Before Claudia Jennings cemented her title as Queen of the Drive-In in Ferd and Beverly Sebastian’s immortal classic, Gator Bait, she starred in the decidedly less than classic The Single Girls for the couple.
Claudia and some friends go to a “liberated” resort where a groovy doctor helps vacationers lose their inhibitions and partake in some “group” therapy, if you know what I mean. (Or, SEX, if you don’t know what I mean.) Too bad Claudia’s stuffed shirt ex has followed her along to ruin the fun. Speaking of ruining the fun, there’s also a killer lurking about the grounds who is slowly (huge emphasis on the word “slowly”) picking off the hedonistic vacationers one by one.
The Single Girls is an uneven mix of hippie dippy sexploitation and prototypical slasher movie. The fact that it was retitled Bloody Friday and rereleased years later on video as a Friday the 13th knockoff is telling. Don’t worry though, because there’s still a decent amount of skin on display. It’s just that the film has a tendency to swap genres as much as the couples swap partners.
This could have worked if the script was tight, but ultimately The Single Girls just never quite gets its affairs in order. It doesn’t work as sexploitation because there’s too much stalling and not enough balling, and it fails as a slasher flick as there’s too much gabbing and not enough stabbing. The finale is pretty weak too.
Claudia is the reason to watch it. She gives a fine performance, even if she doesn’t have quite as many nude scenes as I was expecting. We also get fine support from Albert (the Dirty Harry series) Popwell as the “soul brother” of the group and Robyn (Blazing Saddles) Hilton as one of the tourists.
AKA: Private School. AKA: Bloody Friday.
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