The Harrad Experiment

I just watched a bowdlerized version of "The Harrad Experiment". I'd heard of this movie, but had never seen it. It stars Tippi Hedren, James Whitmore Jr., and a very ( almost unrecognizably ) young Don Johnson.

The story concerns a small college which has gone co-ed to an extreme. Boys are deliberately room-mated with girls, and the couples are encouraged to have sexual intimacy.

Now, had that sort of film been made, today, you'd have a mind-boggling, no-holds-barred sex-fest; but back in 1973, they made a sort of tentative pastel-water-color story with bland characters and dialogue, sprinkled with curses the actors seem to choke while saying. Mind you, I wasn't disappointed, I was relieved. This movie is sort of an icon of modern 'sex as salvation' subject matter in film.

The movie comes off as a kind of bland, sex-driven "After-School Special". The script is vanilla and cliché-ridden; with lots of pop-psychology and not-quite-there challenges to 'old-fashined' mores.

Hedren and Whitmore are the married professors conducting the experiment. We never quite know whether they're actually ( hypocritically ) condoning 'free-love' or whether they're trying to point out to the students that monogamous relationships really are the strongest. Either way, they are dangerously close to law-suits. The curriculum is so wishy-washy that, in comparison, Alfred Kinsey's 'research' looks like the Sodom and Gomorrah Pride Parade ( actually, it probably was ). Intimacy seems to be their real goal, rather than merely pandering to one's sexual gluttony, but they are terribly stupid in encouraging 'sexual freedom' as a means of discovering that.

The style of the film is so typically early-70's with its light, cheerful, guitar background music and sunny edge-lit cinematography; that I expected Karen Carpenter to start singing "Rainy Days and Mondays". It renders the film, unintentionally, quite funny.

There are three folk/pop tunes sung in the film's background, two beautifully performed by Lori Lieberman, and the last by ( what?! ) Don Johnson, himself, and not badly, either.

Other than the Lieberman songs, the only real highlight of the film is an amusing improv team ( The Ace Trucking Company -- featuring a young Fred Willard ) performing on the topic of 'group marriage'.

Most likely, the film would have seemed maybe 2% edgier with all the nudity and G-D's left in, but I seriously doubt it. I could tell where the cuts were made and there was precious little eye-poison in this watery Lorimar Production.

A real surprise is that one of the writers was ( and I blinked twice when I read his name ) Ted ( Lurch, the butler ) Cassidy. He has a cameo early in the film.

I can't recommend the film, due to its themes ( insipidly as they were presented ), but I'm glad that I've been able to check off and discount another cheesy step on the ladder to our current gradual cultural downfall ( "The April Fools", "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" being others ).

This is one of the movies that passed me by when it came out in 1973. I was 27, married, working, and had three young children. However I recall hearing about it because of its daring nature.

An incoming group of Harrad college students have been assigned a roommate of the opposite gender, "carefully chosen." They are becoming the experiment, to see what happens when the pairs share a room and are expected to become sexually exploratory. Don Johnson is one of the featured students, and he also sings a couple of songs written for the movie. He also comes close to romancing his real-life future mother-in-law, Tippi Hedren.

Many of the "featured" reviews here knock the movie because it apparently is available on DVD in a badly edited version and a poor print. It recently (2023) became available on Amazon Prime streaming and, judging by the 96 minute running time is the complete, uncut movie.

In fact, watching it you can see it has quite a bit of full frontal male and female nudity. However the video and sound are marginal, watched on a modern hi-def flat screen TV the images are very fuzzy. Don Johnson was about 23 during filming, he went on to marry Melanie Griffith who was only 15 here and is uncredited as one of the students.

It isn't a particularly good movie but an interesting watch for the 1970s sensibilities. It is mostly notable for its subject and the nudity.

At home, streaming on Amazon Prime.

Robert H. Rimmer's manifesto for the love and sex generation was brought to the big (drive-in) screen by low budget director Ted Post in 1973. Unfortunately the book would have been better suited to have been done in 1968 by someone like Radley Metzger. Because though it may seem dated compared to today's standards. I've a feeling the movie was almost as dated in 1973. The book was written in 1966 by a horny square guy, that tried to punt the book as a "real" experiment in a college that's hidden away somewhere, with 4 kids writing fantasy masturbatory tales of their opposites. Something that would have suited Mr. Metzger, and he would have probably added a dimension of good honest seediness that would have benefitted the film adaption. Instead we have (5 years, too late) Ted Post's treatment of the book. While I do find the film pretty entertaining unlike most of the reviewers, it's just not relevent. And it's all done, as if you were watching a "sexual awareness" film in your high school class. The characters are treated as if they were all blosoming sexual flowers, waiting to picked at the right moment of their maturing intellect. But in it's own dated way, it's kinda cool. Obviously the ideas expressed in this film are dangerous to today's idealogy, but it was made in 1973!!! So with this in mind, it's like watching a drive-in "Eight Is Enough" with nudity. When I was playing hookie from grade school, I would have loved for a film like this to come on TV! All the actors in the film are very likeable. "Eight Is Enough" actress Laurie Walters is believable as the shy virtuous virgin Sheila Grove. While Don Johnson's third film outing is far more confident, and adds an air coolness to the miniscule budget. His character Stanley (after the film "The Magic Garden Of Stanley Sweetheart" (1970), Don can't seem to escape the name Stanley??) is one of the more interesting ones, because he's far more open with his sexuality and the desire to get down with the ladies. Yet later you find that he's not very open with his emotions, and his emotinal attachment to Sheila. Hence the lesson learned. You cannot runaway from yourself. Having said that, there's basically no other lessons to be learned from this (Harrad) college. The rest of the film indulges in naked Yoga scenes (with people connecting through Zooms???), naked swimming in college pool, discussing and understanding relationships, playing jokes with the outside world, and Don Johnson trying to bed down with every lady on campus. Sounds like the perfect Drive-in movie to me! But as an intellectually stimiulating film, your better off watching a John Cassavetes film. If you prefer something less tame, your better off watching some real 70's porn by Radley Metzger. But if you're interested in a Cult classic that's cool in a early 70's retrospect...you might find it as entertaining as I did. Curiously, Don Johnson sings two songs on the soundtrack, was his agent trying to sell him as a pretty boy rock star (ie: Leif Garrett, David Cassidy, etc)??? Strange?? Sounds like a mix of James Taylor and Bread. Bruno Kirby in one of his earlier roles is pretty much a natural playing nerdy awkward types, so the movie tends to pick up a little when he's in the film. Tippi Hendren has a small role as the loyal wife/ assistant to the founder James Whitmore. Her daughter Melanie Griffith was a 14 year old extra in the film, though I've yet to actually spot her in it. Apparently an early 20's Don Johnson courted this 14 year old with mother Tippi's blessings. Now that's when truth is really stranger than fiction. Double strange! Great little curio film, though.

It took 11 years for Robert Rimmer's novel written in 1962 to get to the big screen. In that time America had undergone a cultural sea change in its values. So a novel written in the beatnik years is updated to the middle 70s where it certainly would have been less shocking than the experimental college of Harrad headed by James Whitmore and Tippi Hedren had been brought to the screen in 1962 when the omnipresent Code was still in place.

This college promotes coed rooming and in this carefully selected group of students Don Johnson and Laurie Walters are paired as are Bruno Kirby and Victoria Thompson. It's the story of these four students that is the basis of the plot.

I won't go into it, but it is Johnson who challenges the mores of society far more than Whitmore and Hedren ever expected.

The movie made quite an impact when it came out, but by today's standards seems like really tame stuff. It's also quite a display of 70s fashions as well for kids and adults. Viewers will still find it enjoyable.

This was more or less the KINSEY (2004) of its day, though clearly quaint in comparison; still, it is a measure of the times that the film caused a mild stir back then whereas KINSEY virtually made no ripples when it emerged! Anyway, HARRAD is mildly interesting (if perhaps too low-key to stay in the memory for long) in delineating the forward-thinking/experimentation that occurred in sexual relationships at the end of the 1960s. Incidentally, I rented the film as part of a small tribute to its recently-deceased star James Whitmore: of course, the middle-aged actor does not get in on the action (even if it is never particularly explicit); Tippi Hedren, then, appears as his still-attractive spouse/collaborator – who even catches the eye of the campus hunk (Don Johnson, interestingly the long-time partner of Hedren's real-life daughter Melanie Griffith!). The rest of the cast is filled with fresh faces (including future comedian Bruno Kirby[!]…but especially notable is lovely and initially shy heroine Laurie Walters who, in her turn, is pursued by leering Robert Middleton at a nearby café). Unsurprisingly, partners get swapped (whether intended or not) which invariably cause heartbreaks, but there is also some cheap humor at the expense of a bespectacled and plump student. While director Post was more at home in action-oriented fare, he handles the delicate subject matter with directness and reasonable perception; besides, the film looks good, sports a typical 1970s pop score (one of the songs being performed by Johnson himself) and, for what it is worth, was even followed a year later by a sequel, HARRAD SUMMER.