Raw Footage

No need to write a full-length review, because the previous one from IMDb user lor_ is particularly excellent.

At the heart of Findlay's best films is a sense a profound mischievousness, and while the accoutrement required of erotica is certainly there - Findlay's consistent use of the finest attractive and able performers as well as her sort of id-provoking story and sex scene set ups - the real star is always Roberta. You always find yourself asking "who could have ever made such a thing!?" ... Even though you already know the answer: Roberta F'n Findlay.

A guidance counselor named Mr. Harlowe uses the chance at a scholarship in marketing and journalism to gain sexual favors from four different high school co-eds.

Through his manipulation, one by one he seduces the girls, making them believe they are the one to get the scholarship to the university. However, through an odd (and I do mean odd) twist of fate, the girls gain the upperhand on Mr. Harlowe, and turn things around on him.

This movie was plain awful. It also was released under the names Madison Ave Confidential, and Underage. Though I've only seen it as the first title. This movie gets a 1 out of 10.

RAW FOOTAGE is Roberta Findlay's entry in the then-popular "underage girls" genre -its alternate title is even in-your-face UNDERAGE. As usual with this auteur, there are ulterior motives (and meanings) at work.

The format is familiar enough: four high school co-eds are selected by their teacher (a game trouper, Wade Nichols) to participate in a National School Apprenticeship Program, spending their senior year working as interns at a top Madison Ave. ad agency Fillum, Fuller & Brown. Gimmick is that teach insists on humping each of them, basically statutory rape, with promise of a potential scholarship as reward.

This intentionally tasteless premise is executed in suitably tasteless fashion, as each of the girls squeals in pain as Nichols makes her into an ex-virgin, doggy-style. The rapes usually take place in their parents' home, with Findlay voicing over personally mama's "what's going on in there?" reaction outside the bedroom.

But Findlay's strategy is upfront (if missed by the casual viewer, like the previous poster's non-review in IMDb): she has cast very obviously too-old actresses in the lead roles (pushing 30 rather than 16). Notably Marlene Willoughby, who could just as well, and more convincingly, have been cast as the mother of one of the gals. In most of these '70s exercises, nubile young talent that looks convincingly underage (e.g., Tawny Pearl, Nancy Hoffman or Amber Hunt) is employed to pander to the dirty-old-man viewer's fantasies.

In addition, she ends up mocking and abusing Nichols, with the girls in the final reels turning the tables on him. They comically wear out his penis, and Willoughby violates him anally with a dildo for good measure. Though Findlay liked to sign her films with a male moniker (using "Walter A. Roberts" here as producer-director credit), her feminist point-of-view managed to show through no matter how crude the packaging.

Besides the foursome's antics, there is considerable sexual activity by the film's ostensible leading lady Linda Maidstone (a porn performer who never made it). She portrays Honey Frye, the agency's top model, who connives unsuccessfully to sabotage their efforts and take away their clients for a new agency of her own founding. The film's title RAW FOOTAGE stems from Honey's substituting a reel of raw porn footage in the agency's show reel of their campaign for his Sleepenex product to client Gary Cook (as Mr. Bungle). The girl's sexual servicing of Cook in the screening room saves the day.

Film is well-made and at times well-acted enough to approximate a real movie. Findlay herself gets the last word, popping up at film's end as a bedraggled but uppity cleaning lady, berating Nichols and mocking underage girls' loose behavior.

Of the mainly unfamiliar cast members in the ad agency roles, Tony Mansfield as Ziggy went on to roles in graphic S&M movies.