DRIVE-IN COLLECTON: LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE (1972)/TEENAGE SEDUCTRESS (1975)
Director: Chris Warfield
Vinegar Syndrome

Vinegar Syndrome's latest Drive-in Collection release gives fans a pair of R-rated Chris Warfield productions LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE and TEENAGE SEDUCTRESS showcasing the respective talents of Sandy Dempsey and Sondra Curie.

On the way home from a meeting, music arranger Rick Engels (John Alderman, THE DIRTY DOLLS) makes the mistake of picking up hitch hikers Carol (Sandy Dempsey, POOR CECILY) and Judy (Judy Medford, DROP OUT WIFE) who ostensibly want to tour the Hollywood Hills. Getting Rick's address from his briefcase, they pop up on his doorstep and manipulate their way into spending the night. Rick takes Judy up to bed only to discover that she is (or until a few moments ago, was) a virgin. Afterward, Carol decides to demonstrate that anything Judy can do, she can do better. Returning home from work the next day, Rick discovers that they have turned his home into a crash pad but they mollify him with more sex in various combinations. This goes on for days until Rick starts missing work and feeling his age. When he finally puts his foot down, it is the girls that drop the other shoe: Judy is only sixteen and he is facing statutory rape charges if he throws them out. To his surprise, they want more than a place to sleep and food to eat, they want him constantly and threaten him with the police if he cannot perform his "nightly duties." Although Judy expresses doubts constantly about their treatment of him ("Do we have to be so downright bitchy all the time?"), she follows Carol's increasingly sadistic orders. Rick decides to turn the tables on them and see just how much they can take, but Carol is just as driven to humiliate him and possibly give him a heart attack.

A three-character piece, LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE (aka TEENAGE INNOCENCE) is a showcase for all three leads (particularly exploitation character actor Alderman) that is high on bare flesh but not quite as nutty as it could have been, teetering uneasily and seemingly unintentionally back and forth between sexploitation and comedy. The film was photographed by schlock director Ray Dennis Steckler (BLOOD SHACK) in a far more competent manner than any of his own films (although he does manage to catch his own reflection in the window of a passing bus during a street shot) and George "Buck" Flower (THEY LIVE) is credited as assistant director and set decorator. In 1987, Warfield would produce a hardcore remake – with Eric Edwards (THE PRIVATE AFTERNOONS OF PAMELA MANN) as Rick, Sheri St. Claire (BETWEEN THE CHEEKS) as Carol, and Summer Rose (STOLEN LUST) as Judy – that also recycled both the script (replacing "Hey, you've got a color TV" with "Hey, you've got cable") and the theme song by vocal coach Richard Loring and AIP regular Guy Hemric while extending the sex scenes.

The TEENAGE SEDUCTRESS is Terry (CLASS OF '74's Sondra Currie, sister of The Runaway's Cherrie and Marie) who has been warped by the rantings of her bitter mother (Gwen Van Dam, BLOODY TRAIL) about her father who abandoned them when she was a child. Posing as a recent journalism school graduate, Terry tracks her father – writer/painter Preston King (director Chris Warfield himself) to his ranch in Taos, California with the goal of seducing him ("I'm gonna fuck you father, just like you fucked me!") When Preston does not just fall into bed with her as she wanted, she convinces him to hire her as his personal secretary despite the misgivings of King's suspicious maid Elena (Sonny Cooper) and his girlfriend Victoria (Elizabeth Saxon, GIRLS ON THE ROAD) the local librarian who proved less than helpful to Terry when she first inquired of King's whereabouts. Manipulating the women out of Preston's life – with the unknowing help of hapless gallery owner Reggie (John Trujillo, BIG TIME) – Terry replaces them in the kitchen and, she hopes, in Preston's bed for a "Father's Night" he'll never forget.

Also known as FATHER'S NIGHT and FOR THE LOVE OF TERRY, TEENAGE SEDUCTRESS has a twisted concept and the lovely Ms. Currie headlining, but it is a bit too leisurely throughout its middle as if it is so sure that Terry's plan will succeed. In a way, she's right since Elena just drops out of the picture seemingly without any prodding from Terry, although her subtle manipulation of Victoria leads to the latter issuing warnings to King that highlight her own insecurities. The final act is also padded with some dissolve-heavy montages with some voiced-over dialogue in which King mentions having a daughter he has not seen since she was two years old that robs some tension out of a subsequent dialogue scene in which Terry vaguely describes her own childhood. Mother's presence is rendered through a series of echoey flashbacks and voice-overs as well as some optical superimpositions (including a hilarious one inside a showerhead). The culminating act of incest is prettily photographed with plenty of dissolves and romantic music, but a shot of the two characters in the aftermath has a ring of perverse warmth. Actor Edward Ryder – who starred in and co-directed the Warfield-produced R-rated LAUGH-IN parody UP YOURS – directed the scenes in which Warfield appeared onscreen.

Mastered from 2K scans of the original camera negatives, the progressives, anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen transfers of LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE and TEENAGE SEDUCTRESS both look sharp and colorful with healthy grain (heavier during the titles and the opticals) with the only defects besides the reel change marks seeming to originate with the sources (hairs in the gate, faint vertical scratches probably occurring in the camera). The Dolby Digital 1.0 mono tracks feature some hiss but are pretty clean. Both films are accompanied by theatrical trailers (2:20 and 2:18, respectively) but LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE also features the alternate TEENAGE INNOCENCE title card (0:37). (Eric Cotenas)

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