First off, let's deal with the pinhead sect who are dissing this movie for daring to give them EXACTLY WHAT IT PROMISED -- A sleazy, disturbing, voyeuristic movie about a deranged psycho who murders centerfold models with a straight edge razor. Since nobody in the free world holds a gun to someone's head and forces them to watch a particular movie (aside from Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, that is), anyone who went out of their way to see this movie and were horrified to find out that it actually had the **balls** to give them exactly what it was advertised as has nothing to complain about. Other than maybe sleeping in on the morning they were handing out working brains. They got theirs after all the good ones were gone, I guess, and had to make do with an addled mind that can't grasp basic concepts ... like trashy exploitation movies actually being trashy, and exploitational. How stupid can people get? If you want art, rent or buy art, and stay away from the gutter, which is where this movie deliberately set out to be.
With that scolding out of the way, CENTERFOLD GIRLS is one of the purest, most startling and twistedly imaginative examples of the Grindhouse Exploitation & Sleaze Film as I have ever encountered. Packed wall to wall with glorious female nudity, gory killings, and punctuated by yet another brilliantly twisted performance by Andrew Prine as yet another bizarre psychopath, this movie dares to give viewers exactly what they are looking for in such entertainment: Garbage.
And not just your standard run-of-the-mill so boring 'cos we've seen it all a million times garbage, but garbage that keeps one guessing. Not as to the identity of some masked killer hacking their way through a supporting cast of unlikeable morons, but guessing in terms of just where the movie is going from one given moment to the next. There was one murder that was so abrupt, so uncalled for, and so absolutely brilliant in how it was staged that this film should actually be "Required reading at the Academy, Mr. Spock" material for anyone who's interested in making a low budget amoral slasher film. It is still a vibrant, shocking, and sensationalistic masterpiece of exploitation thirty-five years after it was made.
Yes, there are vulgar, lurid moments that degrade the women who agreed to participate in the film, and none of the characters -- including the sexy women who's murders the film celebrates in such an unflinching manner -- are truly redeemable individuals. Even the usually heroic Aldo Ray comes off as a despicable monster, something that isn't easy to do, and his villainy is one of the film's great curve balls thrown mercilessly at the viewer. The one thing that impressed me more than anything else about the film was how it so specifically defied any formula for how psycho slasher horror films are "supposed" to be plotted out.
There are two keys to the equation of its success: The first are the women themselves, all of whom actually were (or could have been) the girlie magazine pin-up celebrities that the movie depicts them as. They are all stunningly beautiful, with nary a silicone implant to mar their natural female forms. None of them apparently had the slightest qualm with being undressed & paraded before the camera for our amusement to the sole function of any other role in the film. They don't exist as "people" so much as the exist to be Ms. April, Ms. May, Ms. June, Ms. July, and Ms. August. Their names & personalities are exactly as important to the plot as the models gracing the pages of a girlie magazine, existing only to be stalked, terrified, and slaughtered by the psychopath.
Is it misogynistic, regrettable, vile and sleazy? OF COURSE. But then again, what girlie magazine isn't? Don't blame the movie for telling things like they are, and indeed if you look at one of those kinds of magazines the first thing printed on the inside cover is a disclaimer pointing out that the habits, lifestyles and personalities of the models depicted in the magazine are not to be taken as actual representations of those people. Here is a movie that understands this concept, and uses it to great advantage.
The other key is Andrew Prine, who should have been nominated for some form of an Oscar years ago (I say it should have been for SIMON - KING OF THE WITCHES, but take your pick, really: All of his performances are universally marvelous). With his geeky glasses, Sears Roebuck catalog puritan's suit and complete resolve to see his mission through, Prine is the perfect embodiment of the psychopathic killer who slaughters women in an effort to "help" them, as he explains to more than one of his victims. The old Rambler station wagon he is given to drive is also a perfect extension of his character, and while there is some truth to the criticism that his is the only character in the film that is actually developed that's just part of the stacked deck. You can't fault it for being effective at what it set out to do, and once again Prine's acting stands out amidst a sea of dreck that would otherwise smother any other performer.
It is of course wrong to objectify women with pornography, and even more wrong to seek out & murder them for having taken part. But if every psycho killer movie were as honest about their intentions as CENTERFOLD GIRLS were maybe we wouldn't have such a low collective opinion of the idiom. It's the poseur films who wouldn't dare to go as far as this one do that give the form it's bad name. This one gets it right.
8/10, and then some.
With that scolding out of the way, CENTERFOLD GIRLS is one of the purest, most startling and twistedly imaginative examples of the Grindhouse Exploitation & Sleaze Film as I have ever encountered. Packed wall to wall with glorious female nudity, gory killings, and punctuated by yet another brilliantly twisted performance by Andrew Prine as yet another bizarre psychopath, this movie dares to give viewers exactly what they are looking for in such entertainment: Garbage.
And not just your standard run-of-the-mill so boring 'cos we've seen it all a million times garbage, but garbage that keeps one guessing. Not as to the identity of some masked killer hacking their way through a supporting cast of unlikeable morons, but guessing in terms of just where the movie is going from one given moment to the next. There was one murder that was so abrupt, so uncalled for, and so absolutely brilliant in how it was staged that this film should actually be "Required reading at the Academy, Mr. Spock" material for anyone who's interested in making a low budget amoral slasher film. It is still a vibrant, shocking, and sensationalistic masterpiece of exploitation thirty-five years after it was made.
Yes, there are vulgar, lurid moments that degrade the women who agreed to participate in the film, and none of the characters -- including the sexy women who's murders the film celebrates in such an unflinching manner -- are truly redeemable individuals. Even the usually heroic Aldo Ray comes off as a despicable monster, something that isn't easy to do, and his villainy is one of the film's great curve balls thrown mercilessly at the viewer. The one thing that impressed me more than anything else about the film was how it so specifically defied any formula for how psycho slasher horror films are "supposed" to be plotted out.
There are two keys to the equation of its success: The first are the women themselves, all of whom actually were (or could have been) the girlie magazine pin-up celebrities that the movie depicts them as. They are all stunningly beautiful, with nary a silicone implant to mar their natural female forms. None of them apparently had the slightest qualm with being undressed & paraded before the camera for our amusement to the sole function of any other role in the film. They don't exist as "people" so much as the exist to be Ms. April, Ms. May, Ms. June, Ms. July, and Ms. August. Their names & personalities are exactly as important to the plot as the models gracing the pages of a girlie magazine, existing only to be stalked, terrified, and slaughtered by the psychopath.
Is it misogynistic, regrettable, vile and sleazy? OF COURSE. But then again, what girlie magazine isn't? Don't blame the movie for telling things like they are, and indeed if you look at one of those kinds of magazines the first thing printed on the inside cover is a disclaimer pointing out that the habits, lifestyles and personalities of the models depicted in the magazine are not to be taken as actual representations of those people. Here is a movie that understands this concept, and uses it to great advantage.
The other key is Andrew Prine, who should have been nominated for some form of an Oscar years ago (I say it should have been for SIMON - KING OF THE WITCHES, but take your pick, really: All of his performances are universally marvelous). With his geeky glasses, Sears Roebuck catalog puritan's suit and complete resolve to see his mission through, Prine is the perfect embodiment of the psychopathic killer who slaughters women in an effort to "help" them, as he explains to more than one of his victims. The old Rambler station wagon he is given to drive is also a perfect extension of his character, and while there is some truth to the criticism that his is the only character in the film that is actually developed that's just part of the stacked deck. You can't fault it for being effective at what it set out to do, and once again Prine's acting stands out amidst a sea of dreck that would otherwise smother any other performer.
It is of course wrong to objectify women with pornography, and even more wrong to seek out & murder them for having taken part. But if every psycho killer movie were as honest about their intentions as CENTERFOLD GIRLS were maybe we wouldn't have such a low collective opinion of the idiom. It's the poseur films who wouldn't dare to go as far as this one do that give the form it's bad name. This one gets it right.
8/10, and then some.