SYNOPSICS
Score (1973) is a English movie. Radley Metzger has directed this movie. Claire Wilbur,Casey Donovan,Lynn Lowry,Gerald Grant are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1973. Score (1973) is considered one of the best Adult,Comedy,Drama movie in India and around the world.
A happily married bisexual swinging couple, Jack and Elvira who spend their days lounging around the villa making bets and having sex. One weekend, they turn their sights on a couple of naive newlyweds, Betsy and Eddie and bet on whether or not they can seduce the two. Their small get together at their luxury Riviera villa turns into a night of secrets, seduction, and sexual discovery like no other. Elvira and Jack depict bisexuality perfectly as a swingers couple, having sex with each other as well as members of the same sex. When it comes to our naive newlyweds, Eddie is clearly a closeted homosexual and Betsy undoubtedly wants to be more than friends with Elvira while still maintaining an interest for the men in her life. Jack and Elvira allow these young partners to achieve a sexual liberation - regardless of sexuality.
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Score (1973) Reviews
Operation "music box!"
This movie is a trip! I came across this DVD a couple of years ago at a local retailer. Having never heard of this movie or Radley Metzger, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Boy, were my fiancé' and I floored when we started watching this classic piece of erotic entertainment. This movie did NOT go where I expected it too! The movie is filmed beautifully (in the village of leisure, in the land of play, deep within the erogenous zone) & focuses on the seduction of a young newlywed couple by a pair of married experienced swingers. This movie was WAY ahead of it's time when it was first released in 1973. Score features some great erotic scenes, and is filled with plenty of nudity and drug references. The lead actress (Claire Wilbur) is marvelous in her role as Elvira, the swinging married seductress. Lynn Lowry is quite convincing in her role as an innocent newly wed catholic school girl turned wild sexpot! All in all, this movie is great fun to watch! Not really a movie to sit and watch with your friends (unless there extremely open minded), this movie should be viewed alone or with that special someone. Nevertheless, it is an extremely enjoyable and often shocking piece of erotic cinema. They just don't make them like this anymore!! I would have given Score 10 stars, but I hear that the DVD is edited much more than the video release. I can't imagine what they could have left out!! Definitely recommended......just not for everyone.
The UNCENSORED version of this film is better than you'd ever know...
Someone bashed "Score" for being a soft-core, "So What?" kind of movie. This is both unfair and uninformed. Image Entertainment's presentation of "Score" is a CENSORED print of Metzger's intensely more erotic and explicit work (particularly for 1972). Director Radley Metzger was, at this time, ramping up to his stint as legendary hardcore film maker "Henry Paris" (at which point in his career he would grind out some of the X-rated industry's most prestigious and sophisticated projects like THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN and BARBARA BROADCAST). In the UNCUT version of "Score" Gerald Grant and Cal Culver (nee Casey Donovan of gay porn fame) engage in explicit, X-rated sexual activity, much of which was sadly and unnecessarily excised from the chopped-up print released by Image Entertainment. The ladies' sex scene is also longer and feels more complete with the missing footage. I've read some hearsay online that Metzger actually approved of releasing the censored version of the film instead of putting out the full-blown hardcore version. Disappointing, if true, though it may have been made purely due to marketing and distribution (otherwise the title might have been lost amid countless, worthless smutty DVDs in the back-room browsing areas of video stores. (shrug) Now more than ever before, "Score" needs to be re-released UNCENSORED; anyone who has seen the film in its entirety (as I have) knows that the sexual payoffs are part of the reason the film exists at all. Heck, it is still relatively tame by today's standards, so there was little reason to snip away the various erections and oral sex scenes (penetration, while it may well have happened between the men, is never truly explicit due to shadows, etc.). "Score" can only be fairly judged seeing the film in its most complete form; otherwise it understandably plays as half-baked, which is unfair to the viewer, to Radley Metzger and his team of film makers, and to the stalwart cast. I say, if it was good enough to show in theaters in 1972, it's good enough to show on DVD thirty-one years later! Sure, the bi-sexual theme still doesn't resonate well with a lot of folks and maybe that's part of the enduring charm of "Score". Non-traditional sex identities remain today a troubling and disconcerting taboo (particularly for men). It's sad that given as much progress as we've made culturally and scientifically, there are religion-bound folks out there still not willing to admit that *honest* human sexuality is rarely polarized (as hetero- or homo-) without *some* shades-of-gray... Because of this eternal angst, the uncensored version of "Score" is great for group showings. You'll watch with glee as your friends squirm as the last act goes into explicit high- gear. By the same token, of the ultimate strengths of "Score" is that it boldly and unabashedly plunges into territory that has been for decades-on-end commercial suicide. "Score" straddles the world of porn on the one side with more serious entertainment on the other. Even now, this unfamiliar mix of genres seems refreshing; the past three decades have given us plenty of porn and plenty of mainstream entertainment, but very little that really dares to push the envelope the way "Score" did, combining the two extremes. Other groundbreaking movies of the 1970s like "The Story of O" and "Emmanuelle" also accomplished this (and disasters like "Wild Orchid" promised to, but didn't). Today audiences are lamenting that more films like this don't exist -- films with admirable production values which nevertheless aren't afraid to take the provocation initially hinted at to an explicit level. Thanks to an unfortunate distribution choice by Image Entertainment (a company that made its initial living releasing XXX hardcore porno such as "The Girl From S.E.X. to video), audiences only get a "softcore" version and continue to miss out on the relatively mild (by today's standards) but ultimately necessary climaxes in "Score".
Swings both ways...
SCORE Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 Sound format: Mono A sexually liberated couple (Claire Wilbur and Gerald Grant) set out to seduce a young newlywed couple (Lynn Lowry and Calvin Culver). Having explored familiar heterosexual obsessions in well-regarded softcore dramas like CAMILLE 2000 (1969) and THE LICKERISH QUARTET (1969), director Radley Metzger upped the sexual ante with SCORE, a good-natured bisexual romp which crosses the boundary into hardcore territory popularized in US theaters by the likes of DEEP THROAT and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES (both 1972). Based on a play by screenwriter Jerry Douglas, SCORE pits a couple of worldly, uninhibited predators against naive, conservative-minded 'virgins' during a weekend get-together at Wilbur and Grant's luxury Riviera villa. Having plied the hapless duo with drink and soft drugs ("I'm not a very good junkie!" Lowry complains) and dressed them in costumes which tally with their sexual fantasies (cowboy, nun, sailor, etc.), Wilbur and Lowry pair off for a lesbian encounter, while Grant and Culver descend into the basement bedroom for a full-blown gay seduction. Artfully photographed by Metzger himself and veteran cinematographer Franjo Vodopivec on location in Yugosalvia, and framed as an adult fairy tale (the delightful opening narration locates the action "...in the lush little land of Plenty, in the enviable state of Affluence... deep within the Erogenous Zone"!), the movie is distinguished by clever dialogue which removes outmoded notions of sexual parameters from the outset. When asked how she differentiated between sexes during the orgies she's attended in the past, Wilbur replies: "First you don't know, then you can't tell, then you don't care!" The plot is wafer-thin, and the acting is merely OK (the women fare best in this regard), but Douglas' script - played out for the most part in a single interior set, with only a handful of outdoor sequences - allows Metzger to build slowly and surely to the climactic double seduction, using reflective surfaces (amongst other devices) to convey sexual dualities within the characters. Viewers hoping for a non-stop flesh-fest may be irritated by the long narrative preamble (punctuated by Wilbur's rough-house tumble with studly repairman Carl Parker), but there's still plenty of uncompromising nudity, and the film manages to stimulate the brain whilst simultaneously tickling your, er... fancy. Great music, too, including an ultra-groovy (and uncredited) theme song! The film exists in two separate versions: Metzger is said to prefer the softcore edition (85m), but the all-important sex scenes are seriously compromised by jarring edits and obvious gaps in the soundtrack. Try to see the full-on hardcore print (92m), which includes rather more graphic detail during the gay sex scenes. 'Calvin Culver' is actually gay porn performer Casey Donovan, star of groundbreaking titles like BOYS IN THE SAND (1971) and THE OTHER SIDE OF ASPEN (1978), though he later re-teamed with Metzger for the director's hetero masterpiece THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN (1976). Co-star Grant only appeared in two other films - Metzger's NAKED CAME THE STRANGER (1975) and Umberto Lenzi's EATEN ALIVE! (1980) - and it's sad to report that both he and Donovan have since passed away. Wilbur featured in the original stage version of SCORE, but her only other screen acting credit appears to be TEENAGE HITCH-HIKERS (1974), while the beautiful Lowry has since pursued a career in mainstream movies, including THE CRAZIES (1973), SHIVERS (1975) and CAT PEOPLE (1982). Writer Jerry Douglas adopted the pseudonym 'Doug Richards' and made a name for himself in gay porn, writing and directing a number of celebrated productions, including THE BACK ROW (1973), BOTH WAYS (1976) and MORE OF A MAN (1991), the latter featuring Joey Stefano and Chi Chi LaRue, while SCORE's production manager Branko Lustig has since become a major Hollywood producer, with titles like SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) and GLADIATOR (2000) to his credit!
Radley Metzger, the auteur of adult film!
"Score" is an amazing cult classic that should be seen by everyone. Even though I have only seen one other of Radley Metzger's movies ("The Lickerish Quartet"), I don't hesitate in calling him an "auteur of adult film." To call his movies "soft-core porn" would be an insult. "Score" and "Lickerish Quartet" are both top-notch turn-ons. What I liked about "Score" was the fact that nothing about it ever seemed gratuitous, given the subject matter. The same-sex seduction scenes in the movie were fun and genuinely erotic. I especially loved the oh-so subtle ways the characters would flirt and come on to each other. The fact that the nudity was used very sparingly only added to the erotic tension. The movie literally teases and arouses the viewer from beginning to end. And the love scenes between the two men (Jack and Eddie) and the two women (Elvira and Betsy) were done in beautiful taste. While very elegant and aesthetically pleasing, "Score" never takes itself too seriously. I think anyone could easily be hypnotized by this movie if they give it a chance. It is beautiful.
Classy and clever
"Score" is more or less a period piece now, filmed as it was in that post-sexual liberation/pre-AIDS window when it seemed that sexual, political and aesthetic freedom were essentially linked. The film is a manifesto for sexual liberation purely, brushing only briefly by sexuality's darker aspects (the somewhat creepy Mike, and a certain core hollowness in Elvira and Jack's marriage). The characters are psychologically simplistic (Betsy's nun fixation, Eddie's glaringly obvious repressed homosexuality), but--important in a film of this type--extremely likeable. Claire Wilbur and Gerald Grant are particularly good in their roles. All of this is wrapped up in good-natured sex and spot-on stoned dialogue. Even the music's entertaining--particularly the early-Rolling Stones ripoff that functions as a recurring motif and perhaps as well the goofy thematic heart of the film. The trailer for "Score" recommends, "Watch it with someone you want to excite!" Well, it might not be as libidinally exciting now as it was thirty years ago, but it's still fun, and sweet, and highly recommended.