The Grindhouse equivalent of Calendar Girl Murders, which I reviewed earlier this week (click here if you missed it), The Centerfold Girls is an interesting, if flawed little film that functions as a sort of combination proto-slasher and a semi-anthology that sort of plays like Tarantino's Death Proof by way of Pulp Fiction.
Basically, what we've got here is three separate "stories" following three main women, with one antagonist pursuing each of them through the individual segments, each of which has a different feel to it. Mind you, unlike a typical anthology, the stories don't really have a big surprise "twist" at the end- mostly they just end with someone dying.
However, they really do each have a different vibe to them, which helps to distinguish each from the other, and help make this a cut above most films of this type, even if the film is still flawed in many ways. (We'll get to the specifics of that in a minute.)
Our main antagonist is Clement Dunne, played by Andrew Prine, an actor known for his extensive exploitation-heavy resume, which includes such favorites as Simon- King of the Witches, Crypt of the Living Dead, Nightmare Circus, Grizzly, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, The Evil, Amityville II: The Possession, the two V television mini-series and Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem.
Dunne is a holier-than-thou man who takes it upon himself to "help" out a group of girls who posed nude for a men's magazine, a la Playboy. Of course, this being an exploitation flick, by "help" he actually means "kill." That isn't a spoiler- he's shown disposing of one of his victims in the first scene, under the credits, no less.
We don't get a lot more than that, save a brief glimpse into his lair, which is painfully white- reportedly Prine's own idea, in an attempt to flesh out the character a bit, as in this is a man that only sees things in black & white, as it were. The "black" comes courtesy of his dapper black suit and saddle shoes, an outfit which is also very Tarantino-esque- no way he hasn't seen this film.
In the first "story," we follow Nurse Jackie- nope, not that one- as she heads out of town to interview for a job. Jackie is played by Jaime Lyn Bauer, a soap actress, best-known for The Young & The Restless and Days of Our Lives, though she did appear in an interesting-sounding TV-movie called Mysterious Island of Beautiful Women and had cameos in the 80's comedies Pray TV and Young Doctors in Love, which I'm pretty sure I saw on cable back in the day.
Along the way to her destination, Jackie picks up a hitchhiker named Linda, played by Janet Wood. Wood has some decent genre credits on her resume, including roles in Angels Hard as They Come (co-written by Jonathan Demme!) Terror at Red Wolf Inn (which I reviewed at on point and will try to post here on down the line), Snakes, Slumber Party '57, Russ Meyer's Up!; the Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn vehicle Foul Play, Ice Cream Man (with Clint Howard) and an episode of George A. Romero's much-beloved Tales of the Darkside anthology series.
Unfortunately for her, Linda has some hippie friends that she apparently runs a regular scam with, which involves her befriending travelers in order to gain their trust, then later calling in the cavalry, aka her fellow hippie friends, to rob them blind.
If this sounds a bit Manson Family-esque, it's clearly meant to be, especially when one of them turns out to be a smooth-talking bearded fellow that tries to rape poor Jackie, after terrorizing her within an inch of her life.
As if this and the looming threat of Dunne weren't bad enough, Jackie also has to contend with local pervert Ed Walker, who ALSO tries to rape her, but abandons it because she doesn't put up enough of a fight! PC this movie is not, to say the least.
Walker is played by perennial character actor Aldo Ray, who started out his career working with such luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, John Wayne and Rita Hayworth, but was reduced to starring in bit roles like this by the 70's, thanks to a string of bad marriages that left him struggling to pay alimony to various women.
Genre fans might know him from movies like Psychic Killer, Haunts, Haunted, The Lucifer Complex, Death Dimension, Don't Go Near The Park, Bog, Sweet Savage (an X-Rated flick for which he won the Adult Film "Oscar"!), The Glove, Human Experiments, Mongrel, Dark Sanity, Vultures, To Kill a Stranger and Shock 'Em Dead (with Traci Lords, speaking of "adult" films), among many others.
Fun fact: his son was Eric DaRe, aka "Leo" from Twin Peaks, shown here with the most glorious of all mullets.
Also, the actress who plays Walker's wife, Paula Shaw, played Jason's mother in Freddy vs. Jason.
Anyway, by the time fate catches up with Jackie in the form of Dunne, she practically is resigned to death, poor thing. After the day she's had, who can blame her? Basically, this section of the film plays like a home invasion thriller, but boy, do they pile on the horror for Nurse Jackie. I'm guessing she probably wishes she stayed home. So much for being upwardly mobile.
In the second story, we have the closest thing to a slasher film, as Dunne pursues his next prey to an isolated island, where she and a group of other models are shooting even more nude photos. Needless to say, this doesn't go over well with Dunne, who takes most of them out one by one, save one poor girl who ends up the victim of not-so-friendly fire.
Our main calendar girl here is Charly, played by Jennifer Ashley, who was also in Nightmare Circus with Prine, as well as DePalma's excellent musical horror flick Phantom of the Paradise, drive-in fave The Pom Pom Girls, Jaws rip-off Tintorera: Killer Shark, Alien rip-off Inseminoid (aka Horror Planet), Guyana: Cult of the Damned (about Jim Jones) and the excellent women-in-prison flick Chained Heat, with Linda Blair.
Also cropping up in the segment is Francine York, as the woman bankrolling the shoot. York was in everything from TV's Batman, Lost in Space and Bewitched, among lots of other 60's-and-70's-era television, but is best-known to me for her role in Ted V. Mikel's proto-Charlie's Angels flick,The Doll Squad, which is a lot of fun. She would later reunite with Mikels for the Astro-Zombies sequel, M3- Cloned and Ten Violent Women: Part Two.
Keep an eye out for a quick bit by Janus Blythe as Charly's roommate before she leaves for the island. Blythe was also in Phantom of the Paradise alongside Ashley, but is best-known for her work in horror favorites like Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive, Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (as well as the sequel), Drive-In Massacre and The Incredible Melting Man.
This middle section is easily the most fun, with lots of seedy characters and gratuitous nudity. Granted, the movie is called The Centerfold Girls, but there is seriously a lot of nudity in this thing. Even the women who only show up for a minute or two often end up naked, apropos of nothing. Hey, they don't call it "exploitation" for nothing.
In the final section, we finally get someone who fights back, albeit only eventually. It's stewardess Vera, played by yet another genre fave, Tiffany Bolling.
After a well-received turn on the Rod Serling TV-series The New People- sort of a proto-Lost, for those unfamiliar- she began a great string of Grindhouse faves, including Triangle, Bonnie's Kids, The Candy Snatchers, Wicked, Wicked (which utilizes the split-screen technique pioneered by DePalma throughout the entire film); The Wild Party (co-starring Raquel Welch and from, of all people, Merchant-Ivory!), The Vals (a Valley Girl rip-off), Open House and my personal fave spider invasion flick, Kingdom of the Spiders, featuring none other than William Shatner.
Not unlike our first protagonist Jackie, Vera has a terrible time of things, running afoul of a dopey friend (Connie Strickland, of Black Sampson and Act of Vengeance fame), who rats her location out to stalker Dunne, two drunken sailors who drug and rape her, and ultimately, Dunne himself, who not only allows her aforementioned rape to happen, but then picks her up and takes her to a burnt-out, isolated locale to kill her when she figures out he's not who he seems- a passer-by helping her out after her nasty ordeal.
The location in question is Topanga Canyon, California, which had just suffered a forest fire and used to be where none other than the Manson Family made their home, as well as being a hot spot for various musicians of the 70's era, i.e. The Beach Boys (Manson was pals with drummer Dennis Wilson), Neil Young, Emmylou Harris and Little Feat, among others.
Part of me kind of hoped the Manson Family hippie knock-offs and the rapey sailors would randomly show up and Bolling's character would take them out, too, as they emerge unscathed in the film for their respective nefarious actions. Alas, such was not the case. Exploitation films aren't exactly known for their morality.
The film is unusually well-photographed for a movie of this type, thanks to the efforts of Robert Maxwell, an exploitation regular, who also shot the likes of Mikel's The Astro-Zombies and Girl in Gold Boots; Blood Mania, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Point of Terror, The Severed Arm, House of Terror, The Candy Snatchers, The Candy Stripers, and two of the best Grindhouse titles I've ever heard, but haven't seen, Up Your Teddy Bear (with Julie "Catwoman" Newmar) and Did Baby Shoot Her Sugardaddy?
The music score is really unique as well, and credited to "Wheeze" (no relation to Weezer- I think), about who I could find nothing whatsoever online, beyond the fact that a guy named Mark Wolin wrote and composed their music. This is his and their only credit.
It sounds a bit like the late 60's/early 70's psychedelic rock act Love at times, particularly "The Red Telephone," which you might know from the Taking Woodstock movie. Other times it has a brass-heavy sound, which is reminiscent of the cop shows and movies of the times. Neither is particularly appropriate for the movie, but I dug it nonetheless.
The film was directed by John Peyser, who primarily directed for TV, and written by Bob Peete, who went on to work in various capacities on TV, notably on Good Times and Amen. It was based on a story by Arthur Marks, who also directed Bonnie's Kids, as well as the Blaxploitation classics Detroit 9000, Bucktown, J.D.'s Revenge, Friday Foster (with Pam Grier) and The Monkey Hu$tle (with Rudy Ray Moore, aka "Dolemite"), many of which the film's producers worked on as well.
All in all, this isn't a perfect film. It doesn't do enough with the whole triptych formatting to really justify doing it in the first place, beyond the fact that each of the sections have their own vibe, and the through-line of the main girls being women who have posed nude that Prine's character is stalking.
It also has a real mean streak that makes it tough-going at times. It seems like every guy in this thing is a pervert of some kind, and many of them are rapists to boot. I get that it's exploitation, but does every guy have to be despicable?
On the plus side, the main women are reasonably well-developed as characters, and the actresses playing them are good in their roles. Ditto Prine, who, despite the inherent one-note nature of his character, still manages to add just enough layers to be interesting, a lot of which I'm guessing was all him, and not the script's doing.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned nasty vibe to the film can make it a hard watch at times, and it will likely not go over well with the more PC types out there. Party viewing this is decidedly NOT. Not that every Grindhouse film has to be, but this is definitely not one of the fun ones.
And yet, in spite of it all, it does capture the period well, and has enough going for it to recommend at least a single watch, especially for exploitation fans, and those curious to see what sort of thing eventually led to the slasher boom of the late 70's/early 80's.
The second tale in particular is very slasher-esque, and easily the most fun of the three, verging on Giallo at times, a la Bava's classic Blood & Black Lace. Also note certain tropes: the freaky phone calls, the killer "crossing off" his list of victims, the isolated locale in the middle and the stalking of victims one by one, sexual proclivities leading to death, etc.
As such, I'm just going to give it a light recommendation. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it, either, and the cast, score and cinematography are just strong enough to warrant seeing it at least once, especially if you dig this sort of thing.
The film is relatively readily available on DVD (cover shown above) and Blu-Ray (coupled with the aforementioned Bonnie's Kids), as well as for online streaming on Amazon.
Check it out...if you dare! 👹
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