Weekend with the Babysitter

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?

It's been a couple of years since I watched something called The Babysitter. That movie starred George E. Carey as a middle-aged man who ends up having an affair with a young woman who was the babysitter of his and his wife's child. Carey was also one of the writers and the producer of that earlier flick. So it's with this one that he's once again a triple threat, credit-wise, and once again he plays a character who has an affair with a young woman who also sits for his child. The first one, though, had a much serious subplot and while there's some melodrama here, mainly concerning his wife who's a serious addict, the scenes involving the man and his young woman are meant to be more relaxing fun. Unfortunately, while the previous one seemed filled with some excitement, this one threatens to be a little dull due to the scenes in which George hangs with Candy's (the babysitter's name which was the same name in the previous flick though that one was played by a different actress) friends while smoking a joint as well as subsequent dialogue scenes between Candy and George. At least his wife in this one is much more attractive than the wife in the previous one, that's for sure! So overall, Weekend with the Babysitter was only okay as a drive-in flick.

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.

Another poor exploitation movie from Crown International Pictures. This one's about a tired, hen-pecked old middle-aged guy who falls for the young girl babysitting his kids, and begins an affair with her. The movie was shot by Don Henderson, not the actor, and is a virtual reprise of the same director's film of the previous year, THE BABYSITTER, allowing for some self-referencing moments. Overall though it's a kind of sad, wish-fulfilment type film with a bit of a grubby edge to it.

Sadly, as with a lot of Crown fare, this one has dated a lot and not in a good way. The film just sort of dawdles along while the characters take drugs and indulge in various pleasurable activities which don't transmit to the viewer. There's a lot of talk and none of it is very interesting. It's clunky throughout, performed by a cast of low-level actors who fail to make much of an impression, and never as controversial as it wants to be. Saying that, the director does manage to cram in a fair few nude and sex scenes for his young starlet, so WEEKEND WITH THE BABYSITTER does have a requisite sleazy feel to it.

Weekend with the Babysitter (1971)

* (out of 4)

A hot shot director (George E. Carey) has a fight with his wife who then runs away with their young son. The babysitter Candy (Susan Romen) ends up coming over and gets offended by a screenplay he's about to do. To set him straight, the babysitter takes the director to hang out with her hippie friends and later the two have sex. While all of this is going on the wife has been kidnapped by her drug dealer. Yeah. As you can tell, part of this film plays out like a remake of the 1969 film The Babysitter as this features the same production company, director, actor and even the babysitter's name is the same. While that film worked this one here is a complete and utter disaster, which has perhaps one good scenes but the rest of the movie should be thrown in the toilet, although I'm sure even the toilet would try to spit it out. We basically get the exact same story as the previous film but this time out for some reason they tried to deliver an action movie, which is just downright stupid. This was obviously shot on a low budget so all the action scenes look incredibly bad and they really don't make any sense. The mean drug dealers are all fools and you hate the wife so much you really don't care what happens to her. The one decent scene is when the hippies are trying to explain to the old man how to smoke grass. His reactions to what he's being told is pretty priceless. Stone is a tad bit better here than he was in the 1969 film but that's still not saying too much. The biggest problem is with Romen who just doesn't work as Candy. She doesn't have any of the charm that the other film had and she just comes off rather bland.