Cindy and Donna

Cindy Donna: The story of two horny half-sisters suffering suburban ennui in the 1970s. Virginal,15-year-old Cindy idolizes her older, sexually promiscuous half-sister, Donna. When she spies Donna banging her father (Donna's stepfather), Cindy decides that she's ready to experiment with her body and her sexuality, too. More sex (and tragedy) ensues. The staff that worked on this flick knew it was smarmy when they made it. It's good fun to watch, primarily because Cindy, played by Debbie Osborne, is insanely cute and spends a lot of her time in various stages of undress. The film also has a ridiculous, schmaltzy soundtrack that's half awe-filled, horn-ball sleaze and half after-school special. A highlight of the Drive-In Cult Classics collection.

For the information of your readers - I am the person who played the mother in Cindy and Donna. My stage name was: Suzy Allen. I never used the name Susy Allen and any information shown for Susy Allen does not apply to me. I don't know why I was not credited properly. I agree that Cindy and Donna was a terrible movie, but the stagehands and crew said I was the best actor in the movie! We spent an entire day filming one scene, with me and my "husband" driving on a freeway, with me nagging him about not taking me out often enough !! I had a lot of fun trying to be the whining, miserable wife for the movie, even though in real life I am nothing like that character. It was also very interesting for me to have to dub in some of my lines after the movie was finished. Quite a challenge to get everything right on cue.

This is a fascinating film that goes well beyond typical sexploitation. I have so many questions...

I want to know what happened to the actress that played Cindy. I think she is/was (?) uniquely beautiful and was great in this budgetless film.

Did the director (or anyone else) notice that Sue Allen (the mom) was strung out, had at least one black eye, and had sex bruises all over her thighs? If so, was this an example of excellent casting or of irresponsible film making?

Why was Alice Friedland uncredited? This was a big role. The director was obviously obsessed with her, as evidenced by her large role and the lengthy dance routine at the bar. And, why was she so sweaty/oily in the dance scene? The scene was so long, and she was so oily...

How was it ever acceptable, in a theatrical release, to depict 15 and 17 year old girls stripping in bars, smoking weed, and hookin'? This was a drive-in feature. Other reviewers talked about their parents taking them to see this film by mistake. Can you imagine that? Holy ****. I'm not complaining - I think this movie is awesome. I'm just sayin'...

As for the ending, my question is wtf? Seriously... wtf? Brilliant. Amazing.

This film will hold your attention for 90 minutes. A unique and shocking sexploitation film that is worth watching.

RealReview Posting Scoring Criteria: Acting - 1/1; Casting - 1/1; Directing - 0.5/1; Story - 1/1; Writing/Screenplay - 1/1;

Total Base Score = 4.5

Modifiers (+ or -): Originality: 1;

Music Score/Soundtrack: 0.5 (After finishing the film, watch the intro credits again and think about the lyrics to that song. Awesome.);

Gratuitous Female Nudity: 1 (I just love awarding a full point in this category. Plenty of interesting female nudity in this film, about every 10 minutes or so.);

Distractingly Poor Editing: -1 (Multiple sex scenes turn into a naked woman rolling around on top of a man wearing shorts. None of the camera angles produced anything that resembled intercourse. Eventually, softcore directors learned how to better fake the sex scenes.);

Total RealReview Rating: 6 (This is a very high rating for a sexploitation film. Kudos to the creators and all of the missing actresses.)

A teenage virgin, Cindy, is curious about SEX. She watches her older half-sister Donna have SEX with her boyfriend in his car, and then she has SEX with herself afterwards. Meanwhile her father is busy having a lot of SEX with a nubile stripper/prostitute, which doesn't stop him from staggering home in a drunken stupor and having SEX with Donna (his own step-daughter)while Cindy spies on them. Cindy responds to this by going to the beach with her more experienced best friend where they pick up two boys. Her friend has SEX with one of the boys, while Cindy almost has SEX with the other. Later they return back to her house (her parents have gone away to Vegas) where they smoke a joint and end up having lesbian SEX with each other. Meanwhile, sister Donna poses for nude photographs for her boyfriend's friends and has SEX with all three of them. And then finally Cindy at long last has SEX with a guy.

You get the idea that this movie has a lot of sex in it. In fact, it kind of suffers the "curse of too much sex", a problem afflicting almost all hardcore sex films and many softcore films like this: There is so much sex in this movie that it pretty much crowds out anything else of interest (i.e. plot, character development, basic production values). So unless you are a young, heterosexual male who is planning to spend 90 some minutes masturbating, I really can't recommend this. It does have some sicko 70's elements (for instance, the quasi-incest), which will probably offend the sensibilities of some, but for me there is not nearly enough of this since it at least makes the movie less boring. There is also some attempted "comedy relief" by the two drunken parents, but they are mostly just annoying.

The only possible saving grace of this movie is that the four actresses who play the young people (the two sisters, the friend, and the father's mistress) are all very attractive, which isn't always a given in 70's films (70's porn actresses were often pimply and corpulent and generally looked like they'd been picked up in a Times Square vice dragnet). The four girls are obviously all somewhat older than the "teenage" characters they play, but they all have a nubile girl-next-door freshness without the freakishly huge breasts or the unnatural Russ Meyeresque proportions (not to metion the silicone Frankenstein look so common in these kind of movies today). This is still no reason for anybody but a hairy-palmed sex fiend to watch this movie, of course, but it should make it a little more fun at least for those who fall into that category.

This is the epitome of a drive-in smoker. Back in the day, when I was a teen we used to go to drive-in movies just for a place to hang out. Others went for some family entertainment where they could save money by charging by the carload rather than by the individuals. You usually got to see three movies. Depending on what night you went, you either got some G- rated family movies (one first run movie and two less than mediocre throw-aways), three horror or action movies (same deal) or you got the sexploitation movies that were often one step away from a hard "R" or soft porn flick. Sometimes they were sex comedies but often they were low-budget hippie chick flicks where the actors seemed to take themselves too seriously. Cindy and Donna kind of falls in to the latter. This is more than just some flirtatious fun. This really is nothing short of some classic softcore.

Cindy and Donna Weeks are two teenage half sisters who live with their dysfunctional parents ( a booze hound mother and a lecherous, infidelity-prone father). While Donna is an "experienced" girl marching toward woman-hood with a boyfriend, younger red-haired sis, Cindy is conflicted and hesitant but still curious about sex. She spies on her sister and listens to her best friend, Karen talk about sex. She also spies on her drunken father as one night he falls into bed with her half sister, his stepdaughter, Donna.

Basically there's no real plot that's worth following. It's just these three girls falling into sexual situations to the soundtrack of some "groovy" music (it's hilarious how the script has them drop these hip soundbites of the day like 'far out', 'can you dig it?' and 'I'm hip' every five or ten minutes). The editing is what you'd expect for a low-budget movie from 1970. It's choppy and the film is a little grainy in spots. But this isn't the type of movie you watch for the craftsmanship of filmmaking.

In fact, every female featured in the movie seems to be involved in the liberation of the sexual revolution with even Mrs. Weeks throwing herself at her husband's friends. The younger girls are all gorgeous and have no problem disrobing and one girl dances almost nude for a full 30-40 seconds with the camera ogling her naked body. This reminds me why this is one of my favorite periods. The mini-skirts and dresses these girls wear are so short, they can't even lift their arms without giving a show. And the drug use is in full effect. The girls all smoke pot and mom and dad are drunk-a-holics.

I bought this as part of a set of four exploitation movies. It's ironic that I watched this one last and it turned out to be the best of the set.