Saturday, October 15, 2011

The Endangered List (Case File #114)



BABY VICKIE
(1969)


Starring
Sharon Matt (Baby Vickie)
Sebastian Gregory [Tony Vorno](Tony)
Bonnie Clark (Lorne)
Bill Moore (Steve)
Barbara Kline (The Stripper)
Dana Raven (Vickie's Mother)
William Gary (Vickie's Father)

Directed by
Harold Perkins [John Hayes]

Produced by
William Dancer [Daniel B. Cady]

Written by
Harold Perkins [John Hayes]

Cinematography by
John Lyons

Running time: 75 minutes

MOTHER
You lay in a man’s bed, bear his child, raise it, clean it, teach it everything good, and then it disgraces you.

FATHER
Vickie is a good girl, everything will be all right, you wait and see.

MOTHER
Your daughter has been raped, don’t you realize that? Now we’ll have to move – to another town where nobody knows us.

FATHER
Everything will be all right.

The previous scene is the key to the meaning of the new Clover Film BABY VICKIE. Among the so-called “good things” that Baby Vickie was taught is that sex is dirty, and it is something we do not speak about in the home. Vickie believed in this, too.

Her only expression of sex is in dark, quiet places or in the back of the tailor shop owned by her father after everyone is gone and she can lock herself in. Vickie sets the expensive teacups and silverware on the table, sets the mood with music and lights, just before parting the curtains and admitting her lover, the store mannequin.

Vickie rejects the advances of Steve, the young man approved of by the parents. She runs from him through the dark streets and alleys finding herself lost in a remote section of the waterfront. She confides in a longshoreman buts gets beaten and raped.

One year later, Vickie and Steve are married. The feeling is one of gayety and young love as the two slip under the sheets on their wedding night. Vickie is unable to respond in this atmosphere of home and cleanliness. She sneaks out and returns to the scene of her rape. Vickie gets involved with all the lower forms of human life and finds satisfaction.

Innocent Vickie instinctively knows that love is beautiful, but her present involvement is not. She searches wide-eyed, opening herself to everyone regardless of sex.

At the climax of the film, Vickie is rejected and laughed at by all the people she has known. She surrenders completely and jumps up on the bar of a waterfront saloon.



Photo below courtesy of Bruce Holecheck

4 comments:

  1. This film was produced by Dan Cady, who would go on to produce XXX films under the name William Dancer.
    Cady is still alive, I believe, and could be a good source in tracking down any surviving elements. Although there's a good likelihood that this film was lost in the CFI closure.

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  2. Thanks for the reminder about Cady. Dancer's credited in the Variety review, and I knew Hayes & Cady co-owned Clover, but I forgot to include Cady's name as producer. It's in there now!

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  3. I sent over a still from my collection to your Yahoo account.

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