The Centerfold Girls (1974/Dark Sky Films DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Feature: C

 

 

Andrew Prine is a very underrated actor and was in specially prime, prolific form in the mid-1970s.  He never became the big star he deserved to be, but is a survivor and that goes for his past work, which is always distinctive and interesting.  In John Peyser’s The Centerfold Girls (1974), he is an obsessed proto-serial killer who tracks down women who have appeared in a Playboy-like magazine and tells them they are “dirtying the minds of other people” posing for and making such “filth” so he is going to stop them once and for all.  Imagine if they were in Penthouse or Hustler?

 

The film actually has several loosely tied-together stories and another one of the beauties gets abducted by a clone of the Mansion Gang, though this “Charlie” goes around quoting Cool Hand Luke (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and that is the kind of bad humor touch that sabotages the Arthur Marks/Bob Peete screenplay.  The result is an exploitation film that is more miss than hit and without Prine would rally be a dud.  The ladies are pretty, so that parties believable, but this ultimately is not that memorable and though I had seen it years ago, I vaguely remembered it.  Now, I see why.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 x 1 image is on the soft side throughout, though color is decent and the look of the film overall is not bad.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono a little better, but also shows its age with distortion you would expect from a low budget independent monophonic production of the time.  Extras include a making of featurette joking called Making The Cut, TV spots, radio spots, trailers and select music cues.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo