Weekend with the Babysitter

The babysitter fantasy is present in this early 1970 classic flick. A classic in its own right, Weekend with the Babysitter captured everything that was true about the 1970's. Let me explain. From the clothes, the music, the drugs, the parties, and the generation. Susan Romen is perfect as a 70's teenager who is just one of many girls of her generation who is playing with rebellion. Her beautiful innocents leads her into seducing a married man and making him see how much he truly loves his wife. Worth the 4 dollar rental fee....check it out.

This is another 1970's "sex-with-the-babysitter" movies (the best of these probably being "Jailbait Babysiiter" made a few years later). They don't make these kind of movies today, and personally I wouldn't want to see them if they did (after you reach a certain age you may still harbor a nostalgic attraction for the teenage girls of your own youth, but that doesn't mean that you really want to see modern-day teens having sex with anybody). That's not to say that this movie is all that racy. There's some nudity, and some gratuitous showering and spanking. The character is underage, but I don't think the unknown actress actually was.

The real problem with this movie is how shamelessly it pandered to the perverts of the day. The male protagonist is very middle-aged, bordering on elderly--a lot more likely to have grand-kids than kids, and hardly any teenage girl's dream date. He even gets to be a hero when he rescues his unfaithful wife from the clutches of a vicious drug dealer, thus morally glossing over the whole infidelity and statutory rape issue. I liked "Jailbait Babysitter" better because it was told from the perspective of the girl and the middle-age lech in that one is treated to a heart attack(!) rather than to hero status. Neither is very realistic, of course, but even blatant moral hypocrisy is preferable to this kind of sleazy pandering.

Two things are of interest about this otherwise forgettable movie though. It was directed by Tom McLoughlin, old "Billy Jack" himself, a guy who(perhaps erroneously)was considered in touch with the "youth culture" of the day (making it all the more curious why this movie is told from the perspective of the middle-aged codger). And the gangster's sleazy girlfriend is played by Anik Borel, an interesting European actress who appeared in the ludicrous trash-cult favorite "Werewolf Woman" because the director thought she had a face like a wolf (albeit with a body to die for). There's absolutely nothing else to recommend this though. See "Jailbait Babysitter" instead.

How typical! Having turned out the delightful, The Babysitter (1969) the director and writer/star get together to do it all again. But hey, did the pair not get what made the first so much fun? I don't think so for this one takes itself so seriously it is positively boring at times. George E Carey is still effective in the main role and at the start there is some vaguely amusing stuff playing on the fact that Hollywood found it so difficult to get the whole hippie sub culture onto film effectively. But it soon drags with the wife a junkie surrounded by wooden actors and overlong sequences of cannabis smoking and bike racing. Candy is here played by Susan Romen and is fine but so coy, indeed the whole film is much less candies than the earlier one. Another sign, maybe, that this was to be a 'serious' film.

Weekend With the Babysitter : George E. Carrey stars as Jim, a well-off B-movie director who falls for his kids' babysitter. It's not hard to understand the attraction: his wife, a washed up actress-turned-junkie, is pretty damn irritating. Plus, the babysitter gives him some tips on the ridiculous script he's working on--a motorcycle gang/hippie movie. Trouble mounts while the director and babysitter are exploring free-wheeling good times (under the guise of doing movie research) when Jim's wife gets in too deep with some drug dealers by offering up her husband's fancy boat to complete a drug deal in exchange for another fix. What's funny about this film is that its predecessor, The Babysitter (1969), also stars George E. Carrey in what amounts to the same part. In this one, George E. Carrey is credited as co-writer of the film's plot. Funnier still is the babysitter, played here by Susan Romen, is named Candy, which is the namesake of the earlier film's babysitter as well, as depicted by Patricia Wymer. The most "meta" connection between the two is that, when Candy review's Jim's new script, she criticizes the dialogue, noting that "people don't talk this way." For all we know, she could have been reading the script of the earlier Babysitter film--although it's amusing to note that the Candys in both films enjoy saying "Ciao, baby!" This one is mostly entertaining, although the 1969 film is better by a thin margin.

There was a shooting star named Patricia Wymer, who appeared in a 1969 film by the same director called The Babysitter. She only did about three movies and then disappeared.

Director Don Henderson brings in a new girl, Susan Romen, to play Candy Wilson, the babysitter. She only made two films. As a matter of interest, Henderson quit directing the same time after only three films. I wonder what happened to all these people.

Anyway, while movie producer Jim Carlton (George E. Carey) is having fun with the babysitter and her hippie friends, his wife Mona (Luanne Roberts) is captive to her drug dealer.

This is not the typical grindhouse film of the 70s. It was more a drama about hippies and drugs. Yes, there was some nudity and woman on woman action, but it was rather tame.

Still, a good story, if the acting was a bit lame.

Who was taking care of the kids while Jim and the babysitter were having fun?