Geekscape After Dark: Radley Metzger’s “Score”
I find it kind of disheartening that erotic narrative features are now considered a novelty. There was a time back in the 1970s when porn flicks were shot on film (16mm or 35mm) and could only be seen in unsavory viewing booths, “stag” parties or adult movie houses. In 1972, thanks mostly to the runaway popularity of “Deep Throat,” pornography enjoyed a brief mainstream surge, and kind, down-home suburban folks were gathering in groups to view sex films in public venues. For a while there, porn was just good, dirty fun.
Thanks to The Internet, porn has kind of become a little more mainstream again (I’ve heard stats that posit that 30-80% for the Internet is smut), but it’s often relegated to still pictures, or short vignettes; narrative features – like they were back in the 1970s – have become a specialty field. But there was a time in the 1970s, when X-rated films were consumed openly, and garnered attention from serious film critic and heavy/mouth-breathing wanker alike. “Midnight cowboy” and “A Clockwork Orange” spring to mind. There was even talk that Stanley Kubrick would direct a sex film (Eyes Wide Shut, anyone?)
What was lost in this “shrinkage”of the pornographic feature is something that pornographers have all but forgotten in this modern age: sexual tension. The slow, erotic build-up of attraction. Luckily, thanks to the folks at Cult Epics, we now have DVD access to the better-known classics of one Radley Metzger (“Camille 2000,” “Therese & Isabelle,” “The Lickerish Quartet”), often considered the master of the erotic film, and his daring bisexual classic “Score.”
“Score” is set in the Riviera (the country is never named), and is rife with all the accoutrements of gloriously junky Eurotrash pseudo-poetry: we have the lugubrious narration by an all-seeing narrator. We have the overwrought set design. We have the thick-chested hunks and the waif-like women. We have the jazzy, repetitive soundtrack. And, most notably, we have the swinging, bisexual chic that was once so very acceptable, and now is the stuff of fetish sites and immature tittering jokes of 14-year-olds.
“Score” follows the adventures of the bisexual Elvira (Claire Wilbur) and her bisexual husband Jack (Gerald Grant), a swinging married couple who are constantly playing an extended sex game: Together, they select a target couple, and see if they can, within a month, seduce them. Elvira will seduce the woman, and Jack will seduce the man. They each tally up their score at the end of the month, and declare a winner. No prizes are discussed. At the outset of “Score,” Jack and Elvira have already been working on a young prudish American pair, and are very close to sealing the deal. Elvira even goes so far as to have sex in front of the Sissy Spacek-looking twentysomething Betsy (Lynn Lowry from “I Drink Your Blood”). Jack only has to make insinuations to Betsy’s husband Eddie (porn star Calvin Culver) to get him vaguely interested; it seems that Eddie has some sugar in him already.
Despite that one sex scene, “Score” is actually largely sex-free, opting instead for titillating occasions of drunken dress-up (sailor costumes, diaphanous robes, and leather cowboy pants abound) and long conversations of suggestive talk, where the young couple are slowly – ever so slowly – goaded into having gay sex. This may sound kind of sinister on the page, but Metzger, clearly more interested in the eroticism of the situation, tries to keep things mostly upbeat. Well, mostly. There are a few insufferable scenes of weepy confessions, and a few stretches where things seem stretched past the breaking point. But aside from that, the film is largely just a build to the inevitable hardcore sex scenes.
Yes, the two women go at it. And yes, the two men go at it. The man-on-man sex scene is surprisingly hardcore for a film of such high production values, and we’re treated to many a loving, low-light close-ups of their bodies. The women’s sex scene, in contrast, is frustratingly arty, shot mostly in mirrors, and through distorting glass, and seems stiff and distant. Especially in light of the lush photography and professional production design. “Score” looks way better than any slasher flick from the ’70s.
Metzger doesn’t just let us off there, though, actually following these couples to the next morning, where they discuss the consequences of last night’s bisexual adventures. But, in the spirit of the thing, the young ones find that, if they play by their own rules, they find bisexual swinging to be kind of liberating. The film’s final shot is Jack and Elvira scoping a new mark.
In an age where 14-year-old virgins are becoming bored with porn (a phenomenon that baffles and old guard man like me, who had to fight for porn as a teenager, flipping through cable channels hoping for that 1 1/2 seconds of glory through the blurry lines), and kids now have instant, private access to all kinds of freaky sex, it’s kind of refreshing to see an adult film that’s actually for adults.
One that’s actually thoughtful lush and, well, intimate. In an age where you can watch just about anyone being sodomized at a moment’s notice, it’s actually daring and refreshing to see a bisexual feature film that gets there more patiently. One that’s erotic rather than merely pornographic. It’s a film that actually goes all the way.
The DVD also contains a huge amount of special features including some very entertaining footage of on-set antics, and playful cast parties. It also traces the careers of each of the actors, some of which went on to do wonderful things, some of which ended badly (Calvin Culver was an early AIDS victim). Cult Epics did their homework, though, and put out a work of actual, unexpected and surprising quality. Good of them, I say. Keep the spirit of old smut alive.
