Sadly Over-hyped

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Like all character actors, you don't know her name but you've seen her face a million times, and here she shines as the owner of a seedy hotel filled with an assortment of weirdos. I found myself wishing that the film were funnier or edgier like a true black comedy, but it is Paul Bartel's first film and overall it's pretty effective. I kind of wanted Cheryl and George to get together, so it's a letdown when you learn that it's just not going to happen, for reasons that are too bizarre to write down; just watch the film, you'll see what I mean. As far as the rest of the film is concerned, there are some details that are so specific that they must have come from someone's real-life experiences, so in that respect there is a lot of authenticity here; Bartel manages to build a fully-functioning world, not as effectively as John Waters, but it's here nonetheless. It's an entertaining ride, and predictable in parts, but it's a step up from a B movie.

Gay cult actor/director/writer Paul Bartel (1938-2000) began his film-making career in 1968 with a 28-minute black comedy entitled 'The Secret Cinema', a movie about a woman who discovers that her life is being secretly filmed and shown in installments at a local art house cinema (an intriguing idea more elaborately developed in Peter Weir's 1998 film, 'The Truman Show'). For his first full-length feature, 'Private Parts', Bartel naturally gravitated toward a script by Philip Kearney and Les Rendelstein that took the themes broached in 'The Secret Cinema'—voyeurism, invasion of privacy, vicarious experience—and combined them with kinky eroticism and serial homicide to come up with a truly strange movie. Ayn Ruymen plays Cheryl Stratton, a naive but inquisitive 16-year-old runaway from Ohio who rooms with her best friend, Judy (Ann Gibbs)—until Judy angrily ejects her for spying during a lovemaking session. Cheryl subsequently moves into the King Edward, a skid row L.A. hotel run by her morbidly pious Aunt Martha (Lucille Benson). Despite Martha's pretensions toward respectability, the ominously seedy King Edward harbors all kinds of weirdos and sexual deviants, e.g., Reverend Moon (Laurie Main) a gay cleric with a fetish for bodybuilders; Mrs. Quigley (Dorothy Neumann), a dotty, deaf spinster constantly searching for a girl named Alice; Artie (Patrick Strong), a hardcore alcoholic who regularly passes out in his room; George (John Vantatonio), an effeminate photographer/voyeur who photographs couples making love in the park and sells the photos as pornography. After stealing a set of master keys, Cheryl launches a private, voyeuristic investigation into the rooms and lives of her fellow tenants, all the while being spied upon by lecherous George (cf. Norman Bates in Hitchcock's 'Psycho'), who acts out his crush on Cheryl with an inflatable sex doll. The plot thickens when Cheryl stumbles upon the remains of the aforementioned Alice, a teen fashion model recently gone missing. When Cheryl's friend, Judy, and her boyfriend Mike (Len Travis) come to the hotel looking for her, they also end up dead and dismembered before the (gender) identity of the killer is revealed in a surprise ending. A tension-inducing score by Hugo Friedhofer ('Ace in the Hole') adds a spurious gravitas to the proceedings. Subversive even by the more relaxed standards of the early Seventies, 'Private Parts' offended public sensibilities; some newspapers actually refused to print the title, "Private Parts," in ads for the movie, substituting "Private Arts" or "Private Party." Likewise, the movie embarrassed M-G-M, the studio famed for such estimable classics as 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Quo Vadis', and 'Dr. Zhivago'. Though it was hemorrhaging money at the time, M-G-M sheepishly relegated Bartel's unclassifiable opus to a dummy label (Premier Pictures) and made no effort to market it. Not surprisingly, 'Private Parts' fell flat. VHS (1991) and DVD (2005).

This movie begins with the protagonist, a teenage girl (Ayn Ruymen) being kicked out by her roommate after she spies on said roommate and her boyfriend having sex (this is perhaps a little strange since the protagonist is quite the babe while her roommate is kind of a beast even by non-Hollywood standards). Fortunately, she has an aunt nearby who operates one of those old fashion LA hotels and who gives her a room and job. Naturally, the hotel is chock-full of weirdos, and one of the weirdest is a reclusive, voyeuristic photographer with whom the aunt seems to have some strange relationship. Things start to turn around for the girl. She meets a nice guy, and also becomes romantically involved with the strange but handsome photographer. Unfortunately, though several bloody murders occur in the hotel and her former roommate, who comes looking for her, meets a sticky fate. And someone seems to be stalking the protagonist herself.Many times in the past I've heard some loutish guy say of a pretty girl that he'd like to "drink her bathwater". Well, the stalker here does a lot more than that (I couldn't really spoil it if I wanted to, but it also involves a blow-up doll and blood-filled syringe). This is Paul Bartel's first film. It was made before "Death Race 2000" or "Eating Rauol", but it holds it's own pretty well against those. It has a great creepy locale (I'd love to stay in one of these old LA hotels if there were still any around that haven't been turned into vastly overpriced B and B for tourists), and it has an effective horror/black comic atmosphere. The mystery here isn't all that surprising, but it sure is deliciously weird. Ayn Ruymen and the women who plays her aunt are both pretty good. Ruymen was very cute, and while I personally am much too cultured and refined to make crude comments about drinking her bathwater, I sure did enjoy seeing her in it.Also don't confuse this with the later Howard Stern movie of the same name. This is less famous, but actually a lot better.

This is an early film from filmmaker/actor Paul Bartel. Corman fans should know Bartel from such films such as "Cannonball" and "Death Race 2000." Bartel made this before making "Eating Rauol," which was an excellent dark comedy. For some reason, this film didn't really grab me or entertain as much as some of the other b-fare that Bartel directed or starred in.The plot is that Cheryl is a girl who ran away from home and ends up living at a hotel managed by her aunt. The hotel is kind of spooky and there is a lot going on behind closed doors that Cheryl begins to get wind of as the movie progresses. There is a big mystery surrounding the disappearance of a young model named Alice, which happened some time before Cheryl arrived at the hotel.All in all, there is some suspense and mystery in the movie, but it is built up too much. There's a fine line between being un-suspenseful and making things way too suspenseful. This film seems to err on the side of being over the top in the suspense department. The result is that the movie is mundane in points because the suspense was built up too much. In addition, and without giving away the ending, there is no explanation of why the murders are taking place or what the back ground story is. I realize that some things are better left to the imagination, but really. There were some things that were explained, but not enough. I wouldn't say that the film was a total waste though. It did have some interesting moments and it does keep you guessing as to exactly what is going on.