Au Pair Girls (1972)
This movie, according to the liner notes (how do you get a job writing liner notes for forgettable 70s British sexploitation pictures anyway?) was trying to capitalize on a fad that was sweeping across Britain at the time. Supposedly it was the "in" thing to do to have yourself an au pair girl. I guess some genius came up with the idea that since British women were so fugly, they would import chicks from better looking countries (Denmark, Sweden, the South Pacific) to come and do light household chores around the home. Light household chores like the husband. I'm not sure what the British woman thought of this whacky new fad, but if it meant that she didn't have some beak-nosed guy with crooked teeth and werewolf sideburns trying to paw her every night after a hearty meal of fish and chips, then I'll bet there wasn't a lot of noisy complaints around the flat.
If you like 70s style kitsch, then you'll be right at home as soon as this thing starts up. Of course, if you're in to 70s style kitsch, then you're a poser who needs to be reminded that our primary goal here is to watch as many Italian slasher movies as possible and that we a have zero-tolerance policy on posers. Unless the nature of your pose is that you're too cool for this movie, then I'd say that you need to get down off your high horse and take this movie for the kitschy fun that it is.
Anyway, you've got the opening shots of airplanes taking off and landing and the peppy strains of one of those theme songs that deserves as much notoriety as possible for its nauseating tune and lame lyrical attempt to sing about au pair girls. Once we actually get to the airport, we follow around a few of these au pair girls. They seem to come clothed in their home country's traditional attire - the bra-less miniskirt look or the bra-less short dress look, depending upon nationality.
In one sequence pilots are following one of the au pairs as she wiggles her way through the terminal. The loudspeaker calls them to some other part of the airport and they all turn in unison and go back the way they came. It reminded me of a Mentos commercial only except that this movie lasted almost an hour and a half instead of thirty seconds.
This is an ambitious movie though, so we have four story lines to follow throughout the proceedings, giving it a kind of Love Boat or Fantasy Island feel, where we all start out together, periodically check in on each subject and end up back together. Though I don't recall that when Captain Stubbing finally docked the Pacific Princess back to where ever her port was that all the guest stars (usually thespians along the lines of Diana Canova and Gary Collins) ended up riding off in a big car with an Arabian pimp. But I guess that would be the "British sensibility" they are so well known for, rearing it's bucktoothed head.
All four girls get transported to the au pair office where they will receive their assignments. I know that all four girls had names and I even remember that one of them was Randi. Get it? Randi? Have you gotten it yet? This is about as amusing as Benny Hill. So anyway, the rest of the names I don't recall. I know that there was a blonde chick from one of those blonde countries up by the north pole. You know, the kind that speaks English in such a garbled way that everything she says is some type of sexual innuendo that any ten year old and fan of these types of movies would snicker at.
The main thing about this particular au pair is that she actually seems to be retarded or something. As soon as she gets to the office (she's already made a date with the guy that drove her from the airport) all she wants to know about the family she's been assigned to is whether they have a color television. When she gets to the house, the first thing she asks the old hag wife is whether they have a color television. Then she is shown to her room and immediately strips down in front of this woman and demands to take a shower.
The old man gets home and sits in his favorite chair and notices that the ceiling is leaking. He goes up to see what the devil is going on and when he gets into the bathroom, he slips and falls. Whoa! This one is even manages to slip in some physical comedy for you Three Stooges fans! The old man is pretty surprised to see a naked au pair bathing. How many of you ladies out there wouldn't mind if some young thing moved into your house and starting cavorting around all buck naked and stuff in front of your husband? See, that's how us regular folks are different than an ugly British woman. Plus, I'll bet she used all the hot water as well!
Meanwhile, Randi is supposed to be going to some rich guy's house. The son picks her up at the airport and they never quite make it back home. He spends most of his time pawing at her in the car and eventually, they get a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. They end up thumbing a ride with a guy driving a tractor thanks her flashing a little leg and they end up waiting around at this guy's barn while their tire gets fixed. I think most of us are old enough to know what goes on in barns, so it shouldn't come as any surprise when Randi gets her dress caught on a nail and it rips. She blames the guy that's been pawing her and cries rape a few times before ripping her dress again and crying rape again before falling out of the hay loft and into a water trough.
I really didn't have any idea what was going on at this point in time, except that I knew she better get out of those wet clothes before she catches a cold or something. Of course once she does that, she ends up rolling around with this guy and I knew that she better cut that out before she caught crabs or something. These two morons spend the rest of the movie driving around trying to figure out where to get her a spare set of clothes. She's wrapped up in a blanket so I don't know why he just can't take her home and then go to a store and pick something up, but then if they played it smart like that we wouldn't have had that pointless scene with the nude photographer where she gets a bucket of water dumped on her head.
They other story lines consisted of the Asian au pair getting put up and putting out in a country manor house where there's this young guy who's been really sheltered (he likes to play on a swing!) and I guess needs some hooker, I mean au pair, to show him the ropes, because she's there for about ten minutes and the next thing you know, he's laying in bed smoking a cigarette and talking about showing her some new positions the next go around. The fourth au pair ends up going out with the daughter of her employers to some concert where this "rock star" that looks like a skinny biker, but sounds like the middle aged white guy singing the title song beds her down and teaches her what the phrases "one night stand" and "groupie sex" mean.
Things end badly for most of our imported little tramps. The blonde chick gets kicked out of her house when she gets back late from her date with the Arabian pimp (you have to watch the movie yourself to see how her date with the cabbie morphed into a date with rich Arabian royalty), the chick that had the dress ripped off is caught messing around with the crown jewels by the guy's rich father (he faints), the girl that taught the sissy boy to be a man leaves after he falls asleep, and the au pair turned groupie skank figures out that since she lost her virginity to a rock star, her work in Britain was done.
They all meet up at the employment agency and the blonde chick leads all the girls off to the waiting pimpmobile of the Arabian and they lived happily ever after as his harem. Well, it doesn't take an au pair girl to see that this movie is memorable only for its positive message to young gals everywhere: give it up enough and you might get lucky enough to have a rich guy treat you like a slab of meat. The main problem with the movie is that the hi-jinks the girls all get themselves into are really quite pedestrian. I mean they all managed to get laid the first night they're in London. Big deal. I'll bet that happens a lot. Well not for British gals, but for tourists.