The Harrad Experiment

My friends and I read the HARRAD EXPERIMENT by Robert Rimmer as nervous teenagers in the early 70s. The book was a manifesto for sexual awareness and responsibility, a call for a rational development of sexual activity on a cultural basis. Of course at the time, we were just looking for the hot parts....

Anyway, the movie makers were given the thankless task of transforming the book and apparently cound not decide whether to make it a polemic or a soap opera. Worse, the plot they chose betrays the format of the book, where the narrative was shared equally buy two men and two women. The film concentrates on Johnson's character, maligning him and transforming the film into his character's unwilling education in sexual responsibility.

Bruno Kirby doing full frontal nudity? Brrrrr..........

The original, theater and maybe VHS, were excellent. I have bought two different DVDs of this movie and both were horrible TV versions. The first was from Amazon (Passion Productions, 98 minutes (?) and no nudity or language and the color was orange like from a really old film that hadn't been taken of. The BN (Platinum) had much better color (90 minutes) but it was about the same "cut to death" version losing the kids working on nudity and bleeped language that is on TV today. One really great lesson that hasn't been mentioned is Tenhousen's (sp?), James Whitmore, teaching, "People only recognize an action as love when it is the same kind of love that they give." I learned something from that and I have run across many real life examples to support that observation. I would still like to get a DVD that was the theater version that I saw but I don't know how I would recognize the version after being burned twice.

This was more or less the KINSEY (2004) of its day, though clearly quaint in comparison; still, it is a measure of the times that the film caused a mild stir back then whereas KINSEY virtually made no ripples when it emerged! Anyway, HARRAD is mildly interesting (if perhaps too low-key to stay in the memory for long) in delineating the forward-thinking/experimentation that occurred in sexual relationships at the end of the 1960s. Incidentally, I rented the film as part of a small tribute to its recently-deceased star James Whitmore: of course, the middle-aged actor does not get in on the action (even if it is never particularly explicit); Tippi Hedren, then, appears as his still-attractive spouse/collaborator – who even catches the eye of the campus hunk (Don Johnson, interestingly the long-time partner of Hedren's real-life daughter Melanie Griffith!). The rest of the cast is filled with fresh faces (including future comedian Bruno Kirby[!]…but especially notable is lovely and initially shy heroine Laurie Walters who, in her turn, is pursued by leering Robert Middleton at a nearby café). Unsurprisingly, partners get swapped (whether intended or not) which invariably cause heartbreaks, but there is also some cheap humor at the expense of a bespectacled and plump student. While director Post was more at home in action-oriented fare, he handles the delicate subject matter with directness and reasonable perception; besides, the film looks good, sports a typical 1970s pop score (one of the songs being performed by Johnson himself) and, for what it is worth, was even followed a year later by a sequel, HARRAD SUMMER.

A review that came before me listed top 10 unintentionally funny moments in the film, which I am going to reiterate/add to. It is the only way to truly enjoy the film. Don't read this if you actually want to experience these priceless moments freshly for yourself.

1. The opening credits tree hug.

2. "You don't need to lose any weight."/"Neither do you!" (Then the two kiss passionately)

3. Make-out scene simultanously occurring as a conversation about stamp collecting takes place. By the same people.

4. The fashion and hair!

5. Don Johnson repeatedly in scenes with massive pit stains, without any trace of pre-occurring hard labor. (And then he proceeds to make out with whoever is there.)

6. The redhead girl saying "That was wonderful!" to her roommate, after he punches Stanley after he walked in catching her making out with Stanly.

7. The music really is overly dramatic. Both the score and the acoustic guitar-laden ballads with priceless 70's lyrics, one song sung by Don Johnson himself!

Good points in film:

1. Don Johnson in wonderfully tight clothes and sometimes without them.

2. The enjoyment coming from the whole 70's aesthetic and seeing a story line unfold that is so foreign to our 21st century minds.

3. A way of looking at the feeling of jealousy, and dealing with it, that isn't really presented anymore. I decided to shed some of my own hard feelings regarding relationships after some reconsideration prompted by this film.

I just watched a bowdlerized version of "The Harrad Experiment". I'd heard of this movie, but had never seen it. It stars Tippi Hedren, James Whitmore Jr., and a very ( almost unrecognizably ) young Don Johnson.

The story concerns a small college which has gone co-ed to an extreme. Boys are deliberately room-mated with girls, and the couples are encouraged to have sexual intimacy.

Now, had that sort of film been made, today, you'd have a mind-boggling, no-holds-barred sex-fest; but back in 1973, they made a sort of tentative pastel-water-color story with bland characters and dialogue, sprinkled with curses the actors seem to choke while saying. Mind you, I wasn't disappointed, I was relieved. This movie is sort of an icon of modern 'sex as salvation' subject matter in film.

The movie comes off as a kind of bland, sex-driven "After-School Special". The script is vanilla and cliché-ridden; with lots of pop-psychology and not-quite-there challenges to 'old-fashined' mores.

Hedren and Whitmore are the married professors conducting the experiment. We never quite know whether they're actually ( hypocritically ) condoning 'free-love' or whether they're trying to point out to the students that monogamous relationships really are the strongest. Either way, they are dangerously close to law-suits. The curriculum is so wishy-washy that, in comparison, Alfred Kinsey's 'research' looks like the Sodom and Gomorrah Pride Parade ( actually, it probably was ). Intimacy seems to be their real goal, rather than merely pandering to one's sexual gluttony, but they are terribly stupid in encouraging 'sexual freedom' as a means of discovering that.

The style of the film is so typically early-70's with its light, cheerful, guitar background music and sunny edge-lit cinematography; that I expected Karen Carpenter to start singing "Rainy Days and Mondays". It renders the film, unintentionally, quite funny.

There are three folk/pop tunes sung in the film's background, two beautifully performed by Lori Lieberman, and the last by ( what?! ) Don Johnson, himself, and not badly, either.

Other than the Lieberman songs, the only real highlight of the film is an amusing improv team ( The Ace Trucking Company -- featuring a young Fred Willard ) performing on the topic of 'group marriage'.

Most likely, the film would have seemed maybe 2% edgier with all the nudity and G-D's left in, but I seriously doubt it. I could tell where the cuts were made and there was precious little eye-poison in this watery Lorimar Production.

A real surprise is that one of the writers was ( and I blinked twice when I read his name ) Ted ( Lurch, the butler ) Cassidy. He has a cameo early in the film.

I can't recommend the film, due to its themes ( insipidly as they were presented ), but I'm glad that I've been able to check off and discount another cheesy step on the ladder to our current gradual cultural downfall ( "The April Fools", "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" being others ).