Oh Lordy! Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. Having seen the cut-to-ribbons British release version on some ropey little label when I was a youngster, I recently became curious to see this exploitation roughie again, and finally tracked down a copy after months of trying. And while I was watching it (or more precisely, watching most of it - the video copy I located had about twenty minutes' worth of vertical rolling and picture snow, rendering the first act unwatchable) I couldn't help thinking how the memory has a nasty habit of cheating. The buxom, bouncing women are all there, present and correct, and Stephen Stucker is just as funny as I remembered him (he also gets to show off his piano playing), but I'd forgotten - or was too young to fully comprehend - just how crass and insensitive this film really is. Sam Peckinpah upset the moral majority by showing Susan George coming to enjoy being raped by her ex-boyfriend in the gruesome potboiler STRAW DOGS, but in this sleaze-fest the idea that women enjoy being molested and violated is repeated again and again, even to the point of previously sobbing, near-hysterical victims sitting down to enjoy a glass of wine and a little light refreshment with their assailants moments after their ordeal! And yes, there's another male myth proudly on show here - the women who (almost literally) "ask for it"! In the pre-politically correct seventies, this was standard X-film fare, but seen thirty years later it seems so outrageously corrupt and wrong-headed that DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS looks every bit as if it came from a weird parallel universe that has yet to catch up with our more enlightened times. The film's technical credits are every bit as fumbled as the hapless victims - the photography is grimy, the lighting poor, the sound muffled, the editing looks as if it was done with a hacksaw and the performances are dire (Bob Minor looks embarrassed, and who can blame him). Then there are the 'action' scenes, which are so poorly choreographed they resemble a skit from The Goodies that somebody forgot to speed up. A karate adviser is credited, but judging from what's on show here he didn't hang around the set for long. When he's not contriving up-skirt shots or leering over the mistreatment of his buxom female cast, Gregory Corarito's direction is as static as a house brick. And what's the deal with the inane, parping, faux-Benny Hill music that accompanies the double rape scene in the kitchens? DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS is a shot of pure sleaze, right between the eyes, and won't disappoint anyone looking for mean-spirited misogyny.
