The Curious Female (1969)

The Curious Female (1969) is basically a typical late sixties nudie movie, except for its presentation, styling itself as a film-within-a-film.  The actual 'nudie' part is a soft core sex comedy called 'Three Virgins', which is enclosed within a futuristic framing device of having it secretly watched by a group of young underground movie enthusiasts.  In between the reels of 'Three Virgins', this future audience discuss the film and the strange twentieth century morality and sexual norms it depicts, to satirical purpose.  The whole business of low budget sex movie production is also satirised, with the young woman presenting the film telling her audience that one reel of the film, supposedly chronicling a crucial plot point, was censored at the time of its release and is lost, while confiding to her male co-host that, in reality, it was never filmed because the producers ran out of money.  The Curious Female itself was, of course, shot on a low budget, with its future world depicted in the simplest and most basic ways possible - all we really see is a whitewashed cellar with lots of futuristic curved spaces, populated by young people wearing what look like togas.  We're told that in this future world everything is controlled by a central computer, which has outlawed monogomy and ancient sex movies like 'Three Virgins'.  The dialogue elaborates this world a little more, telling us that at age thirteen girls are, by order of the computer, relieved of their virginity by an approved 'old man'.  (We aren't told if thirteen year old boys get similar treatment from either approved 'old men' or 'old women').

The 'Three Virgins', which we see episodically throughout the framing story, plays out like a regular sex movie of the era, with its college campus setting, mix of female leads, comic asides involving a computerised dating agency, (we never learn if the 1969 computer is an ancestor of the central computer of the future, but the implication seems clear - some of its assumptions while matching up dates seem just as eccentric as the rules enforced by the future machine, including matching up an adult man with a little girl).  The film-within-a-film's plot involves a client of the agency looking for virgins - there are apparently only three left on the books, although the computer later becomes confused and thinks that a woman from Virginia is a virgin.  One girl wants to remain a virgin until she is married, but her bastard of a boyfriend wants only one thing and later gets it from her mother.  When he finally relents and marries her, it turns out that he's still a selfish bastard in the bedroom.  Another is escaping a home situation where she is constantly threatened with violence from her father and rape from her uncle.  The third finds that the client looking for a virgin is a wealthy aesthete who simply wants her as an accoutrement,  reasoning that any woman still a virgin at her age isn't interested in sex and therefore won't bother him with any nasty physical demands.  Consequently, she starts having frenzied sex with a variety of men.  

Overall, The Curious Female isn't exactly a great, or even groundbreaking film, but it is quite enjoyable while its playing.  Although clearly made with limited resources, it is actually pretty decently made, not looking too threadbare, with decent photography and sound quality and direction, from Paul Rapp, which, if not inspired, is at least competent.  The cast, which includes Angelique Pettyjohn, are also decent enough, putting in more than passable performances, with the main female leads playing dual roles in both framing story and film-within-a-film.  All in all The Curious Female is an agreeably slightly offbeat take on the late sixties nudie movie.