Pick-Up

Directed by Bernard Hirschenson.
1975. Rated R, 80 minutes.
Cast:
Jill Senter
Gini Eastwood
Alan Long
Tom Quinn
Bess Douglass
John Winter
Don Penny

When our story begins we get a closeup of some guy’s face as he takes a leak on the side of a bus. Umm…okaaay. Not too far off the side of the road, a couple of young ladies are sitting amongst the weeds watching the action. The blonde makes googly eyes at him, immediately convincing him to give these two random babes a lift wherever they want to go. She can’t get there fast enough, but the brunette is hesitant. You see, the brunette is an Aries. Apparently, all people born under that sign have psychic abilities. At least, that’s what she says. Anyhoo, her spider sense or something kicks in and with a rather blank look on her face that we’ll become far too familiar with, she says “It’s gonna be a bad trip.” Little did I know at this point, she is talking about our experience watching this crap. Thinking she means something bad, possibly gruesome and hopefully interesting is about to happen, I keep watching.

Once on board, we find out the bus is actually a 1970s style mobile home. It looks pretty spiffy on the inside. This thing must’ve eaten up a large chunk of the budget, but I digress. The brunette continues to be sour puss and has numerous flashbacks to her painful childhood, during which she appears fully grown, by the way. This must be contagious because eventually, the other two start having flashbacks, too. No to be outdone by a couple of non-Aries, the brunette also has all sorts of strange visions (hallucinations?). She conjures up a random Black woman dressed in an all-white flowing robe whispering very loudly in her best ominous voice. There is also the even more random and bizarre clown that chases her through the woods. Finally, there’s an even-more-random-than-the-clown concrete slab in the middle of said woods. The brunette wanders upon that, wearing only the robe she must have borrowed from the Black woman. She quickly strips that off and psychicly pleasures herself. What? You think I’m kidding? I wish.

Speaking of getting naked, that’s what the other two knuckleheads do best. Well, they have a lot of sex, too. They go for walks, take off their clothes, frolic in the grass, or water, ride a swing together and do the wild thing. They also laugh the whole time, unless they’re kissing or on those less than thrilling occasions one of their brains forms a sentence and forces them to speak. However, just so you don’t go thinking the blonde is having all the fun, or doubt our guy’s studliness, the brunette eventually comes around and he screws her, too. In fact, that’s the turning point of our movie. It precedes a very strange ending that makes about as much sense as inviting Hitler to a bar mitzvah.

The sad part is while we’re watching this, we get the sense the director is striving to create something deep, meaningful and artistically sexy. Unfortunately, we can also tell he doesn’t have anything even remotely resembling the ability to turn that particular trick. Just making it coherent is a task he fails miserably. What he’s given us is soft-core porn at its very weirdest.

MY SCORE: 0/10