes, well, probably all of them. See, our generation is not afraid of feeling… affection… or expressing it. For example… I love you.”

She looks up at him with innocence, smiling. She is an open flower. Surcher, closer to her, takes his sunglasses off and says, “And I love you.” He takes her by the hand and leads her up out of her chair. He continues genuflecting up to the sky.

“And the world must learn to love one another.” As he says this, he grunts and adds a little laugh, and she chuckles back at him to meet his grunt. She is clueless that he is mocking her. He points her out the door as if he is a gay choreographer, lifting his hand to show her the way out. “I’m afraid that will be all.” He calls her by her last name, but she corrects him. “Hilda,” he aquiesces. ” Hilda.” She is still laughing, revealing herself as a vacuous child in Surcher’s opinion. He responds in a mocking tone as she leaves; he puts the cigarette to his lips, still mimicking her simple-minded intoxication with life.

Roddy McDowall and Brenda Sykes.

Brenda Sykes, as Pamela Wilcox, is next to be questioned.

Off-screen, we hear “Next!” as if it is a cattle call for wanna-be starlets. As one beauty, or Pretty Maid, walks out, another enters.

The camera watches her walk with precision, as if we are now auditioning her. Again, the lens assigns us the role of voyeur. Every hip tilt, each swagger, her bare legs bringing her closer to us.

“Good afternoon, Miss Mellick.” She corrects him as well. “Yvonne.” Each young girl acts with a subtle hyper-sexuality toward Surcher. Foisting their first names on him, trying to personalize their encounter. They were conditioned early on by Vadim to be pretty ‘objects.’ McDrew may be objectifying these girls, yet empowered by their sexual freedom, they are choosing to be in control of their bodies. Once again, we are told through Vadim’s lens; however we interpret his vision.

In a classroom setting, Tiger McDrew is leading a discussion. A student asks, “Doesn’t every survey show that the police are oriented very conservatively?” McDrew answers, ” So are many Americans.”

A devious mind…

Ponce, “But if the police represent just one point of view… that could be very dangerous.”

Another student says-“Ponce, hey, come on, my dad’s dangerous ’cause he’s conservative?” “Your dad does have the power of repression,” Ponce says emphatically.

McDrew asks, “Do the police repress us? ” The class sits around in a circle, some playing chess. He clearly gives these kids the freedom to express themselves through an unconventional teaching style.

He enjoys the turmoil and conflict that he stirs up in the class discussion, partly because he truly enjoys the critical thinking that he has engendered and also because of his egoism; it is the vast manipulation that he reinforces by planting ideas in their grasping minds. From Tiger McDrew’s perspective, his philosophy centers on the belief in the uninhibited freedom of will, particularly in embracing one’s desires and impulses. He sees himself as a mentor, imparting this ideology to the young men at Oceanfront High, encouraging them to pursue their animal instincts without guilt or restraint. At the same time, McDrew subtly steers the girls toward embracing their sexual freedom, framing it as empowerment. However, within the narrative, this freedom is complicated by its ultimate function: positioning them as objects of male desire, offered up as part of a broader dynamic that conflates liberation with objectification. Through Tiger McDrew’s actions and worldview, the film raises unsettling questions about the nature of autonomy and the interplay between agency and societal expectations.

The class empties out, flooding into the halls like worker ants out of a hill. In another satirical moment, Ponce has to squeeze between two girls, causing their breasts to crush him in the process.

It’s at this point in the film, while spying on Betty Smith in the hallway that McDrew conspires to send Ponce her way to deflower him and cure his awkward virginity. McDrew uses his nefarious charms to lure her into his plan, knowing that she is obviously attracted to him. It is here that he begins to manipulate her into taking the fumbling young Ponce to bed. She becomes flustered when McDrew asks her to get together in his office. Once again, Tiger McDrew is the master manipulator.

I might try to equate Nietzsche with Tiger McDrew’s libertine, lothario, free thinking übermensch (overman) philosophy, but it would be an oversimplification and mischaracterization of his complex philosophy.

While Nietzsche was certainly a free thinker who challenged conventional morality and societal norms, he was not advocating for unbridled hedonism or libertinism. Nietzsche criticized those who devoted themselves solely to sensual pleasures and libertinism.

“In a typical high school, it would be difficult to invent a system more destructive of a child’s natural creativity. Only in the most backward penal institutions does one discover equally oppressive rules of silence, restriction of movement, constant examination of behavior.” – Tiger McDrew’s recorded notes. Surcher listens to his voice on the reel-to-reel machine and studies the message, developing ideas about this man in his instinctive bald head.

McDrew’s voice on the tape continues, “A world in which one must learn to work, eat, exercise and sometimes even defecate by the clock.”

As Surcher studies the contents of the recordings, McDrew walks into his office and sees that his tapes are being listened to. His private world invaded.

Surcher holds a meeting of the high school staff.

At one point, when the school staff, headed by Principal Proffer, is sitting around a table discussing whether or not to close the school, Surcher tells them all that “The killer is part of the school, there isn’t any more doubt about that.” McDrew starts to look pensive, almost silently hostile. One of the staff members says that they won’t win against Carverton anyway. Before adamantly adding his voice, McDrew suddenly seems to be looking over at Surcher. It’s when he chimes in, “We play on Friday.” McDrew comments as if a warrior who will not let his men be beaten, “Once you start retreating, life will drag you down.” After this comment, Surcher looks over at him, slightly stunned.

Again, the football game is the primary consideration over the tragic killings of the girls and the safety of future victims. Tiger McDrew almost exposes his more brutal antagonism toward convention, referring to being dragged down as an allusion to being dragged down to hell, as Bosch’s painting would suggest.

The correlation and emphasis the film puts on Tiger McDrew’s fixation with the Moliere’s Don Juan mythos is enacted in the scene where he has the students read a telling excerpt from the story…

Set the scene:

Under a tree, with pretty maids lying around on the grass, McDrew reads from the author.

“Why would you have me tie myself down, for the first woman who comes along give up the world for her and, never look at anyone else, you see. What a fine thing that would be, to be tricked into fidelity. To bury yourself in one passion forever and to blind from youth on to all the other beauties.” Looking at Brenda Sykes who plays Pamela, “That might catch your eye”

Surcher asks a young redhead what he is reading; she tells him it’s from ” Moliere’s Don Juan.”

“Beauty delights me wherever I find it…”

We continue to hear McDrew reciting from Moliere’s Don Juan in the background.

“And I easily give over to the sweet violence which directs me. Whatever happens, I can’t refuse loving. What is lovable, and as soon and as soon as a beautiful girl asks for love, If I had 10,000 hearts I’d give them all to her. The act of falling in love has an undefinable charm about it. But all the pleasure in love lies in the fact that it doesn’t… (There’s a pause, as he sees Surcher watching him recite from Don Juan, worried and sweaty, he says the last word, the pertinent word)... Last”

We Are a Fetishistic Society & A Society Filled with Voyeurs and Voyeurism:

The film represents a larger societal phenomenon, with the murders as a trigger opening us up to a conversation. For instance, one of the other glaring themes is that Vadim constructs a satire about American society being callous and uncaring about victimization, eternally voyeurs to tragedy and sensationalism. Everyone appears to be elated and euphoric while all these girls are being killed. In the midst of this horrific reality, all the players, with the exception of Ponce in the beginning that is and consistently Surcher, who is very dour and earnest about the situation. Meanwhile, the entire student body and faculty, among others, is celebratory and apathetic. There’s no reverence for the dead. It’s as if murder were a spectator sport, just like a football game with its cheerleaders.

Pretty Maids celebrates the glorious All-American pastime of Pom Poms and The Gridiron—the sweat of heroic athleticism is a form of patriotism and the cosmetic appearance of the value of teamwork, discipline, morality, and social etiquette of the middle class.

To McDrew, men are warriors and great thinkers. He is there to train other young men to live this model and perpetuate other great warriors to follow. To tap into their ‘animal’ instinct. Eventually, Ponce will finally embrace these tenets, and the publicity and the notoriety that the school is getting from the murders.

Surcher: A moral man set against an immoral world.

Tiger McDrew: Anti-hero & monster.

The scenes of football games, the locker room of athletic cupped Roman soldiers, the media swarming to the high school, the crowds watching the athletes, watching Surcher watching Tiger McDrew, all spectators… us watching them… watching…

… forming a collective spectatorship. The film is less about the victims and more about how everyone’s participation in the prevailing tragedy galvanizes the school around the wrong people and focuses more on their connection to football and its related heroes as a group. As an American society, we are not only voyeurs and spectacle junkies, but also very immersed in hyper-masculinity and toxic masculinity.

This is also Vadim telling a modern-day story about power and control, using Tiger McDrew as the hedonist emperor ruling his domain, a type of Roman leader like its most infamous Caesar, Caligula, who ruled and led his men unabashedly and violently with a philosophy of self-fulfillment.

Ultimately, Tiger McDrew remains the hero in the story. The players in the story, except Surcher, the protracted wheel of ethical conscience, perhaps simply raw justice as a working machine, all perpetuate the institution’s flaws. Nothing has changed in the deaths of these girls.

It creates, influences, and informs an entire cultural mythos. It allows Tiger McDrew’s philosophy to thrive… his killing the girls, as a magnet for the high school institution to merely continue its prevailing hegemonic roots of classism, racism, and the sexism, and expands outward to the local media and the surrounding community.

Tiger McDrew is just part of the story; it’s about us, the spectators. Society feeds off of sensationalism. The myth of American cultural egoism and egocentric rituals we partake in as a whole extends beyond personal narcissism to a broader phenomenon of collective narcissism, the objectification of people, the fetishism of ideals or objects, and an ego-driven obsession that reveals a culture shaped by self-interest and the constant negotiation between individual and collective identity. McDrew may be the monster in the story, but he lives in a society that allows him to prowl and prevail.

TIGER – A FATHER FIGURE, A HERO, A DEVIL BOUND FOR HELL AND DAMNATION.

Behind the camera, Rosher captures an interesting angle of Surcher entering McDrew’s office.

Vadim and cameraman Rosher use interesting frames, not unlike those in Neo-Noir, to reveal angles with doors to the right corner of the screen as a frame within a frame. Example: Surcher is waiting in the corner of the screen behind a door frame as a long view of McDrew comes out of his office,  framed within yet another frame of the school hallway.

Rosher shot the film with lots of interesting angles. In the beginning, the bathroom scene looks like a lab maze for rats, all closed in. There’s a scene where Surcher sneaks into McDrew’s office as the camera frames his sunglasses and bald head at an upward angle—a lot of odd angles for a very odd film. Everyone in this ordinary American town is shot from odd angles.

Surcher stalks the halls, looking to tie anything to McDrew.

McDrew’s camera is strategically placed in his office. June Fairchild as Sonny Swangle leaves a suggestive photo and seductive message on his tape recorder.

.

Vadim involves us in a sense of spare-ness, and more of his voyeurism, and perhaps this is what the tape recorder represents. This is yet another way of presenting surveillance. We see the tape rolling. Actress June Fairchild as Sonny Swangle uses the tape to show herself off to McDrew. Later, Ponce discovers the tape recording and the naked snapshot of Sonny. Ponce becomes part of the collective voyeurism that feeds on sensational news and is also a witness to grisly, titillating events—feeding off the frenzy of the gory and graphic details, making him and us participate.

McDrew records himself on tape and listens back, revisiting the wisdom that he has documented. Furthering his psycho-sexual release as he thrives on control and his god-complex that he wields over the young influential teenagers he mentors, tutors, and guides. He’s writing a book. He thinks of himself as a master, like De Sade, who collects youth, a puppeteer, guru, and narcissistic cult leader.

Do the tape recordings emphasize McDrew’s narcissism prevalent in the film? Does it also represent entrapment or eavesdropping? It will serve as a mechanism to tantalize and beckon Sonny’s demise, whose unfortunate mistake is to ‘capture’ her sexual encounter with McCrew on tape.

Ponce discovers the recordings and the snapshot.

The reel-to-reel tape recorder will play a prominent witness in the story, as Ponce will discover McDrew’s secret recordings along with a snapshot of Sonny one of his young playmates. When McDrew realizes that Ponce has a deeper window into his hidden life, it poses a threat to Ponce, his young acolyte.

McDrew is now threatened by Ponce who has discovered part of his secret life.

By the film’s end, Betty’s sexual drive has been unleashed, and she now moves on to more young men to feed her appetite.

Also by the end of Pretty Maids All in a Row, Ponce holds up the mantle of Tiger McDrew’s womanizing, he also starts to exhibit a tinge of excitement during the flurry of tv crews; in contrast to initially showing repulsion at the revelation that his hero and mentor is, in fact, a serial killer when he discovers the snapshot and taped evidence. It is too late for Ponce,  as he is now transformed into a lethario and perhaps a lady-killer himself.

This garden of earthly delights has corrupted him. The serpent has infected him. Betty has tempted him.

You’ll have to watch the film to see if Surcher gets his man and how it all plays out. Until Tiger McDrew’s ambiguous death – you’ll ask, does he die? The question is left open – while Ponce truly emerges as a complete and total Don Juan himself, as the ending scene hints at.

McDrew has transformed this institution vicariously through his deeds. American culture and traditions go on after Tiger McDrew is ‘gone’ as he is a symptom of society and not the complete and lone monster in this play.

McDrew is not insane. He is sociopathic and amoral. He knows right from wrong as he has a strong sense of self-preservation. He has a code he lives by, which enforces his sense of sexism and self-preservation. Just the fact that he dumps the first two girls’ bodies by plumbing speaks to the idea that they are to be discarded when done with and that it’s their parts, their plumbing, that they are only good for.

The monster is the American culture and exploitation of beauty, youth, and appetite for self-satisfaction, sensationalized manufactured heroism.

Pretty Maids All in a Row: A Few Juicy Bits For the Curious:

FROM BOY NAIL BITER TO HANDS FIRMLY IN POCKETS, THE ‘MALE’ STANCE.

Ponce will utilize the newly found masculinity that Tiger McDrew has given him through the gift of Betty Smith.

From “don’t drop the bar of soap in the prison shower” to “please drop that soap in the bathtub!”

During the afterglow of great sex with Betty, Ponce declares,  “Oh Brave new world, with such people… “

While Betty has been offered up as an object in this environment of sexual freedom, she too exploits the youthful boyhood that she now has been given permission and access to satisfy herself with.

Tiger McDrew also struggles with his own duality as he straddles his psycho-sexual philosophical beliefs and lives as the father and family man to wife and daughter. At certain times in the film, close-ups of Hudson’s pensive eyes and expression are downright chilling as we see a dark side to this American hero and quote ‘family man.’

We see throughout, as Vadim frames his facial expressions in close-up, that he lives in active conflict. As I’ve said, his wife, Janet, is also compliant in this because, on some level, I think she knows what he has been doing. Here again, the American Dream is not what it appears to be, for under the surface, the ugly truths and dark deeds that occur in the American family are manifest here with the McDrews.

Vadim’s Visual Approach: A Blend of Satire and Suspense:

Notice how Vadim & Rosher have framed Janet McDrew in between the two men, good vs evil. She gives a knowing glance to the camera and us.

When Betty sleeps with Ponce, we see them looking at us, looking at them in the mirror. The gaze is turned on us. They are the objects simultaneously becoming the voyeurs now; while we are the voyeurs looking at them, we are exposed.

We’re looking at them, looking at themselves, looking at us. Their gaze is turned on us.

At other times the camera is signaling to us with visual metaphors for sex and ejaculation, as in the scene that follows the night that Miss Smith initiates Ponce into a world of orgasmic bliss; the following morning, the scene cuts to sprinklers spurting water like streams of fluids on the lawn, just before we see two victims lying outside on the football field. Again, yet another theme, the violent integration of sex and death.

Keenan Wynn stumbles onto Hudson in a tryst with Joy Bang—much to both their ill fates.

Vadim’s cinematographer, Chuck Rosher, also used the camera to focus a lot on body parts, ogling, in particular, panties and breasts. Like close-ups of Betty’s lips, the positioning of the dead girl in the boy’s bathroom was strategically posed for the viewer’s benefit as much as it was for the police. This film emphasizes the physical form. At times, the close-ups are quite incisive, particularly when McDrew is having one of his liaisons with a pretty maid.

Roddenberry shot a lot of short-skirted women as well, but Star Trek was a beloved iconic contribution to the philosophical sci-fi community that dealt with issues of race, class, and war.

By the film’s end, we see him as confident in his predatory posturing, embracing every girl in school, each one Tiger McDrew once slept with… who he didn’t strangle, that is. Will Ponce become a ‘lady killer’? It’s a curious hole that Vadim leaves gapingly open at the end…

Roger Vadim: Pioneer of Sensual Cinema:

In Paris, Vadim attended the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, where he met film director Marc Allegret. Because of his association with Allegret, Vadim met various filmmakers and writers, particularly the incredible Jean Cocteau (Beauty and The Beast 1946 and Les Enfants Terribles 1950), as well as Jean Genet and Andre Gide. Vadim was exposed to a very progressive salon of creative artists, musicians, bohemians, and surrealists—an avant-garde crowd of post-modern intellectuals. Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, Proust, Amedeo Modigliani, and
Édith Piaf was among them.

Most notable is the fact that it was Allegret who introduced Vadim to sixteen-year-old Brigitte Bardot, who would appear in several of Allegret’s films before attaining stardom with the success of And God Created Woman in 1956 with Vadim. Bardot and Vadim got married in 1952.

Vadim was responsible for discovering Brigitte Bardot, casting her and her beautiful posterior in his 1956 sexually charged And God Created Women, which was famous for the scene where Bardot dances barefoot on top of the table, showing little nudity yet showcasing her sensuality.

The press became fixated on the sexual expressiveness of Bardot’s character, which created a critical argument about what is art and what is pornography. Of course, like every good controversy, the sparked debate made the film an international success.

Interestingly enough, as I make the correlation between Tiger McDrew’s character and Svengali, And God Created Women put Vadim on the defensive as a ‘Svengali’ who was exploiting the young, naive Bardot. Perhaps some of Tiger McDrew is Vadim working out his historical demons on film, as many artists are apt to do.

This is how Vadim responded to the allegations:

“I did not invent Brigitte Bardot. I simply helped her to blossom, to learn her craft, while remaining true to herself. I was able to shield her from the ossification of ready-made rules which in films, as in other professions, often destroy the most original talents by bringing them into line.”

And, of course, the idea that Tiger McDrew held sway over these young maids by the power of persuasion as if by some gift of mesmerizing them into his bed and under his control…Vadim was accused of being a Svengali when it came to his young bride. One thing that Vadim is credited for is focusing on Bardot’s natural beauty instead of relying on the dramatic artifices of fashion, hairstyles, and elaborate make-up or lighting to enhance a look that is unreal. It is this naturalism that directors like Jean-Luc Godard and other New Wave directors began to utilize in their films. Vadim is considered one of the primary explorers of the New Wave movement in film.

Before his divorce from Fonda, Vadim had relocated to Hollywood. He remained there so that he could direct Hudson in Pretty Maids All in a Row.

Vadim is considered an unapologetic womanizer. He spent the rest of the 70s writing two memoirs, Memoirs of the Devil and Bardot Deneuve Fonda, based on the infamous love affairs he had with Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Annette Stroyberg, and Jane Fonda.

Vadim fathered a child with Deneuve. Fonda eventually denounced their film collaborations, saying they were exploitative. Stroyberg appeared in Vadim’s adaptation of the Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s classic vampire story Carmilla, which he entitled Blood and Roses.

He had been married to Jane Fonda and was now crushed by their divorce. Also, having directed her in the segment where Fonda plays the sensual yet cruel Contessa Frederique de Metzengerstein in the Poe-adapted film Spirits of The Dead (1968),

Pretty Maids was filmed just coming off the success he had with the kittenesque Fonda in Barbarella (1968), the cult classic based on the French science fiction comic strip by Jean-Claude Forest.

Both Fonda and Bardot appeared in Poe’s adaption of Spirits of The Dead, in which Vadim, Louis Malle, and Fellini each directed the film’s three small vignettes.

In the 1968 film Spirits of the Dead, Jane Fonda played the role of Countess Frédérique de Metzengerstein in the segment titled “Metzengerstein.” This segment was directed by Roger Vadim and is based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story follows Countess Frédérique, a promiscuous and debauched aristocrat who becomes obsessed with a wild horse after her cousin, Baron Wilhelm (Peter Fonda), rejects her and is killed in a fire she sets at his stables.

Vadim went on to do Une femme fidèle in 1976 with the beautiful Sylvia Kristel (Emmanuelle in 1974, another guilty pleasure of mine), and then he made a very obscure film in 1980. I remember it leaving an impression on me. The film Night Games 1980 with Cindy Pickett was a very mysterious, fetishistic, and romantic piece of work. The character Valerie is very traumatized by a past rape. She meets a man who begins to open her back up by wearing an erotically surreal bird costume, not unlike the French character that Georges Franju adapted to the screen in 1963, Judex.

Excerpts from Roger Vadim’s autobiography entitled Memoirs of The Devil when discussing the casting of the Pretty Maids.

Vadim recalls 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.”

He also mentions that not one of the “Pretty Maids” wound up becoming a major star, but a few went on to do several exploitation and cult films: Brenda Sykes was in Black Gunn in 1972 and Mandingo in 1975, Margaret Markov wound up in Black Mama, White Mama in 1972 and The Hot Box in 1972.

Vadim also specifically ordered the wardrobe department to dress the girls in micro skirts and tight-fitting shirts. Mostly, everyone was NOT wearing bras in Pretty Maids.

Vadim recalls again in his autobiography, “When I started shooting Pretty Maids All in a Row for MGM-

“There was not a single other film being made in any of the six main Los Angeles studios. It was a strange paradox that the only director working at that time in the legendary stronghold of the cinema was a Frenchman. The vast MGM studio complex was like some western ghost town. Three thousand people were still employed in the offices and in the workshops, but the famous faces that had set the world dreaming were no more than shadows, the machinery continued to turn, but to no purpose, like a train running along the track when the driver is dead…Apart from one or two television series, my film was the only production at the time, and three thousand MGM people were working on it. Only in Russia have I seen such a cancerous bureaucracy.”

Baudelaire’s Shadows in “Pretty Maids”: Tiger McDrew as the Embodiment of Sin and Beauty:

Rock Hudson, producer Gene Roddenberry, left, and director Roger Vadim introduce the eight misses selected for key roles in MGM’s Pretty Maids All in a Row, Vadim’s first U.S. film. They are front from left: June Fairchild, Joy Bang, Aimee Eccles; center row: Joanna Cameron; back row: Margaret Markov, Brenda Sykes, Diane Sherry, Gretchen Burrell.

Baudelaire says, “One side of humanity reaches for fantasy and false honesty, while the other exposes the boredom of modern life. “

Tiger McDrew has a sense of privilege in savoring the secrets of the world that he has created outside his marriage and the tenets of society. He defines beauty; he chooses who he wants to sleep with. Who are the ‘exceptionally gifted.’ Tiger has a God complex and thinks of himself as God-like.

The divine power that Baudelaire writes about in another of his poems as part of The Flowers of Evil, called “Elevation,” has the narrator rising like a god to the throne of heaven.

“His ascendancy is compared to the poet’s omniscient and paradoxical power to understand the silence of flowers and mutes. His privileged position to savor the secrets of the world allows him to create and define beauty.”

We know from Tiger McDrew’s pedantic mentorship and the evidence of his philosophy documented on tape that he considers himself a great thinker, social innovator, and perhaps a sexual being like Baudelaire’s poet, whose aestheticism elevates him to levels of sensual ascendancy. The pretty maids are his flowers of evil, the temptations that will drag him to hell.

” A mythical world of his own creation, Land of Freedom and Happiness. There, all is nothing but beauty and elegance, / Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.” – From “The Head of Hair and Exotic Perfume”

Baudelaire’s poetry has often been described as the most musical and melodious poetry in the French language.

“The Flowers of Evil evokes a world of paradox already implicit in the contrast of the title. The word “evil” (the French word is “mal,” meaning both evil and sickness) comes to signify the pain and misery inflicted on the speaker, which he responds to with melancholy, anxiety, and a fear of death.”

“But for Baudelaire, there is also something seductive about evil. Thus, while writing The Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire often said that his intent was to extract beauty from evil. Unlike traditional poets who had only focused on the simplistically pretty, Baudelaire chose to fuel his language with horror, sin, and the macabre. The speaker describes this duality in the introductory poem, in which he explains that he and the reader form two sides of the same coin.”

“Together, they play out what Baudelaire called the tragedy of man’s “twoness.” He saw existence itself as paradoxical, each man feeling two simultaneous inclinations: one toward the grace and elevation of God, the other an animalistic descent toward Satan. Just like the physical beauty of flowers intertwined with the abstract threat of evil, Baudelaire felt that one extreme could not exist without the other.”

McDrew tries to draw out the animalistic in his male students. He is a man of ‘twoness’. His life is a paradox, and his desire for beauty fuels a very realistic horror of sin and, ultimately, death. As Baudelaire adeptly points out, one extreme can not exist without the other.

Roger Ebert wrote- “One thing you can say about Pretty Maids All in a Row. Rock Hudson sex comedies sure have changed since Pillow Talk…The movie itself is, finally, embarrassing. It’s embarrassing because Vadim’s personal hang-ups don’t fit the nature of his material, and so he tries to bend things.”

David Thomson wrote in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, calling Pretty Maids All in a Row – “a film of disturbing insights in that its central character – an amused Rock Hudson (once all that Universal allowed to the lovelorn) – does not separate his fucking of campus nymphets from his murder of them. Too unreal to know in bed, these chicks are plastic enough to be disposed of. The sexual idea in Pretty Maids All in a Row has become psychotic, acting out the dismissal of human reality that has always been implied in the method. And yet the film is tritely playful and the succession of post public children are gilded by the loving photography of that veteran, Charles Rosher, who once caught the rapture of Janet Gaynor in Sunrise.”

This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying thanks for stopping by the Last Drive In of earthly delights!