The Roommates

I mostly agree with The Hoyt's review except where he says initially that "this is not a very good movie" and that Arthur Marks had "low standards." Marks was, IMO, an underrated exploitation master and "The Roommates," while perhaps not as good overall as "Bonnie's Kids" or some of his other films, is nonetheless a great, lost drive-in classic that screams the 70's.

The 70s hair. The clothes. The beauty. The music. The drama. The sex. The murder. The comedy.

It's all there, in ample proportions. If only my summer jobs during college were half as exciting (LOL).

Entertaining and worth seeking out at any cost for fans of the genre.

Carla (Marki Bey), Heather (Pat Woodell), Beth (Roberta Collins), and Brea (Laurie Rose) are four absolutely lovely young co-eds who head to the community of Lake Arrowhead for some R & R. The story mostly consists of their amorous adventures, while the activities of a psycho on the prowl form a major subplot.

Written by director Arthur Marks and actor John Durren (who plays the small role of Socks the biker), this is good, straightforward exploitation entertainment that has its cake and eats it too. By that, this viewer means that Marks & Durren combine some enlightened sexual politics - the four main characters are independent women who know their own minds - with diversions of the far more lurid kind. The script has some surprising wit going for it, although there are some pretty silly lines as well. The assets of the female cast are stressed whenever the opportunity presents itself. Also, our actresses are engaging and intelligent as well as being fine eye candy. Bey, in particular, shines.

Many of the men in this series of episodes are not exactly portrayed in the most flattering light. Lee (Ben Pfeiffer) is especially sleazy, the kind of guy who has no more need for a woman once he's gotten what he wants from her. David Moses is very likable as Mike, the rural cop who becomes instantly smitten with Carla (you can't blame him).

This is a very nicely shot movie that is simply gorgeous in more ways than one; Harry J. May performed the cinematography duties.

Look for appearances by Connie Strickland as a victim of the killer, and Juanita Brown & Uschi Digard in the orgy scene.

Seven out of 10.

This movie has been unavailable in any form for many years. Short of driving down to the original Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas when they did the occasional repertory showing, there has simply been no way for most people to see it. Now that has changed with a long-awaited DVD release. And it was actually worth the wait. It isn't that this is a brilliantly conceived movie by master filmmakers, or conversely, that it's one of those largely mythical "so-bad-it's-good" films, but it's one where all the elements just happily gel together in a near-perfect exploitation romp.

The format of the story involves four sex college-age girls, who are not all technically "roommates", but are spending summer vacation together in two lakeside houses. The girls each have individual adventures. The black girl (Marki Bey) works at a library and is torn between two lovers, a jealous white stud and a heroic black sheriff's deputy. The blonde girl (Roberta Collins) has a fling with a recent divorced older man. The brunette (Pat Woodell) is supposed to be "babysitting" her younger cousin (Christina Hart), but they BOTH get involved with a middle-aged womanizer and his troubled teenage son. The last and sexiest girl (Laurie Rose) becomes a nurse at a boy's camp where she helps out a bullied male virgin (although not so much with the bullying part). These separate stories follow the formula established by Roger Corman/New Line in the early 70's with his "Nurse" movies, but this film does not have the ham-handed attempts at humor or the dated and often annoying faux-feminist politics of the Corman-produced films. Instead it has a giallo-esque killer wandering around picking off the secondary female characters--which is actually a lot more fun.

The movie actually spends more time creating various red herrings than it does on the murders (they should have called the lake Lake Red Herring), and the identity of the murderer ends up being rather perfunctory and obvious. But the mystery-killer plot does avoid some of the borderline misogyny that mars some of the other films produced by Arthur Marks in that era like "Centerfold Girls" and "Bonnie's Kids". This falls between the pseudo-feminist preaching and the sleazy misogyny of the low-budget 70's era into a happy medium of truly enjoyable exploitation.

The five girls, of course, really make the movie. Marki Bey is the best actress. Roberta Collins would have the most substantial exploitation career (although she is somewhat wasted here). TV actress Pat Woodell is serviceable. The best two though are Laurie Rose and Christina Hart. Rose is probably the closest to being a purely softcore sexploitation actress, so not surprisingly she has the most nude scenes, but her acting is actually quite good here. Christina Hart plays a character that alternates between a naive innocent and a malicious young tease (similar to Robin Mattson in "Bonnie's Kids"). She is incredibly sexy even with her clothes on. I'd highly recommend this one.

Near the opening, it shows two of the women in a public shower, showing some skin while having a conversation about how nature's natural beauty shouldn't be exploited... but that's exactly what they're of course doing by flashing their boobs for the camera in a cheap film, so the hypocrisy is quite funny. They probably thought if they showed two women at least sounding intelligent and talking about politics, then they could get back to the real business of showing their boobs and exploiting them. How weird but hey man, that was the 70's.

Pat Woodell is in it and is of course beautiful and smart. It's sort of too bad she never did more in the way of quality work because she had the talent and the looks, however she probably did the intelligent thing by getting out of showbiz.

I won't bother describing what happens because others have mentioned the details, but if you like funny, campy movies, then this one will probably not disappoint.

The first time I saw Roommates a few weeks ago I thought it without merit and deserved only a 3. Probably this was due to having seen the eye-popping (don't ask) Beach Bunnies (1976) a couple of days before. Packaged as a sex film, it's hardly more daring than a 1960's Elvis Presley movie, a bit of a swindle. One reviewer reckons it has more sex than comedy, from which I can only surmise either he thought it entirely devoid of comedy or there are two versions and he saw the uncut one. On the second, more cerebral viewing I better appreciated the good points. Enjoyment of older low budget films can be blighted by that grainy, out of focus look, this picture is so sharp it could have been shot last year. And, like the scenery, the girls are easy on the eye, especially Brea and Carla. I rather felt the others were there to make up the quorum, though of course this is highly subjective. To digress, I only recently started reviewing films and by now all but the most abysmal or obscure have garnered at least a dozen reviews. This can make it hard to think of anything original to say. On the other hand it's likely someone has already delineated the story in some detail, obviating the need for any humdrum descriptive writing. That being the case here I will make just a couple more observations. While the story is not far fetched, neither is all of it believable. A real life Brea, taking the reputational and possibly legal risk of bedding a teenage boy, would surely have picked the confident and better looking (albeit conceited) Aaron over the mousy, tongue tied Harold. I guess we were supposed to think Harold rather sweet and so deserving the girl of his dreams. Which provokes the contrarian in me to see him rather as a bit of a wimp. I wonder if I'm alone in suspecting that elements of the murderers' modus operandi owe more to a famous Hitchcock scene than mere coincidence - no names, no spoilers.