(1971)

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2 versions, both lousy
lor_28 June 2010
This poorly made porn film has been revived by competing companies Something Weird and Alpha Blue Archives, but it wasn't worth the trouble.

Porn vet Orita de Chadwick plays Mrs. Wellington, the blonde headmistress of a private school for girls, catering to mess-ups from wealthy families as a high-priced alternative to reform school. Opening has her sitting down to supper with 6 of her charges, as the uncredited director uses "go in & out of focus" to intercut two sets of lesbian scenes involving student Oko with two of her schoolmates.

Minimal plot has her son Peter, with whom she is carrying on an incestuous relationship, having sex with the girls against mom's wishes. After several of these trysts, the girl is killed, one rather graphically in an extended (intentionally distasteful) scene of suffocation by a plastic bag over her head. A new girl, Suzanne, arrives and gets spanked by Mrs. Wellington prior to the headmistress making love to her. A suspicious looking handyman outside is shown from time to time to keep the pot boiling.

The ABA DVD has no suspense, giving away the identity of the killer early on. Both reissues on video are from splicey prints and are incomplete, but the SWV version moreso, with just enough missing shots to make the whodunit aspect of the story ambiguous. Both films have a crudely designed and edited ending, which was evidently botched in the original negative for adult movie house release in the first place.

This stinker remains unclaimed as to authorship nearly 40 years later, for good reason. It is a poor excuse for porn even on its own terms -introducing a large cast at opening, most of the girls never to return (as one would anticipate as a patron). Sex footage is perfunctory and unerotic, and the premise of "schoolgirls in trouble" with a stern disciplinarian in charge is also pure bait & switch.

P.S.: Vinegar Syndrome reissued it for yet a third version, more complete, but clearly misdirected energy, likely stemming from that latterday company ignoring (or personally dismissing, I'm not sure which), the earlier contributions of pioneering folk like Mike Varny of SWV or the Frisco Bay group running ABA. "Mania" is the title VS assigned but their 1971 release date is dubious.
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8/10
Amusingly shoddy early 70's porn
Woodyanders2 December 2016
Warning: Spoilers
A psycho murders young wayward coeds at an exclusive all girls boarding school. This enjoyably rough around the edges hardcore grinder provides a wealth of unintentional laughs thanks to its ridiculously eclectic film library music score alone: We start off with an ooga booga organ tune from "The Phantom of the Opera," a funky soul number plays during a hot girl/girl make-out session, and a lame soft-rock muzak cover of "Witchy Woman" mewls away on the soundtrack as another straight copulation sequence unfolds. Moreover, the woman portraying the stern head mistress is hilariously miscast due to the fact that she's basically the same age as the guy playing her creepy handyman son Peter. The gals run the gamut from homely to pretty. The killer's identity can be figured out early on. No classic, but a still entertaining sliver of sloppy 70's sin cinema.
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Bizarre Horror/Porn
Michael_Elliott6 November 2016
Mania (1971)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

An acting group is under attacked by a masked maniac who is brutally raping the women.

MANIA is one of those ultra low-budget movies that probably played 42nd Street for a week around 3am. The movie is technically pretty bad as the performances, the direction, cinematography and everything else imaginable is pretty bad. With that said, this movie is so wildly insane that I couldn't help but be entertained by its madness. For starters, the rapist appears to be played by different actors during different scenes and this is obvious by how the body type (and other things) change sizes. It also doesn't help the film that you will easily be able to tell who is doing the rapes. The sex scenes are mostly poorly shot and there's really nothing "good" to speak of here. Still, this film is pretty over-the-top in its weirdness and on that level alone it's worth watching.
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