The Centerfold Girls

The Centerfold Girls is a low budget thriller about a serial killer who hunts down women. Not exactly an original idea but the lead performance of Andrew Prine gives the film a bit more merit. In fact, the cast is full of B and Z rated actors (like Aldo Ray who plays an incredibly nasty character) which make things a bit more interesting. What's unusual about the filmn is it's harsh tone. Some of the things that take place on screen are pretty brutal even by today's standards. One wonders what audiences thought of the movie back in 1974. This is one film that women's groups have a right to protest about.

This film boasts a large cast of beautiful women in various states of undress. For some that may be plenty of inducement to watch. For others it might help to add that it is also the odessey of a serial killer in their midst, slitting throats where he can and extemporizing on other occasions. His motive, he says, is to help these women who have posed nude, or at least topless, in a Playboy-like men's magazine as centerfold models. At a guess, he believes he is helping them abandon their evil ways, the visions of which must haunt his darkest dreams. Though his motive is never explained, his speech patterns, mannerisms, and expressions plainly bespeak a psychopath. Andrew Prine as Clement Dunne shows us quiet madness and menace in a perfect composite. Everything about him, including his wardrobe (black) and living quarters (white) whispers "absolutely unhinged." The film consists of three separate stories, each featuring a different centerfold girl, but all three are bound together by the presence of Dunne and his scalpel. The third and final story may be the most intense as it concludes with a confrontation in a horrible landscape of burnt hillsides and charred trees, a nightmare background against which the violence unfolds. Dunne's third victim, Vera, (Tiffany Bolling) fights back and nobody skates. A truly fine thriller

Superb exploitation nasty. I loved this one. Real dirty and gritty and fast moving. Well-directed with some nice performances.

Andrew Prine is perfectly cast as a saddle-shoe-wearing nerd who is out to "save" all the calender/pin-up girls he can ("save" as in split their head open with a razor). And he really goes about his business. With his ultra-skinny physique and creepy/quirky demeanor he projects kind of a low-rent Norman Bates quality.

Film has three (or is it four?) different stories, each following a girl that Prine is tracking down. The killing is ruthless and quick and somewhat unsettling. Also unsettling is that the girls bounce from one horrific situation to the other like pinballs (ALL the men in this movie are creeps - and most of the women, too!!!).

If you get a chance, and if exploitation with a sharp-edge is your bag check this one out, you might like it.

A men's magazine with beautiful women nude... a deranged killer who fights in the name of modesty. What happens when he gets their names and traces their private numbers? As you can imagine, bloody mayhem. And this is all before the hippies and rapists show up...

"Centerfold Girls" (known some places as "Girl Hunter") is a strange film... not visually strange, not strange in its telling... but strange in that the plot shifts in ways you will not expect it to at first. We seemingly follow Jackie, a nurse and former model, as she befriends Linda and stays lodged out of town... confronted by wild, rapist hippies (including one who wears a Coors box for a hat). But despite all this, Jackie is not the main character... we don't see much of her after the first half hour.

This film has a style that is hard to dislike. The murders are simple but effective, with the killer being a truly likable character with horn-rimmed glasses and saddleback shoes. (Don't worry, I'm not giving away anything -- he stands in the open throughout the film.) And the cast and crew is largely unknown, at least today. You may have heard of Aldo Ray or Ray Danton, but I doubt this. The director (John Peyser, mostly known for television work) and writers (Bob Peete and Arthur Marks) are obviously talented, but not household names in the world of horror.

Even the "star" (if one can call him that), is largely a television actor with bit parts. Andrew Prine, who plays killer Clement Dunne, is the glue that holds this entire movie together. Yet, as much as I loved him, I'm hard-pressed to name another movie he's in. Okay, that's not entirely true. The mid-70s saw him not only in "Centerfold Girls", but also in the now classic "Town That Dreaded Sundown" and "Crypt of the Living Dead" (directed by Ray Danton, and available in certain public domain horror collections).

My one concern, and this has been raised by other reviewers, is the lack of background on Clement Dunne. What does he do for a living? What made him want to kill women, and why did he pick the particular magazine he did? How does he track down the addresses and phone numbers for his victims? This lack of information did not take away from the picture, but makes me wonder. A sequel would probably have worked well, but it's a bit late now.

The box calls this a movie from the "sleazy" 1970s, an "exploitation" film in the "grindhouse" tradition. Now, I don't know if this is grindhouse, but they are dead-on with the exploitation and sleaze comments. Nudity abounds in this film, and if more than five minutes go by without someone getting topless (often for no reason), I'd be surprised. And then the (attempted and successful) rapes... not just one, but more like three. In one movie!

Dark Sky Films offers a nice, crisp picture and sound on this disc, while still capturing the gritty quality of the original film. While the special features are somewhat lacking (an audio commentary would be nice), the 15-minute featurette "Making the Cut" offers a great look back and really puts the picture in perspective. That, and a "musical cues" feature, which makes sense to me since the music was very unique and apparent throughout the picture (next to Prine, the music of Mark Wolin is my favorite thing about this film -- and this was his only work). I would encourage anyone to give this title a fair chance.

I really enjoyed Arthur Marks' drive-in movie "Bonnie's Kids", so I decided to take a look at the movie he did right after it, "The Centerfold Girls". While I would not label the movie a drive-in classic like "Bonnie's Kids", I have to admit that the movie does deliver a lot of nice sleaze. The women in the movie are always taking off their clothes, and there are a number of sexual situations. The movie does have some additional interest. Andrew Prine does well as the serial killer, coming across as believably deranged and awkward like I think many crazy people are in real life. Also interesting is that the movie isn't one story, but three stories connected by Prine's character. This was a wise choice I think, because I think if any of the stories been feature length there would have been some dull spots. As they are, they all feel at an appropriate length. Well worth a look if you are interested in 1970s sleazy drive-in cinema.