Private Parts (1972)

Directed by Paul Bartel. Starring Ayn Ruymen, Lucille Benson, John Ventantonio, Stanley Livingston, Laurie Main, Ann Gibbs, Len Travis, Charles Woolf, Dorothy Neumann. [R]

Perverse cult item from first-time director Bartel is populated by eccentric and depraved weirdos, some of whom get offed by a deviant serial murderer, so that’s either a win-win or a lose-lose. Troubled young runaway Ruymen ends up at her grouchy aunt’s rundown hotel; local boy Livingston takes an interest in her, but she’s more intrigued by an inscrutable photographer (Ventantonio) whose experiments with “blood transfusions” and an inflatable sex doll he keeps in his room hint that something’s not quite right about the young fella. Not especially effective, consistent or coherent as either a proto-slasher or bizarre black comedy, but just barely demented enough to be worth watching anyway…provided one’s sense of humor trends toward the sick and one’s tolerance for crudeness is high. The acting is usually bad enough to stand alongside 70s porno house productions, but that’s really part of the charm for these unrefined exercises in satirical excess. Bartel can be spotted briefly in a cameo as a disorderly lush.

64/100