THE CLASS REUNION (1972) * ½

Marsha Jordan, Rene Bond, Sandy Carey, and a bunch of others gather at a hotel for their class reunion.  (“The Class of ‘69”.)  One guy invites everyone back to his room to watch old footage of them partying it up and having sex in their old college days.  (It’s just footage from College Girls and is only meant to pad out the running time.  Plus, it’s tinted red for some reason.)  The classmates get so turned on watching the movie that they decide to have an impromptu orgy right then and there.  Afterwards, the friends pair off for more fun.

Directed by A.C. Stephen, and co-written by Ed Wood, The Class Reunion is seriously lacking the hallmarks you’d expect from the duo.  Sure, we do get the obligatory scene that goes from day to night and back again (courtesy of some random footage of a hippie peace protest), and a couple of boom mike shadows, but that’s about it.  The most memorable thing about it is how progressive it is as it contains a love scene between two gay characters (both of whom are portrayed as over the top stereotypes).  I guess it earns points for inclusiveness, but the fact remains, it’s still not very good.  (I can only imagine the audience reactions this scene caused among the raincoat crowd back in ’72.)

I’m a fan of Stephen and Wood’s adult features, but even this one was kind of a test of my patience.  For starters, the sex scenes are filmed in a sloppy manner.  The camera is usually placed too far away from the action and/or zooms around listlessly.  Many scenes also suffer from awkward framing and indifferent editing.  The biggest miscalculation was having the lovely Bond sit and watch from the sidelines instead of participating during the big orgy scene.  At least she gets a decent scene where she seduces her married girlfriend, which is about as tantalizing as the film gets, which is to say… not very.

The film has a disjointed feel as stuff just sort of happens at random.  Maybe it was just me, but it felt like the orgy scene belonged at the end of the movie and not the beginning.  I know I shouldn’t be thinking so hard about this as Stephen and Wood were only using the (very) thin premise as an excuse to show some skin.  That wouldn’t matter if the sex scenes were any good, or if the filmmaking was up to their usual WTF standards.  In the end, The Class Reunion isn’t a worthy reunion between Stephen and Wood.