Permissive

In the development stage the title for this truly dispiriting film was Suzy Superscrew. Better had it been kept for at least it gives you an idea of where the action is heading. Suzy is a duffle-coated runaway, arriving in London to join the groupie scene. Unable to score with the band her groupie friend introduces her to, she hooks up with Pogo an itinerant musician and mad preacher. "Where do you live?' she enquires of him. "Under the stars, the world is my scene, man", he responds. Unfortunately the world isn't listening as he gets mown down by a car shortly afterwards. The subsequent narrative is reduced to what band member or groupie Suzy will wake up with next.

The film, shot in a quasi documentary style and was partly intended as a promotional vehicle for heavy rock band Forever More, which accounts for their music being way up in the mix and sometimes drowning out the dialogue. This same logic explains footage of the band performing being inserted whenever the director runs out of ideas, which is often. On the plus side the relentlessly downbeat tone does provides a telling snapshot of the fag-end of the sixties and a particular sub-culture, while at the same time maintaining a grim synergy: hairy men and ugly women having bad sex together in cheap hotels to a Forever More soundtrack. Just desserts are sometimes delicious.