As its title indicates, this old-fashioned, very poorly directed melodrama by Larry Buchanan, famed for his atrocious set of '60s horror movies that I used to see constantly (via AIP syndication) on TV back then, aims to be an exploitation movie, to titillate fans at drive-ins and grindhouses. Instead, it's merely an overwritten, embarrassing and amateurish stinker.
Buchanan's pretentiousness is sealed when the final scene, meant to be a climax of bittersweet "never to be" romance, is scored with library music very familiar from soft porn movies of the '60s, and ends with a freeze frame of a quote for tolerance by Irish poet James Stephens, a favorite author of mine. Yikes!
Story revolves around pipe dreams: heroine Cynthia Hull works as a maid in a wealthy white family's mansion, where she has plans to get ahead by passing for white. The exploitation movie title and subject is fake: she never does this, just talks and thinks about it. Her friend is the Black butler whose dream is merely to steal the family's valuable silver set to be his nest egg to start a new life.
A central character is the footloose, bratty daughter of the family who drives a Jaguar XK-E, and lures Cynthia to a night out on the town (sneaking away when her parents are out) that is her undoing. In a real, major studio movie, they'd go to the Whiskey a-Go-Go and see Johnny Rivers perform (this was made when he was a superstar) but instead we have to sit through Jody Daniels plus a terrible band led by deejay Jimmy Rabbit.
Buchanan's ridiculously pompous screenplay includes a preposterous gimmick: Kay Taylor is slipped a mickey by the valet who parks her Jaguar (for no reason -just seemingly a prank) that sets in motion her murder by Bill Thurman, an untalented villain who pops up in Buchanan movies regularly. The sex and violence is left out of the movie despite it being in the exploitation genre -Buchanan fails to deliver the promised sleaze. And the contrived finale where a completely unbelievable cop uses Cynthia as bait to trap Thurman is inept filmmaking.
Worst scene has Taylor's weakling brother pouring his heart out to Cynthia - relating the trama of his life when, horror of hoorors, he was ready to have sex with a nightclub girl who turned out to be a man in drag, and has felt gilty at NOT feeling disgusted when the guy revealed his identity. The scene stereotypes transvestites as predators and perpetuates the same sort of LGBTQ-hating venom as we're being exposed to some 60 years later. Thanks Larry for presenting bigotry in a movie trading on prejudice yet ending with a phony plea for tolerance. This is a "problem film", and Larry Buchanan is the problem.
