The denouement, which explains the whole elaborate scheme and fills in what would otherwise be plot holes, is interspersed with the credits. Murray's neck brace being one of them. Another is the huge bald convict in Lombardo's jail cell. Mostly, though, McNaughton sustains an air of lurid high melodrama. The camera lingers on high-school girls' crotches, thighs and tanned midriffs.
People fuck in pools or under rivulets of spilled liquor, in twos and threes.
It's utterly gratuitous and utterly entertaining. At first it seems overly macho the way the camera molests these taut Lolitas, especially in the service of a plot that involves an innocent man accused of rape by vengeful girls and a spiteful older woman. Sure it's an exploitation movie, but this twisted Technicolor orgy is also a thriller in the original sense of that word. Michelle Goldberg is a regular contributor to Salon. All rights reserved.