Score Review
Following his cult erotic hits Camille 2000 (1969) and The Lickerish Quartet (1970), director Radley Metzger, a director who found himself more settled in Europe, made Score in 1974. This film went further in its explicit content than its predecessors. A lot had happened in the past couple of years in the loosening of censorship with the mainstream releases of such porn classics as Deep Throat (1972), The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and Behind the Green Door (1972) in the US making stars of out of porn actresses Marilyn Chambers and Linda Lovelace. Also about to be released in Europe was the film that defined 70s porn on the mainstream big screen – Emmanuelle in France which starred the late Sylvia Kristel. Metzger decided to remain in Europe to film his next film Score and this time chose the former Yugoslavia to shoot the film which, although a communist country, was popular with filmmakers. The location for the shoot was the northern Croatian harbour town of Bakar where the crew set up production.
Metzger has been dubbed the master of euro erotica and set about adapting the play by Jerry Douglas who had originally had a minor hit with Score as an off-Broadway play. Douglas was then invited by Metzger to adapt his play for him. He transferred the location from New York to Europe and invited Claire Wilbur from the original to play to play Elvira, one of the central characters. The story follows a decadent couple of swingers who corrupt another couple into their lifestyles, but not to experiment with each other’s spouses but rather she with the girl and he with her husband. The original play had a young Sylvester Stallone in it but at the time Metzger thought Stallone too ‘ethnic’ looking and so cast a more European looking actor. However, an interesting making of documentary highlights that Douglas and Wilbur did not get on and marred the production. Wilbur also fought with her co-actress, Lynn Lowry when she learnt that Lowry was being paid more for her part. Ultimately it was only Wilbur who made the production a very difficult one. Also in the cast were the two males actors including Calvin Culver who went on to act and appear in many gay porn films before succumbing to the AIDS virus in 1984. Also in the cast as the shy Betsy is Lynn Lowry with her distinctive features would go on to perform in many B movies and did plenty of TV work such as in the classic Hollywood soap ‘Knots Landing’ and had also appeared in George A. Romero’s The Crazies the previous year as well as the odd other soft porn flick.
As with other Metzger films the eroticism is well handled, but like nearly all soft porn films of the 1970s it is incredibly dated including a typically period score, poor acting, poor production values and little more than erotic titillation. This film is hardly a cultural milestone but as with nearly all the Arrow Video releases there are plenty of extras that give background to Metzger’s film as well as a talky commentary. The ‘Making of’ documentary has a very retro kind of scratchy commentary to it giving the story of the film with lots of home video footage of the shoot played to a typically cheesy soft porn soundtrack. The other notable extras are trailers of the other two aforementioned releases by Metzger and a worthy interview with Lowry.
Chris Hick