The Centerfold Girls (1974)

Glamour models being stalked and murdered by a puritanical maniac is hardly an original plot - in British exploitation cinema alone we have Cover Girl Killer (1959) and The Playbirds (1978).  In between these we have The Centerfold Girls (1974), a gritty and single minded piece of US exploitation.  This time around it is religious fanatic Andrew Prine harassing various models who have appeared as center folds in a men's magazine with anonymous phone calls, before following and killing them.  But while the plot might be familiar, the film's structure is quite different to the other two films mentioned, opting for an episodic format, making it an anthology film of sorts, as we follow three different girls as their paths cross that of Prine.  

First up, we meet one of the models as she travels to a rural community where she hopes to resume a career in nursing.  While Prine is stalking her, the initial threat comes from the hitch hiker she earlier picked up and her hippie friends, who rob and attempt to sexually assault her at the relative's house the model is staying at.  Escaping and seeking refuge at the local motel, she finds herself further molested by the superficially sympathetic motel owner, before encountering Prine's character, who appears to be sympathetic and respectable, in contrast to all the hippies and local sleazebags she has encountered.  Of course, having lulled her into a false sense of security, Prine murders her.  This first story effectively sets the tone for the whole movie, with the victims portrayed as naive in their interactions with others and the male characters as being universally scummy would be rapists.  To be fair most of the female characters are also portrayed in equally unflattering terms, as either bimbos, sadists or moralistic harridans.  

The second story varies the format - this time Prine manages to follow, in secret, a group of models and photographers to an island where they are to carry out a photo shoot.  He succeeds in murdering them all and escaping from the island, leaving no trace of himself, in what could almost be a parody of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.  The police, naturally, are baffled.  Once again, the male characters involved in the shoot are all utterly despicable sleaze bags, who spend their time trying to hit on the girls with promises of career advancement and the like.  The models all seem utterly oblivious as to the threat posed to them, even as the bodies pile up.  This is probably the weakest of the segments, stretching credulity as Prine pulls off his 'perfect crime'.

The final story varies the format once again: this time his prospective victim is aware of the threat to herself and attempts to evade Prine by going into hiding.  Unfortunately for her, a fellow model incredibly gives her location to a complete stranger (Prine) over the phone.  Once again, the initial threat to the victim comes not from Prine, but from various random men she encounters after her car breaks down and she is forced to hitch hike, culminating in her being drugged and raped by a pair of sailors who pick her up.  As in the first story, Prine in his respectable married man persona, appears to come to her rescue, offering her a lift, only to drive her to a remote woodland spot in order to kill her.  This time, however, he finds that his victim is prepared to fight back.  

As noted earlier, the film is single minded (and quite relentless) in its quest to portray most of humanity and men in particular, as sexually motivated predators obsessed with the degradation of women.  So depraved are most of the men the models encounter in both their work and everyday lives, that it is no wonder that Prine's character is able to win their trust simply by appearing respectable and civilised.  Besides, he only wants to kill them, not rape them.  Moreover, he at least has a coherent motivation, (coherent to him, at least), for targeting the centerfold girls - he is a puritanical religious fanatic who believes that their displaying of their bodies in men's magazines represents an attempt to corrupt decent men through sexual temptation.  The behaviour of virtually every non-pyschopathic male character in the film would seem to validate his claims.  Yet it isn't quite that simple - the film seems, in places, to be trying to explore the mind set that tries to make victims complicit in their own ordeals.  In the first story, for instance, the motel owner's wife assumes that the girl must have been 'asking for it' when she was attacked by the hippies - after all, she is a young, single and emancipated woman who takes her clothes off for money.  Likewise, the motel owner himself thinks that she is 'available' and 'easy' for the same reasons, despite the fact that the hippies had attacked her for being too repressed (she doesn't want to party with them, declines offers of drugs and alcohol and rejects their sexual advances).  Young women, it seems are damned if they appear to be too 'liberated' or if they are too 'repressed'.  They can't win.

It has to be said that The Centerfold Girls comes over as scummy in every respect, with grainy, often bleached out looking (thanks to be mainly being shot in bright California sunlight) photography, scratchy sound and sometimes choppy editing.  But the look complements the subject matter perfectly.  Nevertheless, some scenes are highly effective - the final confrontation in a burnt pout section of forest, for instance, with the protagonists surrounded by the charred and twisted remains of trees.  Overall, The Centerfold Girls is a less than subtle film in its depiction of male violence and the persecution of female sexual liberty.  Moreover, to ram home the reductive way in which Prine's character views the world, he lives in an all white apartment and wears black clothes.  But Prine could always play psychopaths well and he does so here, alternately a ranting religious fanatic and an apparently respectable, rational, middle class professional.  Aldo Ray is also suitably sleazy as the lascivious motel owner in the first story.  Of the victims, only the last, played by Tiffany Bolling, is particularly memorable.  The film actually has a lot to recommend it - not least that sub-text about victim blaming that lurks in the script, but also its structure: the episodic format and the focus on the killer and his victims rather than the police investigation, (the usual focus of such films).  Indeed, the police are shown to be spectacularly ineffective throughout the film, (as they more often than not are with regard to real life stalking cases).  The Centerfold Girls was one of only a handful of films (all low budget) directed by John Peyser, who was otherwise a prolific director of episodic television, but he succeeds in turning out a suitably gritty piece of exploitation which, despite the episodic format, moves along at a decent pace.  Satisfyingly sleazy, it is well worth a look.