Janie

Janie (1970)

** (out of 4)

Janie (Mary Jane Carpenter) is a young girl who apparently has some sort of bizarre sexual fantasy about her father. As the movie starts Janie is in bed with a much older man and she begins to tell him about her day. When then flashback to the various stories she tells, which includes her luring men in with her sexy body only to then kill them.

JANIE is a film that I'm really shocked isn't better known by people. If you're a fan of exploitation then how is it you've probably never heard of this film? Well, I'm going to guess the reason it's not better known is the fact that it's really not that good of a movie. Yes, the plot description is a knock-out but sadly the film was burdened with some flaws including a low-budget, which probably kept the movie from achieving more.

Still, if you're a fan of exploitation then this is still a must-see because, after all, how many awful sexploitation movies are out there and known to fans of the genre? This one here has a lot going for it including the lead actress who is extremely cute and she fits the part of a nymph very well. She's certainly easy on the eyes but she also makes you believe she could lure all of these men to their death. The budget doesn't allow for very gruesome murder scenes but there's still a little blood mixed in with the sex and nudity.

The film clocks in at a very, very short 65-minutes and it's really not that long because there are all sorts of weird flashbacks throughout the film. We get countless flashbacks to previous murders in the movie and I'm going to guess these here were done so that the running time could be extended. The film isn't all that well-made but these types of movies don't really have to be the work of Orson Welles, now do they?

Jack Bravman, who would later direct the horrid ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE, is credited with this film but many believe it was actually directed by Michael Findlay who has a small role in the film. This honestly doesn't look like the work of Findlay so I'm going to go with Bravman as the director.

This here is a pure example of a sleazefest. There's nudity and blood in it in the most gratuitous way. It isn't for everybody but people who love exploitation, roughies or grindhouse flicks this is a must see.

The story is very simple, Janie (Mary Jane Carpenter) is out to random killing and she's telling her story to her dad with whom she's making love with. Yes, incest. She has a kick on killing because after each kill she masturbate. But all killings she has to undress in some way or let friends undress for her. It's just until the end that you know how far she actually went.

Why is it pure sleaze, the script, the sound made of one track full of acid rock that can irritate some. Further you have bad sound, you can hear the camera, a lot of hiss on sound and sometimes they are too far away from the microphone. There's no use of extra lighting which shows inside buildings. And of course all the nudity that has nothing to do with the story. Made as a roughie it has in fact nothing to show from underneath, no genitals at all let even say bushes (well, just one second).

But for the geeks there's a reason to hunt this flick if you can find it. So far as I know it's OOP and a rare object. Not only that, Michael Findlay do act here. He was the director of the well known Snuff (1976) but became most notorious with his death. Findlay was killed (1977 aged 38) in a helicopter accident on the roof of the (then) Pan Am Building in New York city. On his way to John F Kennedy airport to connect with a Paris-bound flight, Findlay was planning to demonstrate his new 3-D camera to potential backers in France. But there's also Roberta Findlay in it, Michael's wife. Both were in front and behind the camera in Janie.

Mary Jane only appeared in 3 flicks all made in 1970. A pure sleazefest...they don't make 'em like that anymore. The hair, the short skirts, the no-bra women, the white boots, those were the days.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 2,5/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Janie is a fetching blonde schoolgirl who thinks people are "stupid and disgusting". We hear her psychotic conscience directing her to do terrible things...first, she sets up a sexual encounter between two acquaintances...as they are making love, she runs over them with a car. Getting a big thrill out of this, she masturbates wildly while looking at their bloody corpses. Next, Janie takes a dip in a filthy pool...the owner of the pool comes out of his house, and follows Janie to the beach. There, she sticks a knife in him and pushes him into the water from a pier. More masturbation. Next Janie thumbs a ride from a lesbian who recommends that Janie come to her home and freshen up with a nice bubble bath. Janie agrees, and the lesbian ends up with her throat slit. As Janie's conscience rambles on and on, we come to understand that the only one who can keep her sexually satisfied is her father(Eeew!). She gives Daddy a call and arranges to meet him. She takes a quick breather to watch her drunk stepfather beat her mother to death. More masturbation. She then proceeds to Daddy's house. Once there, she is greeted by a woman who presumably is Daddy's mistress. She and Janie exchange hostile words and Janie strangles the bitch with her belt, dragging the corpse into a bathtub. Daddy returns home, and he and Janie make passionate love while Janie tells him about her eventful day. He laughs this off, until he goes into the bathroom and sees his mistress dead. Janie is committed to a padded cell in a nuthouse. The End.

This is a late-entry roughie, and it has the usual substandard lighting and sound quality expected in this subgenre. A pretty sick and strange affair this is, with terrible, disorienting acid rock throughout. Worth a look for the onscreen presence of Michael and Roberta Findlay, the royal couple of vintage sleaze.

This movie starts with a sexy but rather elderly-looking "schoolgirl" (Mary Anne Carpenter) rolling around in bed with a man who is old enough to be her father because you see. . .oh, never mind. She then starts telling her much older lover about her "day", which began when she and her equally mature-looking friend decided to "play hooky" (for some reason dressed in their school uniforms). They get picked up while hitchhiking by a middle-age lech in a station wagon and she convinces her friend to have sex with the guy. Why, I don't know, nor do I know why she suddenly decides to commit some sudden automotive coitus interruptus by running over them both with the station wagon. Anyway, this begins a bizarre, but not particularly graphic (certainly due more to the limited budget than good taste) flashback killing spree.

Obviously, this movie is kind of a cross between "Mantis in Lace" and "Toys Are Not for Children", but it is not really as good as either. Naturally, both Michael and Roberta Findlay (sleaze cinema's First Couple) are involved both in front of and behind the camera. Mary Anne Carpenter is quite sexy, even if she doesn't exactly light the screen up with her acting. Each murder is punctuated by her character masturbating for about five minutes, somehow without her either removing or her hand ever going beneath her early 70's grannie panties. That's pretty typical of this whole movie which, in concept, is unbelievably sleazy, but is actually rather tame.

Just in case you prefer your 70's exploitation extremely rancid, gratuitous, pointless, psychedelic and not needlessly stretched, well then you should definitely ask "Janie" out on a date! This cheap excuse for a motion picture barely runs over an hour, but it contains more sleaze and general weirdness than the majority of exploitation movies do in their normal running times. "Janie" is totally … demented, but at the same time hugely entertaining as long as tolerate constant errors in continuity, a lack of plotting, hideous photography and sex-laden situations that are politically incorrect to the extreme. Janie is a perky and sensationally torrid teenager with clearly more than one mental issue. She doesn't speak too much herself, but her guiding voice does all the talking for her. The narrating voice talks about the beauty of the autumn season (because then everything is dying or dead) and continuously reassures Janie that she's better than everyone else and that everybody in her direct surrounding should meet a violent death. According to the charming voice in her head, the only man good enough for Janie is her daddy, and thus she sets off to see him. On her journey Janie runs a car over her classmate and a random guy, stabs a pervert in the back, cuts up a lesbian and peeks through the keyhole to watch her stepfather beat the hell out of her mother. Eventually she arrives and has sex with her father, though not before strangling his bitchy mistress with her belt. As you see, just another average day in the life of a wicked teenager… What makes this film so awesome (in terms of tastelessness, so to speak) are Janie's reactions to murder & mayhem. She reacts to the sight of bloodied corpses like other teenage girls react to, say, the release of Justin Timberlake's new CD or a huge discount on pretty shoes. She giggles, playfully hops around and promptly begins to masturbate where she stands. Okay, most teenage girls probably don't do that when they buy shoes… Mary Jane Carpenter undoubtedly ranks very high on the unofficial list of "hottest-actresses-to-appear-in-just-one-movie" and she depicts her character like she's some type of exploitation version of Little Red Riding Hood. She looks genuinely irresistible in her too tight uniform and the boots are just … wow! The murders are gruesome but not exactly shocking and the overly cheap editing and acid-soundtrack are often quite annoying. But hey, it's all about boobs and dementia so why complain. One final trivia detail cult fanatics are likely to appreciate is that both Michael and Roberta Findley have supportive roles.