Saturday, July 07, 2018

290. The Babysitter

290. The Babysitter (1969)
Director: Don Henderson
Writers: James E. McLarty from a story by George E. Carey and Don Henderson
From: Cult Cinema

An assistant district attorney has an affair with a babysitter and is then blackmailed by a motorcycle gang facing murder charges.

How am I getting all these movies in a bunch? First The Teacher, then My Tutor, and now this. Adults having affairs with minors or people coded as being dramatically young. Leaving aside the fact that there are at least three movies like this in these sets (I’m sure there have been more that I’m forgetting), they all come up within two months of each other. Mathematically, how does that happen?

To be fair, the titular babysitter does seem to be an adult—she’s not coded as a child, but still lands in the college-age category—so the movie doesn’t have the pedophilic edge that My Tutor and especially The Teacher had. Thin defense, I know.

Anyway, the movie is about George, an assistant to the DA who’s potentially preparing to run for the position himself. He and his wife go out for a political dinner and hire a babysitter from a service—Candy. That night, George drives Candy home and there’s some flirtation.

Meanwhile, a motorcycle gang learns that George has been assigned as prosecutor to a murder case involving one of their members. The member’s girlfriend, Julie, decides to ingratiate herself into George’s house and get evidence of his daughter being a lesbian to use as blackmail. The plan works, only the daughter is hooking up with her girlfriend behind frosted glass. However, at the very same time, Candy comes over and hooks up with George. Julie gets pictures of that and their continuing relationship over the next two weeks.

Finally Julie calls, gives George the blackmail threat: get her boyfriend off or she sends the pictures to his wife and boss. She tells him the whole story of how the gang murdered the woman. They wanted revenge on her for killing one of their members in a car accident. The boyfriend “just wanted to hurt her,” but she died anyway.

George tells Candy about the blackmail threat and Candy brushes it off. He learns that she knows about Julie dealing drugs, but refuses to give him details that he could use to have her arrested because that “wouldn’t be fun.” In the end, George gets the conviction, using part of Julie’s description of events to sway the jury, and Candy gathers some friends to torture Julie into handing over the negatives. Candy and her friends plant weed at Julie’s place and leave her tied up for the cops. Meanwhile, George has written his letter of resignation, but his boss refuses it. He already has the pictures and thinks it’s funny. George rushes home to find his wife has copies as well, but she immediately forgives him. The final shot is Candy dancing with a new man at a dance club. THE END.

How is this cheap 50s b&w exploitation film coming out in 1969? There’s a sense of it trying to impose a moral lesson, but the outrage seems to be at the idea of George having to face consequences for his actions. He starts the affair with Candy the day after meeting her. Then the shock moment at the end when Candy refuses to help him because she doesn’t want to rat out her friends’ weed source. The implication is that she’s doing something wrong, not that George is looking for a way to use his power to escape responsibility for what he’s done.

Don’t worry, though, the movie is very clear that his power gets him out of facing consequences. When he talks to his boss about the pictures, the boss treats it like a joke. He even tells George that Julie told him the whole story and that he’s going to leave her locked up so no one else hears it.

I don’t know—powerful men abusing their power to facilitate their sexual impropriety? Just isn’t sitting well when I’m in PA and the clerical sexual abuse files are being released. Or when people who got toppled by #MeToo are getting paid gigs playing themselves up as victims.

You don’t need politics of the moment to be turned off by this movie. It’s cheap softcore porn masquerading as a real movie. If you want a modern comparison, think Neil Breen: George, the main character of this movie, is also the writer and producer. So he wrote a porno and cast himself in it as the guy who gets laid.

Apparently he liked the experience so much that he made a not-quite-sequel the next year with the same babysitter plot and tagline: “She came to sit with baby...And went away with daddy!” That movie, Weekend With the Babysitter is also in this set! There’s yet another one of these that I’ll have to watch!

Not only does the movie have gross morals, it’s dull. It takes, literally, 55 minutes of this 75 minute movie for George to get the phone call from the blackmailer. Everything up to then is just George moping, sex scenes, and a general skeeviness. The movie doesn’t even seem to worry about him getting caught since he doesn’t put much effort into hiding the affair (considering the end, I can see why).

It just sucks on every level and I’m not happy that I have to watch this deflated potato take another run at it in another movie—one that’s apparently 15 minutes longer and doesn’t include the blackmail plot. Great. So it takes longer for less to happen. I cannot wait for this all to end.

Skip the movie. Burn any copies you find.

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