Alley Tramp (1968)

Herschell Gordon Lewis is best remembered as the pioneer of gore and splatter in such grindhouse bloodbaths as Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, and The Gore-Gore Girls. But he started his career making nudies with partner David F. Friedman, and after the two amicably dissolved their partnership, apparently kept his hand in with the occasional skinflick, such as this campy troubled-teen/family drama in which scrubbed, wholesome Marie Barker (Julie Ames), a cute perky teenager in the mid-sixties Patty Duke Show mold, accidentally sees her parents in bed together and turns virtually overnight into a cynical, calculating, sexually voracious little wench. Beginning by seducing her third cousin, Phil (Steve White), she goes on to cut classes for trysts with Phil at local cheap motels and adopting an insolent attitude when confronted about her school attendance. When she catches her mother (Ann Heath) having an affair with a barfly named Herbie, she blackmails her into giving her a blank check for doing what she pleases, with whomever she pleases. It'll come as no surprise that this situation won't last for long.

In classic exploitation fashion, Alley Tramp takes the pseudo-moralizing approach to rationalize all the skin and sin being represented on screen. Marie's "serious case of nymphomania" is explained as the product of parents who are too busy squabbling with each other and pursuing their own selfish interests to take an interest in their daughter. Dad is too busy at the office, where he's having it off with his secretary, and Mom, notwithstanding the witnessed bed scene, is sexually neglected by her husband and seeks solace in booze and extramarital affairs of her own. After a hilarious montage of Dad dandling his secretary on his lap, Mom going with various pick-ups, and Marie in bed with Phil and with various other men who grab her fancy, it all comes down with a bump: an unplanned pregnancy, a botched abortion, a trip to the mental home, and Mom and Dad resolving to come together and make their family a happy one again.

By the time this film was made, this moral pretense was getting a little old-fashioned: exploitation films were losing the tongue-in-cheek lectures in favor of straightforward wallows in sleazy wish-fulfillment. But it works for this film, largely because it matches the acting to a tee: bad, broad, heavy-handed and loud. When Julie Ames does her "I'm not a child anymore, I'm a woman and I'll do as I please" speech, it's in a top-of-her-lungs screech and very obviously read from a script off camera... and priceless. Ann Heath similarly clobbers her role with overwrought gestures and community-theater emoting.

The style of the film only underlines the enthusiastic but unnuanced performances. A pragmatic filmmaker who always realized that his audiences didn't give a damn about stylistic niceties or mise-en-scene, Lewis always reached for the simplest solutions: if you can get the point across in one take, do it in one take. So when Marie goes to her bedroom to change into something sexy for Phil before seducing him, the tripod-mounted camera spends three minutes following her around in roughly moving pans, tilts and zooms as she peels off her clothes, admires herself in the mirror, selects some new clothes, puts them on, and leaves. Similarly, a walk in a very large, scenic park shot on location, until it is time for the outdoor love sequence, when the two collapse behind a bush and -- cut -- fall onto a carpet of artificial turf on a soundstage, shot from overhead with a tree branch and the sound of birds for some continuity and the two are soon engaged in a naked tussle that accidentally turns up the corner of one of the sheets of turf.

Alley Tramp is rich in this kind of bad-film detail, and the results add up to what I think is an accessible and entertaining film experience and one that might serve as an introduction to sixties sexploitation for those who like "cult films" but might not have had too much experience with this particular genre. The nudity is not particularly graphic, and the camp elements give newcomers a handle of sorts to acclimatize themselves to a genre that over the past several years has been coming out on DVD format, often after decades of obscurity. This film comes on a double-feature edition by Something Weird Video along with Over 18... And Ready, a story of the sleazy world of sexploitation pictures, as well as a few appropriate short subjects.