User Reviews

GAME SHOW MODELS is an odd mix of comedy, softcore skin flick, and human drama, set in and around the offices of a production company busy working on their hit TV quiz show. It's a surprisingly well made effort considering the usual pedigree of these genre productions, and for once the sexual content is secondary to the actual story.

What we have are a tightly-wound group of characters dealing with some of the social issues of the day. There's a surprisingly sweet interracial romance, a little violence, and some really sleazy characters thrown into the mix. The actors were unknown to me and are not the best, but they give solid performances for a film of this kind. The actresses are pretty and disrobe a lot, as you'd expect. Best of all is Dick Miller's cameo as the gruff TV show host; Miller is one of those guys whose presence automatically lifts the films in which he appears, and so it proves so here.

I feel like this is the first time I've been swindled by Vinegar Syndrome. Here's a movie without a direction or an identity, and I watched the re-cut exploitation version, which was originally conceived and shot as an art film (the original edit, The Seventh Dwarf, is included as an extra... and there's no way on the planet I'll be sitting through it).

Take one look at the title, cover, and blurb, and prepare to have your expectations dashed. I would've sworn this movie came out of the 60's, but the year on the box, and a bit part by Thelma Houston say otherwise. I don't know if I've ever been more baffled by a movie outside of an art house flick (Ok, I get it, this IS art house).

Some filthy hippy with a "five year plan"(? Of what? Being an artist, I'm guessing?) leaves his live-in girlfriend, gets his hair cut, heads for Hollywood to a "square" job, where he works on the lowest rung at a PR firm. Now that is some scintillating stuff. They don't even have a title for him, he seems to drive people around, and run errands! The guy above him, showing him the ropes, is "head of signs," or some nonsense. There are four nude scenes, dubiously qualifying this as "exploitation" (watch for the chick credited as... "Chick." In the spirit of (intentional) political incorrectness found in this film, her perfect body gets the extra star in my book).

I found Gameshow Models to be a real cluster-F of ideas. The re-edit could partially be to blame, I suppose. I'll never know. Message: Hollywood Bad? This movie is chock-full of dalliances of subplots, the bulk of which are promptly dropped, ultimately totally trivial to the scope of this meandering mess. And the filmmaker gives me no reason to care about any of it.

So Stuart (our hippy protagonist, gone straight for a corporate gig) randomly encounters his ex, uh, face-painted, dressed, and dancing like a flower child in the streets (checked the dvd box again, yup, 1976), and her current guy, playing piano on the truck bed of his flower power-painted truck. She has lunch with Stuart, alone, OFFSCREEN. Go figure. By the end of this, after these two characters disappear for another 20 minutes, Stuart is asking to move in with the two of them(!) in their decrepit half-built house. THE END. The most boring, aimless so-called exploitation film I've ever seen, in all likelihood.

Disaffected dropout Stuart Guber (a solid and likable performance by John Vickery) decides to rejoin the mainstream rat race by leaving his performance artist girlfriend Josey (sweetly played by pretty blonde Diane Thomas) and accepting a job in the PR department at a major record label. However, Stuart soon becomes disillusioned with the shady wheeling and dealing of the whole plastic Hollywood scene. Writer/director David Gottlieb neatly captures the seamy, superficial, and duplicitous cutthroat dog-eat-dog nature of behind the scenes show business in Los Angeles: Gottlieb addresses such pertinent issues as racism, sexism and the objectification of women in the entertainment industry, homosexuality, and compromising one's values in a smart and compelling manner. Moreover, Gottlieb makes excellent use of various LA locations and makes a provocative central statement about how show business ain't exactly what it's cracked up to be. The sound acting by the capable cast helps a whole lot: Diane Sommerfield as the naive and spunky Cici, Gilbert DeRush as sleazy CEO Roger Feinstein, Nick Pellegrino as smarmy executive Arnold, and, best of all, the always delightful Dick Miller in an especially stand-out turn as an unctuous low-rent game show host. Look fast for 70's B-movie starlet Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith in a fleeting uncredited bit role. The crisp cinematography by Alan Capps provides an attractive bright look. The funky syncopated score by Willie Bobo and Christopher Robin Culver hits the eclectic groovy spot. Worth a watch for fans of offbeat 70's fare.