Tale of the Dean’s WIfe

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!

Soft‑core sexploiter for less permissive situations. Inept. Self‑imposed X.

Strange the things that pass for movies nowadays. TALE OF THE DEAN’S WIFE has nothing to offer but unconvincingly simulated sex, including the sort of orgies where the guys keep their socks and underwear on at all times, but nudity should get it by in the more restrictive urban and suburban sex markets and drive-ins. The usual dubbed moans and groans accompany the frustrated sex action, which is limited to listless writhing and grinding. The plot makes SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE look sophisticated. It starts with socially redeeming campus protest footage and the assurance that the picture will show the underlying reasons for such behavior. Sure enough, first thing we see is a group of rather elderly, pot-smoking, no-good permissive student degenerates who loll around all day fondling each other.

The dean tosses them and their list of so-called demands out of his house after dispensing a short lecture on anarchy. The dean’s buxom wife makes it with various students but holds out on the dean, reserving her affections for the lesbian maid. A visiting professor and his wife use the dean’s wife to demonstrate the latest scholarly techniques of whipping and lesbianizing. The maid joins in. The dean comes home and breaks it up, but the students drop LSD in his vodka, sending him sex-tripping, signified by lots of zooms. The girls slobber over him and the guys take blackmail pictures. The rest of the cast shows up and it’s orgy time. Afterward, when the dean recovers, everybody laughs at him, but he has the last word. He shoots himself.

<joe2>Hemisphere Pictures (Twin Peaks Productions). Color. 73 minutes. Christine Murray, Jim Gentry, Mark Edwards, Trace Mills, Guy Anthony, Anita Joyce. Produced by L.K. Farbella. Directed by Benjamin Onivas.