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Before porno movies coagulated into rigid choreography, explicit sex on the screen had a disarming clumsiness. The titular coed (Debra Allen) and her fiercely sideburned beau (George S. MacDonald) go at it in her dorm room, intimately rather than acrobatically, and in the afterglow she notices something: "Hey, you still got your socks on." Allen’s assignment is on subcultures, she picks the sexual flowerings of San Francisco and dives into research, "purely academically." The first ad she answers takes her to a hippie couple attempting to spice up their marriage via ménage a trois -- the comely researcher is a gift to the husband’s yen for younger women, though the wife directs the action imperiously from a nearby rocking chair. ("Tony, your knee’s in the way. Down." "Sorry, dear.") While Allen rolls around with a father-and-son pornographer duo, her roommate (Susan David) stumbles upon her stroke-mag collection and hits it off with their professor. The items on the list are checked off with likable humor and naturalism. Phone sex? Girl-on-girl action? Group grope? "Does that sound so strange?" "Not really." "Let’s explore, then." It builds toward a presentation and a wink that’s worth more than all of The Paper Chase. Directed by Paul Gerber.
--- Fernando F. Croce |