Jeunes filles impudiques

Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (1973)

** (out of 4)

Jean Rollin directs this crime film with a touch of lesbians and sex. Two young girls hitchhiking through the country stop at a house, which they think is empty. Later that night, after some hot lesbian sex, they discover three people are also at the house and they turn out to be thieves missing some stolen jewelry and naturally they think the girls have stolen it. This isn't that bad of a film, although the English dubbing really doesn't do it any justice and the actual budget looks less than a McDonald's value meal. The two female leads are both very attractive so watching them nude half the running time doesn't hurt matters either.

Jean Rollin (Caged Vampires, Queen of the Vampires, Zombie Lake) takes a break from the dead and directs an adventure of the living.

Two girls (Gilda Arancio & Joëlle Coeur) travel the countryside enjoying each others company and bodies and company of whomever they manage to hook up with.

They find a small-time mobster hiding in an abandoned house and have a night of fun before moving on. However, they manage to get caught up in some jewel theft and the mobster's bosses have him kidnap them thinking they stole the jewels.

This was just an excuse to begin torture and show some more breasts in this silly yarn that drags on and on until the real thief is uncovered.

It had been a bad Monday when I popped this one in to the 'ol DVD player. I just wanted to wind down and be entertained and this film delivered. Grindhouse veteran Jean-Jacques Renon was the cinematographer for this film (credited as Oscar Lapin) and gave the film the only hint of class it has. Honestly, great camera work and lighting here with some gutsy angles.

On to the film. We open with two Eurobabes walking through the French countryside when they come upon a stone wall. For reasons unknown to me, the director (Jean Rollin) decides we must watch every excruciating second of the girls' navigation of this wall but I digress. On the other side of the wall is a French Baroque manor that, in spite of its dilapidated looks outside, is surprisingly tidy inside. After a quick tryst, Joëlle Coeur (the characters names aren't mentioned I think) needs a ciggy and discovers a slimy Euroguy with a pornstache and a gun staying in one of the downstairs rooms. Not put off by either the stache or the gun, Joëlle dances in the sheets and when her friend discovers the two, she joins in! The next morning a "plot" ensues and we find out guys with mustaches and guns aren't always worth a roll in the hay. Somehow, this idiot and two other idiots managed to burgle some jewels, I assume from some more idiotic idiot. Those jewels wind up missing and the thieves assume it was our Eurobabes what done it. After some torture and some more torture we are introduced to a French PI and his Eurogirl (I believe she is actually wearing a cheerleading outfit) assistant. From here on the plot has more lead changes than a girls basketball game with the good guys getting the drop on the bad guys only to lose it again.

The film is mindless trash but an entertaining 70 minutes none the less. If your looking for polished soft-core, go elsewhere, but if you just want to vedge at the end of the day with a cold one, this is a good film to use.

I hunt down horror but I also dig exploitation and grindhouse or drive-in flicks. By doing that you are immediately linked to the French director Jean Rollin. Jean's flicks are best known for two things, they are really bad and secondly they contain a lot of nudity. And this here is no exception. The strange thing about this flick is that Jean directed it under his porn name Michel Gentil. Why he did this with this flick is for me a strange thing because it doesn't contain explicit sex. His best known porn was Phantasmes (Once Upon A Virgin (1975)). Even the Castel twins, which he used a lot, were indulged and even they performed oral sex with one guy.

But Jeunes Filles Impudiques was the first flick were Jean used his pseudonym. It was also the first flick were he worked together with Joelle Coeur, an actress that delivered Jean's best flicks. But this flick, as bad as it was also became a cult hit in the US as Schoolgirl Hitchhikers. It even stated Sex kittens who stop at nothing.

But it is really a typical Rollin's flick. The script doesn't make any sense, but what do make sense is that again, he used a lot of nudity. You are just 10 minutes into the flick before you will have bushy vagina's. But never you will see some explicit scene's or even some pussies. So even as he used his pseudonym it isn't a porn flick.

What it do have is as I said a script were nothing is explained and were we see stupid things like being captured just by sitting in a chair, when the hitchhikers go to another part the victims staid in their seats, not even tied up. Or when the two girls attend to stay at an abandoned house when suddenly a stranger enters one of the girls immediately makes love to him but afterwards he asks, who are you and what are you doing here!

The reel itself is full of scratches and the inserts of close-ups were shot with another color temperature. I may even say that it is so bad that, yes you can guess it, it even becomes good. It is up to now available everywhere as an ode to Jean Rollin who died in 2010 but I guess it will disappear soon as an OOP.

And for the horror fans, yes, they do torture one of the girls with a whip and they do use a pincer to crush some nipples but it's so badly done and don't think that the erotic scene's will give you a warm feeling, the girls exaggerate with every touch of their body, but at the end of the day, it's Jean Rollin, do I need to say more?

Gore 0/5 Nudity 3,5/5 Effects 0/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

This movie recently showed up on the DVD collection "The Grindhouse Experience" (as if I haven't bought enough Jean Rollin's movies on purpose) under the unlikely title of "High School Hitchhikers" because apparently the original English title "Schoolgirl Hitchhikers" sounds too perverse or politically incorrect by today's standards (don't worry though--the lead actresses look mature enough that this could have easily been called "Post-Doctoral Hitchhikers"). Actually though it would probably have been more accurate to use directly translated the French title "Impudent Young Girls"--I don't know if the protagonists are all that "impudent" but at no point are they ever seen hitch-hiking.

The "plot" (people familiar with Jean Rollin's body of work should be rolling around on the floor laughing right now) involves two female drifters who go into a strange château for no apparent reason. After some typical girl-on-girl action they run into some criminals on the lam who. . . well, that's pretty much it. It is similar to a lot of better Rollin's movies like "Requiem for a Vampire" with the gratuitous lesbianism and silly and unconvincing bondage and torture scenes, but it lacks the bizarre surrealism or more "fantastique" elements that mark the director's more interesting work. This is just a knock-off softcore sex flick along the lines of "Bacchanales Sexuales" but with shorter sex scenes (which may or may not be a plus depending on your motives for watching it).

The best thing about this movie is that the two lead actresses are very appealing (at least, if you're not some drooling pervert drawn in by the lurid title). Joelle Couer had a short but memorable career in early 70's French sexploitation film, including Rollin's own (much better) film "The Demoniacs", but she refused to make the leap to hardcore and was supplanted by much less attractive actresses like Claudine Beccaire. The other, more obscure lead looks like a 1970's French version of Mena Suvari. She is wearing a plaid skirt at the beginning of the film (though not for long!), which might partially explain the misleading title. I guess this movie isn't a TOTAL waste of time but just about.