Films We Love: SCORE (1974)
Directed by: Radley Metzger
Starring: Claire Wilbur; Lynn Lowry; Gerald Grant and Casey Donovan
Released: April 16, 1974
"Score" is an amazing cult classic that should be seen by everyone. To call his movies "soft-core porn" would be an insult. Most viewers will expect a pretty good saucy movie, but it easily breaks out of that envelope. Goodies rates Radley Metzger as one of the great movie makers, and we honestly believe he is a genius (read the story about Radley Metzger in Goodies Issue 8).
Score has a very simple plot that involves a married couple who make a wager to seduce a newlywed and somewhat naïve couple. Lynn Lowry and Calvin Culver (as Betsy and Eddie) are the newly hitched couple who meet the more mature and experienced couple played by Claire Wilbur and Gerald Grant (as Elvira and Jack). Elvira and Jack, a thirtyish American couple living in Europe, amuse themselves with the game of seduction, keeping score on each other's successes and failures.
As the movie opens, Elvira is laying an elaborate trap with which she hopes to lure the fresh-faced Betsy into her lair. Betsy and her equally-innocent husband Eddie come to dinner, and the evening is devoted to the machinations of the wilier and far more experienced couple as they try to further Elvira's plot.
The musical soundtrack is 1970's horrible, but the dialogue is hilariously brilliant (and the same goes for the actors), the cast is attractive, and director Radley Metzger conveys more with close-ups of the actors' eyes than has anyone since silent film director G. W. Pabst. If sexual humor in film makes you uncomfortable, stay far away from this one, it'll save you stomping out later in a huff. But if you think sex can be funny, and you're out for some of the best lines ever uttered, go for SCORE -- you won't regret it.
