Review of Scorchy

Scorchy (1976)
Costumes for Miss Connie Stevens...by Pleasure Dome Boutique of Hollywood
15 April 2004
That gives you an idea of this textbook American International Picture with a lot of heroin in valuable objets d'art and many vehicle chases,as well as some on foot, with some very good, some inept beyond belief.

Bill Smith in his 'Falconetti' period is the main reason to watch this: when he runs criminally away, darting here, darting there, it's so gracefully tigerlike it looks like surfing or serious dance.

There is some wonderful footage of Seattle cityscapes in a long chase in which Connie changes from a taxi to a hot rod and Bill gets off the train to get in a beautiful orange Pontiac Bonneville, and later--aided by one of those conveniently passing trains--manages to get a motorbike whose owner he kills in that just-for-the-hell-of-it way that started happening in the early 70's; and so we get a little nice nostalgia for his fabulous biker flicks. This he takes right on into Puget Sound, but Connie just pulls up--then, inexplicably, jumps into the water as if to catch him now by swimming--with all of her clothes, including a full-length coat, still on. As the scene dissolves, she hadn't swam very far, and momentarily is back in her apartment, holding far less of the wet clothes she had been wearing, but still wearing the coat (which looks dry by now) and an orange scarf over her head, whose hair looks dry by now.

And to think that all these garments, but part of all she owned in the film, came from Pleasure Dome Boutique of Hollywood...

This cannot have been synonymous with Frederick's, already an established name, although perhaps Marlene Schmidt had some of those kinds of items when she was primping in her soft-porn-style apartment...

Connie also sometimes screams like a real street feline, the kind that has fights in alleys, a most remarkable horrible snarling sound.

She'd played the Marilyn Monroe character in 'The Sex Symbol'. She would do better to portray Mary Hart of "Entertainment Tonight," even if she is older than the subject, as she is temperamentally suited for this role (not yet projected, alas.)

There is a far too explicit-looking scene of Connie making love with her boyfriend who is then shot in the back by Smith through the window with a spear.

This was a pioneering moment in the new coitus interruptus styles: Having made a clean break with the past, we were on our way to a most thoroughly unbrave new world.
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