From the Shelf/D2D update #87: The Babysitter (1969, Tom Laughlin as “Don Henderson”)
(Featured in 42nd Street #2.)
Acquired: Last week, from Amazon.
Seen before?: Nope.
The Babysitter is about a midlife crisis cured by humping. And not just any humping - humping a free-spirited 19-year-old blonde who is decidedly not your wife. Such wonderful things the movies teach us these days!
Sarcasm aside, this black-and-white piece of cheesecake from the man who would be Billy Jack has more going for it than first blush would reveal. George Carey is credible in the lead role of George Maxwell, whose life is turned upside down by, respectively, pixieish babysitter Candy Wilson and sultry blackmailer Julie Freeman (who just wants Maxwell to acquit her biker boyfriend of murder). Carey articulates Maxwell’s frustration at the arc of his life (mostly his sex life) with more aplomb that I expected from a cheap potboiler such as this. Patricia Wymer isn’t nearly as effective as Candy - she’s a terrible actress, and you can see her thinking about every word she has to utter - but she’s certainly a lovely-looking young lady, and her lack of inhibition is nothing to sneeze at.
The script, too, is stronger than it seems at first. The dialogue is oft-dopey - in the film’s goofiest scene, Maxwell and Wilson initially bond over tacos, with the older man expressing admiration and wonder for the younger generation’s openness to new experiences, leaving me to wonder how sheltered this guy is if he lives in Southern California and doesn’t know what a goddamn taco is - but the plot takes some unexpected turns and generally seems to be trying its best to keep us on our toes while we mark times between nude scenes. Candy may ultimately be a grindhouse version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but she ends up being an unusually active iteration of the type. She leaves Maxwell better than she found him because that’s what she’s supposed to do; her selflessness, however, does not extend to Julie.
Also, this film contains gratuitous lesbianism and gratuitous biker rape. Not that everything about this film isn’t gratuitous.
Up next: Probably a childhood thing…
