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Counterculture, heal thyself. Lumet's The Group is the useful model, Los Angeles at the start of the new decade is a feminine consciousness split four ways, all in tight starched scrubs. Assigned to the psychiatry division, the blonde coed (Karen Carlson) takes up with the affable gynecologist (Lawrence Casey) and finds herself questioning the limits of her own liberation. The defiantly braless bohemian (Barbara Leigh) zings with a granola biker (Richard Rust) on a ruddy-tinted beachfront and experiences the world's gentlest LSD freak-out. Over at the terminal ward, the winsome caretaker (Elaine Giftos) faces the ailing young poet (Darrell Larson), the last leaf drops off after she enhances her bedside manner. Finally, the compassion of the public-health intern (Brioni Farrell) is put to the test in the oppressed barrio, where the activist leader (Reni Santoni) forever clashes with uptight officers. "Give men the chance to play inquisitor, and it's thumbs down for women every time!" Corman's studio wanted another template for drive-in titillation, Stephanie Rothman supplied it plus also a flavorsome chunk of 1970 compressed into a strong-minded snapshot. The hippie's abortion-clinic interview is shot with a pitch of early Truffaut (cf. Doinel's psychiatric evaluation in The 400 Blows), the surgery itself is a kaleidoscopic fever elaborated by De Palma in Sisters. Love-ins and shootouts, folk ballads and confrontational pamphlets, Florence Nightingale and Chairman Mao, the whole contemporary megillah of upheavals dressed up as softcore exploitation. The series pushes on with George Armitage and Jonathan Kaplan, though the original grungy-tender sensibility remains Rothman's. With Richard Stahl, Paul Camen, Pepe Serna, and Katherine MacGregor.
--- Fernando F. Croce |