The Centerfold Girls, Nude and in Peril

Gratuitous!  Exploitation!  Lurid!  Prurient!  Maybe a good description of this film is an American Giallo-esque slasher film with more nudity.  Well, in defense of this movie, it is about centerfold models.  It is actually about centerfold models being hunted, humiliated, and slashed.  Not the feel good film of the 20th century and not a film to bring up in polite conversation, still, 1974's "The Centerfold Girls," directed by John Peyser, is a vicious slasher film with a ton of cheese.

This one unfolds almost like an anthology.  Our slasher, Clement (Andrew Prine) goes through the calendar, starting with Miss January, and slashes his way through the year.  As the opening credits roll, he is disposing of Miss January's (Charlie) slashed corpse.  Very sad.  On to chapter two and Miss March, Jacki (Jaime Lyn Bauer).  Jacki is a hot nurse in white who poses for girly magazines.  Now Clement begins hunting her.  Uh oh...Jacki will be sexually assaulted, and humiliated by some hippies.  Her tormentors grope and try to rape her.  Lesbian hippies will also try this.  After the fiends paint Jacki's face with her own cosmetics, the poor nurse escapes and runs into the hands of Clement.  Sadly, whichever way she went, Jacki was going to die horribly.  This first segment is a good metaphor for the fate of more centerfolds as the film continues.

We'll see Clement hunt Charly (Jennifer Ashley), a nubile coed...and then Vera (Tiffany Bolling), a sultry stewardess.  The hunts will be detailed and there will be a lot of collateral damage to either other centerfold models or just innocent babes caught in the crossfire.  The beautiful will die horribly, in states of nudity and helplessness.  Clement believes himself a crusader and is attempting to purify their souls through death...I guess these folks are out there.  Almost as sad, is the treatment these beauties get from the non-slasher characters in this film.  The women believe them sluts and harlots...the men see them as asking for their rapes.  Brutal!

Will any of our calendar gals have enough fight in them to survive Clement and turn the tables on him?  Is this film a mere mirror held up to Hollywood and its producers and moviemakers?  Is the misogyny captured in this film even more acute today as young Hollywood actresses must serve themselves up to drooling cads and even a female power structure that will make sure they are soiled and corrupted?  If you are into exploitation, gratuitous violence, and nudity (guilty!), see "The Centerfold Girls."