The Single Girls (1974)

Featuring the sort of lurid plot that later powered episode after episode of Charlie’s Angels, this sleazy drive-in picture tracks a serial killer who stalks visitors at a Caribbean resort where guests overcome sexual hangups by sleeping with each other. Naturally, all the female guests are twentysomething babes and most of the male guests are middle-aged. In one scene, the psychobabble-spewing proprietor of the resort encourages his guests to free themselves by “milling,” which involves turning off the lights so everyone can grope freely. This experiment goes awry when someone either bites or cuts a buxom young woman’s breast. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie. Codirected by the exploitation-flick brain trust of married couple Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, The Single Girls works about 40 percent of the time, delivering cheap thrills and nudie shots by way of coherent storytelling. The rest of the time, the movie ambles from one disassociated vignette to the next. Therefore, one’s tolerance for this sort of thing depends entirely on how much joy one is able to derive from watching ladies scream, screw, shower, and strip. Although the movie has a few proper dramatic scenes, mostly involving the trouble that sexy redhead Allison (Claudia Jennings) has with a possessive ex-boyfriend, those bits come across like filler, no matter how hard the appealing Jennings tries to give a real performance. Incidentally, Jennings also starred in the Sebastians’ next opus, ’Gator Bait, which was released later in 1974.

The Single Girls: LAME