Private Parts (1972)

When Cheryl and her roommate quarrel, Cheryl moves into her aunt's skid-row hotel in downtown L.A. rather than return home to Ohio. The lodgers are odd, Aunt Martha is a moralizer obsessed ... See full summary »

Director:

Paul Bartel

Writers:

Philip Kearney, Les Rendelstein

Stars:

Ayn Ruymen, Lucille Benson, John Ventantonio

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Ayn Ruymen	...	Cheryl Stratton
Lucille Benson	...	Aunt Martha
John Ventantonio	...	George
Laurie Main	...	Reverend Moon
Stanley Livingston	...	Jeff
Charles Woolf	...	Jeff's Dad
Ann Gibbs	...	Judy
Len Travis	...	Mike
Dorothy Neumann	...	Mrs. Quigley
Gene Simms	...	First Policeman
John Lupton	...	Second Policeman
Patrick Strong	...	Artie

Storyline

When Cheryl and her roommate quarrel, Cheryl moves into her aunt's skid-row hotel in downtown L.A. rather than return home to Ohio. The lodgers are odd, Aunt Martha is a moralizer obsessed with funerals, murder is afoot, and the inexperienced and trusting Cheryl may be the next victim. She wants to be treated like a woman, and she's drawn to George, a handsome photographer who longs for human contact but sleeps with a water-inflated doll and spies on Cheryl as she bathes. Jeff, a neighborhood clerk, may be Cheryl's only ally in what she doesn't realize is a perilous residence haunted by family secrets. And, what happened to Alice, a model who used to have Cheryl's room?

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Plot Keywords:

hotel | photographer | stealing a wallet | bathroom | fake priest | 

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Taglines:

A most bizarre voyage into the psycho sexual!

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Genres:

Horror | Comedy

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

September 1972 (USA)

Also Known As:

Blood Relations

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Penelope Productions Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

87 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Aunt Martha: Cheryl dear, when you're older, you'll realize that the body is a prison that traps and bends the natural spirit to its will. It makes us weak or sick or ugly, it makes us into men or women or whatever it likes, whether we like it or not.

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Connections

Featured in Celluloid Bloodbath: More Prevues from Hell (2012)

User Reviews

NOT the Howard Stern movie--this is actually pretty good

This movie begins with the protagonist, a teenage girl (Ayn Ruymen) being kicked out by her roommate after she spies on said roommate and her boyfriend having sex (this is perhaps a little strange since the protagonist is quite the babe while her roommate is kind of a beast even by non-Hollywood standards). Fortunately, she has an aunt nearby who operates one of those old fashion LA hotels and who gives her a room and job. Naturally, the hotel is chock-full of weirdos, and one of the weirdest is a reclusive, voyeuristic photographer with whom the aunt seems to have some strange relationship. Things start to turn around for the girl. She meets a nice guy, and also becomes romantically involved with the strange but handsome photographer. Unfortunately, though several bloody murders occur in the hotel and her former roommate, who comes looking for her, meets a sticky fate. And someone seems to be stalking the protagonist herself.

Many times in the past I've heard some loutish guy say of a pretty girl that he'd like to "drink her bathwater". Well, the stalker here does a lot more than that (I couldn't really spoil it if I wanted to, but it also involves a blow-up doll and blood-filled syringe). This is Paul Bartel's first film. It was made before "Death Race 2000" or "Eating Rauol", but it holds it's own pretty well against those. It has a great creepy locale (I'd love to stay in one of these old LA hotels if there were still any around that haven't been turned into vastly overpriced B and B for tourists), and it has an effective horror/black comic atmosphere. The mystery here isn't all that surprising, but it sure is deliciously weird. Ayn Ruymen and the women who plays her aunt are both pretty good. Ruymen was very cute, and while I personally am much too cultured and refined to make crude comments about drinking her bathwater, I sure did enjoy seeing her in it.

Also don't confuse this with the later Howard Stern movie of the same name. This is less famous, but actually a lot better.