The Head Mistress

The Head Mistress (1968)

** (out of 4)

Marsha Jordan (under the name Vanessa Van Dyke) plays the title character, a strong-willed woman running a school for girls when she hires Mario (Victor Brandt) under the impression that he's deaf and dumb. Before long the mistress is seducing the young girls and she eventually finds out that Mario is doing the same.

THE HEAD MISTRESS comes from producer David F. Friedman and director Byron Mabe who has previously worked together on A SMELL OF HONEY, A SWALLOW OF BRINE, SHE FREAK and would later do SPACE THING and THE BIG SNATCH. They certainly made some interesting films together and this one could be called that as well. Look, if you're wanting some heavy drama or soapy melodrama then you're not going to find it here. This movie was produced to show off naked bodies in various sexual situations and on that level it's entertaining.

I thought Jordan was very good in the lead role. She doesn't have any dialogue as the film was shot silent so more times than not she's using her acting ability to show the toughness of this character. I thought she was quite good in the film and certainly looked quite nice. There are several young ladies who strip down so fans of sexploitation will enjoy that. There are some pretty campy scenes as well including a rape (?) scene where the mistress is attacked by a couple guys with one of them going straight for her feet!

THE HEAD MISTRESS isn't going to win any awards but if you're a fan of the genre then it's worth watching.

A handsome lothario finds out that the gardener of a girl's school is retiring (a girl's school where are the "students" are all ridiculously over-aged, very voluptuous, and seem to spend all their time having topless picnics and slumber parties--begging the question of WHY in the world the original gardener wants to retire). Anyway, the lothario gets the job by pretending to be a mentally retarded deaf-mute (or something)and naturally he manages to seduce all these hot-to-trot girls, which leads him into a confrontation with the eponymous "head mistress" (60's sexploitation legend Marsha Jordan) who is using the school as her own personal lesbian seraglio.

This movie is mostly just a lot of straight sex scenes with the girls and the gardener alternating with lesbian scenes with the girls and the headmistress (and you can probably guess the ending), but it does veer into pretty questionable "roughie" territory in a couple places. The headmistress catches the prettiest girl having sex in a bathtub with the randy gardener and reacts by tying her up (naked, of course) and whipping her bloody. But the "blood" is obviously coming from the whip as Jordan is obviously hardly touching her fellow actress with it. No more believable but slightly more appalling is a scene where a girl becomes pregnant and decides to hang herself(topless, of course). The headmistress then comes upon the scene of the most downright demure, and completely ridiculous "hanging" in cinematic history and responds by--for no real reason other than to reveal the VERY questionable taste of the filmmakers--pulling down the hanged girl's panties. Wow, what a turn on! It makes you wonder who the hell used to watch these things.

Fortunately, these "roughie" scenes are almost impossible to take seriously. And the girls are all quite pretty and all quite natural (I personally will tolerate a little misogyny and bad taste if it spares me a lot of silicone). Marsha Jordan was not much of an actress, but she was always effective in these kind of roles. And this is currently paired up on a Something Weird disc with "The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill" featuring another 60's sexploitation legend Stacy Walker. Both are worth a look if you're interested in sexploitation fare of this era.