cult film freak: DAMAGED GOODS

year: 1961 cast: Dolores Faith, Charlotte Stewart, Michael Bell, Mory Schoolhouse rating: ***1/2

Attention high school students: instead of class everyone will meet in the Gym to watch a very important short film about venereal disease. Thankfully it’s enveloped within an hour long movie about four kids hanging out, making out, drinking, two-timing and all that fun stuff.

Originally titled VD and meant as a teen warning against premarital sex in 1961 (when America still resembled the Eisenhower era), the retitled DAMAGED GOODS, part of a double-feature DVD along with Gary Graver’s THE HARD ROAD, centers on Jim and Judy, the perfect couple who, only seniors in high school, foresee a blissful suburban marriage.

Dolores Faith as Kathy

Jim’s jovial sidekick Monk doesn’t live up to his name – he wants a girl so bad he’s about to go crazy. Enter wild child Kathy played by exploitation starlet Dolores Faith; with lust-narrowed eyes and looking a cross between a young Liz Taylor and Suzanne Pleshette, Kathy wants Jim and doesn’t care about his clingy girlfriend.

Much of the film has Judy moping about Kathy’s blatant flirtation with her beau, who, thanks to Monk’s goading, winds up on a drinking binge, having sex with a hooker and contracting syphilis. But this is towards the end of our story – you can shut your eyes during the short providing grueling medical footage of a disease cured by a few shots.

Walk a mile for a camel

The most shocking aspect is that the basic storyline (juggling personalities of the four eclectic teens) is involving and the acting’s pretty good. Charlotte Stewart as the blond good girl Judy played the Walnut Grove schoolmarm “Miss Beadle” on LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE while Michael Bell (Monk) continued to act and has provided many many voice-overs throughout the years.

While some of the performances is of the Deadpan school of acting, liken to many low budget flicks, Michael Bell has tons of fun energy and carries the story along. But you’ll most likely center on Dolores Faith’s exotic temptress: if this were Film Noir she’d be armed with a gun and plenty of stormy prowess... Take away the gun and you have a sultry vixen that could tempt, and perhaps even intimidate, the Devil Himself.