In the prosecution of a Catholic-school music teacher for the rape of an alluring lipstick model, the defense attorney manages to touch on a prococative question: Can't a woman, groomed for sex appeal, be held culpable for her own rape? That's a question for another movie, however. In this one, the F. Lee Bailey-ish attorney raises the point merely as a smear tactic; and the charming rapist, with a secret taste for bondage and humiliation, is plainly a psycho. (Even the enlightened prosecutor, Anne Bancroft with a Billie Jean King haircut, looks askance at the defendant's experimental music and its title, "Fury's Child," and expects the jury to see this composition as the product of a sick mind.) On its own terms, the only way the movie can turn is to hair-raising. In fact, it turns to pure baloney at the climax, as the rapist, aroused again, pursues his previous victim's thirteen-year-old sister through a maze of unoccupied offices and halls while her sister, one floor below, swirls in front of fashion photograpers in a scarlet spangled dress. The men in the movie are deceitful, cowardly, or depraved; but the women are characterized with considerable care and sympathy: Margaux and Mariel Hemingway, real-life sisters, have a warm, appealing relationship; and as a screen personality, Margaux has a shlightly shlushy voice that humanizes her cover-girl looks. With Chris Sarandon; directed by Lamont Johnson. (1976) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.