LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE (1973)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Chris Warfield's LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE (a more fittingly ironic title than TEENAGE INNOCENCE) isn't a metaphenomenal movie, though it almost certainly inspired 1977's DEATH GAME, which makes it into some concordances due to its psycho-thriller additions.The version I saw on Youtube has certainly had a lot of sex-scenes removed, as well as a scene mentioned in an IMDB review, in which one of the female characters mentions having been raped by her brother.

Fifty-something bachelor Rick (John Alderman), gainfully employed as a music arranger, enjoys a comfortable pad in Los Angeles. Driving along a boulevard, Rick spots two teenaged girls thumbing for a ride and he lets them hitch. The slightly more dominant female is Carol (Sandy Dempsey), while her more soft-spoken companion is Judy (Terri Johnson). Rick lets them out at some point, but not before they find out where he lives. After some puzzling discussion as to Rick being old enough to be a father to them, they nevertheless show up on his doorstep.

Rick thinks they just want a quick roll in the hay, so he enjoys a night with both girls. There also follows a rather misleading scene in which Rick squires the girls around to see the local sights, as if he were a devoted dad with his two teen daughters, but I assume this irrelevant sequence was thrown in to substitute for deleted sex-scenes if the flick was sold to television. But the crux of the real conflict is the girls won't leave when Rick tells them to do so, and they make certain Rick can't call the cops by informing him that Judy's underage, so he's guilty of statutory rape. Yet even their private dialogue doesn't clarify what they want of Rick. Not until the last half hour does the viewer hear that Carol has talked Judy into a big experiment, to see if it's possible to screw a man to death.

Carol's hostility to the male of the species would make more sense with the rape backstory. But the script, co-written by Warfield, doesn't put all the blame on her, and indeed, the relatively shy Judy is the first one to initiate sex with Rick. Clearly she's at least partly intrigued by the experiment to see how much sex an experienced male can dispense.

Toward the end, the two young vixens exhaust Rick. Carol at least considers other options-- the use of a dildo, or tortures a la De Sade, whom both girls know about, at least by reputation. But no exotic sex-acts are shown, although Rick's hands are bound at the time when the young ladies finally decide to leave. Yet, while they could just leave him tied up to starve-- since he doesn't seem to have any regular friends who might stop by-- even hard-ass Carol consents to let him loose before they depart. The clever irony at the end is that Rick begs them not to leave, because he's grown addicted to their sweet torments.

I grade the mythicity high precisely because the girls aren't true sadists or psychotic man-haters. They have a clinical, "innocent" desire to explore the functioning of the male anatomy, and Rick is their experimental subject. In closing I'll note that the director of photography is cult director Ray Dennis Steckler, but I've yet to see any of his directorial efforts look this well photographed.