Thanks largely to the late Mike Vraney of Something Weird, I've seen over 60 of pioneering soft-core porn maven Barry Mahon's films. CONFESSIONS OF A BAD GIRL displays many of his trademark stylistic motifs and is an enjoyable if flat movie.
First curiosity is that the AFI catalog of films released during the 1961-1970 decade lists the movie as black & white, when in fact it is in color. This is an interesting discrepancy when one addresses the movie's content: its oft-told tale (oft-told by Mahon himself) of a new girl in the Big Apple headed for the gutter seems always to be better in b&w, especially if there are "rough" (here read: rape) elements involved. The color productions of the '60s were reserved for more fluffy skin flicks like comedies or travelogues where the scenery is mainly naked female flesh.
The answer comes from Mahon's many short nudie films, which depict models at work or sometimes documentary-style observations of photographers & their craft. These are invariably in color, and since the bulk of footage in CONFESSIONS shows young model Judy Adler looking for work and disrobing for prospective employers, then color was the way to go.
Extremely episodic in nature, and quite repetitive too, CONFESSIONS shows Judy and other models enduring the travails of lecherous guys, some legitimate ad men, artists or photographers, but mostly horny creeps anxious to molest the gals. Adler is very convincing in acting out the ambivalence of a young person trying to get work but constantly being disillusioned as the need to "cooperate" (means: put out sexually) rears its head at every turn. Most of it rings true, largely because Mahon casts men who don't seem to be actors but really approximate sleaze-balls.
Most dated sequence has to be one about the wife of an artist who can't keep her hands off the models. This allusion to a predatory lesbian is tastefully presented, but it is quite clear that the horror of her light fondling was a big deal 50 years back. The rape sequence late in the film is not graphic at all, but again must have delivered a punch.
Interstitial footage is Judy sightseeing around the docked Queen Mary in a sequence that looks to have been shot at the old Chelsea Piers on the west side of Manhattan. It also adds to the pervasive realism, which is probably more enduring than the film's copious footage of '60s figure models, some familiar, many not, going topless or carefully posed (to avoid showing pubic hair) nude for the audience's delectation.
