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Pick Up
[Deimos]
1975; color
Directed by Bernard Hirschenson
Starring: Jill Senter, Alan Long & Gini Eastwood
The Teacher
[Deimos]
1974; color
Directed by Howard Avedis
Starring: Angel Tompkins & Jay North
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Despite the fact Pick-Up appears to be the lead feature on the box cover and DVD menu, when you opt for the "Grindhouse Experience" (which includes trailers before each picture) The Teacher plays first. And maybe that's a good thing, because it far outclasses the celluloid swamp fart that is Pick-Up. But more on that mess later. The Teacher, a movie I was completely unaware of until this disc arrived in the mail, is a fine example of by-the-numbers seamy '70s sinema that appears to have been designed to leave a bad taste in the mouths of theater goers a some 30+ years ago. The story revolves around a curious triangle of a hot 'n' horny 28 year old high school teacher, the 18 year old senior student she seduces and starts dating once summer vacation kicks in, and an obsessive Vietnam vet whose psychotic obsessions lead to nothing but tragedy. (Duh.) The other main thing you need to know about this movie is that the boy who gets lucky with the teacher is none other than Jay North, aka TV's Dennis The Menace. Before the getting lucky part happens though, there's an accidental death at the beginning of the film that sets into motion the whole subplot of the crazed vet out for revenge and, eventually, that story winds it's way to the inevitable head-on collision with the "illicit" couple, yielding a classically dark ending. The Teacher reminds me of dozens of unknown films from that era that would play in theaters for a week and then disappear, never to be seen again unless they happened to wind up on late night TV a couple years later… which many did. While The Teacher is memorable - or, at least, reminded me of a lot of other movies - Pick-Up falls into the category of "forgotten cinema that's best left forgotten." Pointless doesn't even begin to describe this waste of time, but it's the one word that kept coming to mind about every other minute as I kept hitting the display button on the remote to see how much longer this exercise in awfulness would go on. Seriously folks, this might be a new leading contender in my never-ending quest to find the worst movie ever. Pick-Up is kind of a road movie, except that for more than three-quarters of it the mobile home everyone's traveling in is stuck in the middle of the Everglades. To pass the time in the swamplands, we get endless scenes of hippies wandering through the woods, bizarre flashbacks that make less than no sense, hallucinatory scenes that may or may not be actually taking place, and rowdy, rapin' rednecks. The ending is the most confusing bit of all, as it makes you wonder if the entire previous 78 minutes was all a dream / vision / hallucination of one of the lead hippie chicks. To continue what I said at the beginning of this review, it's a good thing this movie came second, because if I'd seen this piece of crap first I probably wouldn't have hung in for The Teacher.
—the Kommandant
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