Three teens are spending the summer on Fire Island -- Thomas, Davison, and Hershey. I just love to see the young folks having fun and frisking around. And, man, they are radiantly happy, all sun tanned and drinking Heinekin's and doing a little grass and playing "Truth" and looking mighty handsome, all three of them. There's no jealousy between the boys, although they both have the hots for Hershey. But then there's no reason for jealousy because she lets both of them feel her up at the same time in the movie theater while watching a sexy Swedish movie.
There enters the picture Catherine Burns, not from New York but from Ohio. She's not ugly but she takes a little getting used to, next to these exemplars of bronzed and well-bred youth. She's shapeless and wears braces. Her hair isn't fashionably groomed and is configured like a Nazi helmet. On the vast white sand of Fire Island's beaches, her pale, plump figure is the only body that shines with the sheen of sun-blocker. She's moral too. She'd never take off her top and glow with self satisfaction as the two boys stare at her, while Hershey revels in their admiration.
The three sort of adopt her and try to teach her how to enjoy herself in accordance with their lights. She doesn't smoke or drink; she doesn't swim; she doesn't do dope; she looks and sounds like an adult and she has adult sensibilities.
So, one hot day, at Hershey's urging, the four of them go into the bushes and Burns is raped by the boys and left behind, with the sun a blistering crimson as it settles into the haze.
What is this movie about? Better to ask what was going on in 1968 when it was shot. There was a revolution under way in certain sectors of social space -- well-off white kids, mostly. The movie illustrates to the general audience what these spoiled narcissists were up to when they weren't carrying placards on the streets although, to be sure, not an iota of the outside world and its problems is ever mentioned. They're simply on the hedonic treadmill.
Whether it intends to or not, the movie also gives us a glimpse into human nature, which is not so flattering. Here are three kids who have everything they need and are free to do what they want. (There is hardly an adult to be seen.) And the world turns Hobbesian. Self indulgence is redefined to include inflicting pain on others. The Summer of Love is behind us -- and forget Flower Power.
That's what I got out of it anyway. That and the gradual suspicion that these teen agers of 1968 are now sixty-year-old urban bourgeois who are screeching about not wanting to pay taxes to support government freeloaders. They need the moolah for next year's BMW, the one with the 20 mm. cannon on top. Yes, Sandy, there is a certain strain towards diachronic consistency in cohorts. Some of us manage to grow older without really growing up.
I now step down from behind the pulpit. No, please. Save the applause. Just donate your next paycheck to Medecins Sans Frontiers. Thank you.
Barbara Hershey, running around clad in that skimpy bikini, is enough to generate a gonadal glow in any normal young man and tempt him to felony. Richard Thomas is the sensitive kid who kisses Burns and chats seriously with her, but only when they're alone, and at the end he turns as savage as the slightly beef-brained Davison.
The three of them had been reckless, selfish and cruel before, getting a nice Puerto Rican man drunk and leaving him to be beaten by a couple of thugs. And earlier, having saved the life of a sea gull, Hershey bashes its head in when it accidentally bites her finger. You have to govern that human nature carefully.
The performances are pretty good. I could believe each of the individual actors, and Burns is maybe marginally more convincing than the others. But the script has its weak points. NOBODY could be as frisky as the three kids at the beginning, and the transition to barbarity at the end is a little too quick. Pretty scenery though -- the summer beaches.
There enters the picture Catherine Burns, not from New York but from Ohio. She's not ugly but she takes a little getting used to, next to these exemplars of bronzed and well-bred youth. She's shapeless and wears braces. Her hair isn't fashionably groomed and is configured like a Nazi helmet. On the vast white sand of Fire Island's beaches, her pale, plump figure is the only body that shines with the sheen of sun-blocker. She's moral too. She'd never take off her top and glow with self satisfaction as the two boys stare at her, while Hershey revels in their admiration.
The three sort of adopt her and try to teach her how to enjoy herself in accordance with their lights. She doesn't smoke or drink; she doesn't swim; she doesn't do dope; she looks and sounds like an adult and she has adult sensibilities.
So, one hot day, at Hershey's urging, the four of them go into the bushes and Burns is raped by the boys and left behind, with the sun a blistering crimson as it settles into the haze.
What is this movie about? Better to ask what was going on in 1968 when it was shot. There was a revolution under way in certain sectors of social space -- well-off white kids, mostly. The movie illustrates to the general audience what these spoiled narcissists were up to when they weren't carrying placards on the streets although, to be sure, not an iota of the outside world and its problems is ever mentioned. They're simply on the hedonic treadmill.
Whether it intends to or not, the movie also gives us a glimpse into human nature, which is not so flattering. Here are three kids who have everything they need and are free to do what they want. (There is hardly an adult to be seen.) And the world turns Hobbesian. Self indulgence is redefined to include inflicting pain on others. The Summer of Love is behind us -- and forget Flower Power.
That's what I got out of it anyway. That and the gradual suspicion that these teen agers of 1968 are now sixty-year-old urban bourgeois who are screeching about not wanting to pay taxes to support government freeloaders. They need the moolah for next year's BMW, the one with the 20 mm. cannon on top. Yes, Sandy, there is a certain strain towards diachronic consistency in cohorts. Some of us manage to grow older without really growing up.
I now step down from behind the pulpit. No, please. Save the applause. Just donate your next paycheck to Medecins Sans Frontiers. Thank you.
Barbara Hershey, running around clad in that skimpy bikini, is enough to generate a gonadal glow in any normal young man and tempt him to felony. Richard Thomas is the sensitive kid who kisses Burns and chats seriously with her, but only when they're alone, and at the end he turns as savage as the slightly beef-brained Davison.
The three of them had been reckless, selfish and cruel before, getting a nice Puerto Rican man drunk and leaving him to be beaten by a couple of thugs. And earlier, having saved the life of a sea gull, Hershey bashes its head in when it accidentally bites her finger. You have to govern that human nature carefully.
The performances are pretty good. I could believe each of the individual actors, and Burns is maybe marginally more convincing than the others. But the script has its weak points. NOBODY could be as frisky as the three kids at the beginning, and the transition to barbarity at the end is a little too quick. Pretty scenery though -- the summer beaches.