The Single Girls

friends advised me to catch a copy of this flick. ?Not that easy because it's an OOP. Anyway, I caught my a copy and looking at the cover I thought that it would be a nice movie a real exploitation one, and the title says it all, bloody. Well, don't believe the hype. It's only 83 minutes of your time waisting and maybe there is 1 minute of blood, and that's laughable too. The killings are the worst I ever seen, it's unbelievable that so much fuzz has been written about this flick. Let's say that they are talking a lot and keep on talking and talking, nothing really happens except now and then the usuall T&A but it doesn't lift the movie as watchable. Again, the cover made you think you will catch a OOPgem but it wasn't the truth. I have seen a lot of trash, this a real trash, don't waist your time.

"Dr. Phillip Stevens" (Wayne C. Dvorak) is a psychiatrist who has set up a private practice on a tropical island and caters to singles who are experiencing intimacy issues. His therapy mainly involves things like group encounter sessions, sensitivity training and a host of other new-age techniques which implicitly encourage public or private encounters of a sexual nature. What he doesn't count on is the patronage of a psychotic killer who hunts down his guests one by one. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this had a couple of good things going for it. First, it had some attractive actresses in Claudia Jennings (as "Allison") and to a lesser extent Jean Marie Ingels ("Phyllis") which the directors (Beverly and Fred Sebastian) made sure to give ample coverage. Likewise, they also managed to maintain the mystery until the very end which seems to be a lost science in many of the films of today. On the other hand, I thought some of the scenes could have used more suspense and the script needed a bit more attention as well. Additionally, both the beautiful tropical scenery and the talents of Robyn Hilton ("Denise") were essentially wasted for the most part. In any case, while this wasn't a bad movie by any means, it could have been better and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

A group of men and women travel to an island retreat where Dr. Phillip Stevens (Wayne C. Dvorak) helps them to expand their sexual awareness by discussing their needs, getting them to fondle each other in the dark, and walk around blind-folded. One visitor in particular is in need of some serious therapy: they're sneaking around the island bumping off the women (all of whom are, rather unbelievably, absolute babes).

Opening with a murder - the harpooning of a young woman - by an unseen killer, Bloody Friday (AKA The Single Girls) looks set to be a fun photo-slasher, perhaps inspired by the success of the Italian giallo genre; instead, it winds up being a rather tedious slice of highly dated hippie nonsense that focuses more on the characters' relationships than on their untimely demises.

The first half an hour is particularly wearisome, with lots of dull chit-chat, weird group sessions, and belly dancing. The film eventually picks up a bit with some gratuitous nudity from most of the women and a couple more murders (although they are frustratingly tame in terms of bloodletting), but the film as a whole is an unremarkable and instantly forgettable drive-in flick, one that even slasher completists and fans of exploitation babe Claudia Jennings (who plays 'final girl' Allison) might struggle to sit through.