No.160 : Weekend With The Babysitter (1970)

Weekend With the Babysitter at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of an oddity from 1970 that garnered a frankly woeful 1.4/10 at the IMDb. It’s a hard film to categorise - it’s a sort of soft porn, action thriller fantasy with a bit of education and stoner wisdom thrown in for good measure.

We open with scenes of a young girl on a moped inter cut with some action at the border. The customs are shown to be doing a bang up job and although that seems incongruous with the carefree girl all will become clear soon. Or not, depends if you can stay the course really.

Anyway our hot chick arrives at her destination and we find that she’s the titular babysitter - but there’s been a mix up! The wife is indeed going out but not with the husband who is staying in. As he waves the wife off he tells the girl to stay so he can pay her for her time. The dirty bastard.

The pair settle down on the sofa and the girl starts reading a script that the chap, who is a director, is due to film next week. The girl laughs at how crummy the script is (oh the irony!) and tells him that the kids don’t talk like that. To prove her point she takes him out to meet her skuzzy friends.

Meanwhile, we learn that the wife has a drug problem and is visiting her dealer. They want paid and all she can offer is a loan of her husband’s boat which could bypass the customs problems we witnessed earlier. They take her along on the smuggling trip and after doping her up make her indulge in some lesbian sex for no other reason, it would seem, other than to secure an ‘X’ certificate for this tame offering.

Back at the house the husband is flat on his back after the night on the tiles but the girl stays over to make him breakfast and take him to the speedway, like you do. After lots of unnecessary shots of screaming bikes and babysitter nudity he realises that his wife is missing and commandeers a friend’s plane to search for her. Once spotted he rallies his new biker chums to intercept the bad guys and save the wife. Will lives be lost and will our man take his junkie wife back over the nubile babysitter?

This is quite a funny film if you don’t take it too seriously. The two leads are awful with the silver haired director as convincing as a hat stand. We’ve no idea what the baby sitter’s motivation is in seducing the old timer but fair play to him seeing as this was before the time of Viagra. The sex scenes are pretty tame although I did like how one ended with a cut to an anchor splashing into the water!

The kids all get a say and one boy’s assertion that not all bikers were bad was proven when they intercept the bad guys and destroy their drugs rather than toking up themselves. The twangy early 70’s soundtrack is a bit of a distraction but if ever a film was of its time this is it.

It’s certainly not as bad as the low scoring suggests but by no means a classic either. For your money you do get a fair bit of nudity, some cringingly bad sex scenes and dialogue you wouldn’t hear in a porno - so a wise investment all round then!

Best Bit : Pilot calling the control tower and asking them to call a biker bar for help

‘W’ Rating 11/23

No.83 : Women In Cages (1971)

Women in Cages at the IMDb

‘Women In Cages’ is a hard biting social satire that makes valid socio-political points about the drug trade and the exploitation of women.

Not really.

‘Women in Cages’ is an 1971 exploitation film about a bunch of chicks in a foreign jail and their evil bitch of a matron. The film opens on board a floating brothel, staffed by stereotypes and women with those 1970‘s nipples. In a needlessly elaborate scheme some drugs are passed to Rudy, who turns out to be a real shit. He then takes his American girlfriend, Jeff, to the cock fighting, as you do. The police are however on the case and as they close in Rudy gives Jeff the drugs to hold for him. The authorities give Jeff 10 years in the baddest jail in town and let Rudy off Scot free. Bugger.

Jeff meets the other inmates and it’s good to see hygiene is taken importantly, as the girls are quickly hosed down and deloused. The girls then meet the nasty head matron, Alabama, played by the always foxy Pam Grier. Alabama is a right cow, and takes her pick of the girls for her bedroom and her torture chamber ‘play room‘.

On the outside Rudy is worried that Jeff will talk to the cops, so he enlists her junkie cellmate to do her in with a poisoned ham sandwich. When this fails she uses other tactics but is foiled at every turn. One of Jeff’s other cell mates is enlisted to look after her as the cops thinks she can be turned to testify against Rudy and the syndicate.

With the promised early release not forthcoming Jeff plots the easiest jail break in history and gets out with four other prisoners. For reasons that are unclear, apart from another shirt ripping, they bring Pam along but the notorious trackers are hot on their trail. Can any of the girls survive and will the syndicate be brought to its knees?






This is a pretty crappy film, even given the low standards of the genre. The characters are unbelievable and the acting is deplorable. The dialogue stinks like the prison’s hole with lines like “It’s just like home - only different” peppering the shambolic plot.



Obviously the kind of person who picks ‘Women in Cages’ off the shelf isn't looking for much in the way of stylised drama and at least it delivers on its promise of naked women, lesbian sex and a bit of torture. It’s not very erotic however, and pretty tame by most standards - nothing below the waist please!

The jail break, which is simply going out through the sewers, is a bit easy and the feared trackers look like a bunch of blokes pulled out a Philippino bar for the occasion. Pam Grier shows great promise in an early role, and at least she gets some character development when she sees the horrors she used to inflict on others when the tables are turned.

The lead is devoid of personality however, and fails to register any emotions even when the most heinous outrages are inflicted upon her. She is also totally dumb and her relationship with the swarthy boyfriend doesn’t ring true. Still the nits I pick are hardly the kind that would concern the producers of this type of rubbish. A grubby distraction that should be put away for a few years itself.


Best Bit : Pam gets a massage


‘W’ Rating : 8/23