Score (1973)

Brilliant and touching

Absolutely amazing

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This movie is a trip! I came across this DVD a couple of years ago at a local retailer. Having never heard of this movie or Radley Metzger, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Boy, were my fiancé' and I floored when we started watching this classic piece of erotic entertainment. This movie did NOT go where I expected it too! The movie is filmed beautifully (in the village of leisure, in the land of play, deep within the erogenous zone) & focuses on the seduction of a young newlywed couple by a pair of married experienced swingers.This movie was WAY ahead of it's time when it was first released in 1973. Score features some great erotic scenes, and is filled with plenty of nudity and drug references. The lead actress (Claire Wilbur) is marvelous in her role as Elvira, the swinging married seductress. Lynn Lowry is quite convincing in her role as an innocent newly wed catholic school girl turned wild sexpot! All in all, this movie is great fun to watch! Not really a movie to sit and watch with your friends (unless there extremely open minded), this movie should be viewed alone or with that special someone.Nevertheless, it is an extremely enjoyable and often shocking piece of erotic cinema. They just don't make them like this anymore!! I would have given Score 10 stars, but I hear that the DVD is edited much more than the video release. I can't imagine what they could have left out!! Definitely recommended......just not for everyone.

Someone bashed "Score" for being a soft-core, "So What?" kind of movie. This is both unfair and uninformed. Image Entertainment's presentation of "Score" is a CENSORED print of Metzger's intensely more erotic and explicit work (particularly for 1972). Director Radley Metzger was, at this time, ramping up to his stint as legendary hardcore film maker "Henry Paris" (at which point in his career he would grind out some of the X-rated industry's most prestigious and sophisticated projects like THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN and BARBARA BROADCAST). In the UNCUT version of "Score" Gerald Grant and Cal Culver (nee Casey Donovan of gay porn fame) engage in explicit, X-rated sexual activity, much of which was sadly and unnecessarily excised from the chopped-up print released by Image Entertainment. The ladies' sex scene is also longer and feels more complete with the missing footage. I've read some hearsay online that Metzger actually approved of releasing the censored version of the film instead of putting out the full-blown hardcore version. Disappointing, if true, though it may have been made purely due to marketing and distribution (otherwise the title might have been lost amid countless, worthless smutty DVDs in the back-room browsing areas of video stores. (shrug)Now more than ever before, "Score" needs to be re-released UNCENSORED; anyone who has seen the film in its entirety (as I have) knows that the sexual payoffs are part of the reason the film exists at all. Heck, it is still relatively tame by today's standards, so there was little reason to snip away the various erections and oral sex scenes (penetration, while it may well have happened between the men, is never truly explicit due to shadows, etc.). "Score" can only be fairly judged seeing the film in its most complete form; otherwise it understandably plays as half-baked, which is unfair to the viewer, to Radley Metzger and his team of film makers, and to the stalwart cast. I say, if it was good enough to show in theaters in 1972, it's good enough to show on DVD thirty-one years later! Sure, the bi-sexual theme still doesn't resonate well with a lot of folks and maybe that's part of the enduring charm of "Score". Non-traditional sex identities remain today a troubling and disconcerting taboo (particularly for men). It's sad that given as much progress as we've made culturally and scientifically, there are religion-bound folks out there still not willing to admit that *honest* human sexuality is rarely polarized (as hetero- or homo-) without *some* shades-of-gray... Because of this eternal angst, the uncensored version of "Score" is great for group showings. You'll watch with glee as your friends squirm as the last act goes into explicit high- gear.By the same token, of the ultimate strengths of "Score" is that it boldly and unabashedly plunges into territory that has been for decades-on-end commercial suicide. "Score" straddles the world of porn on the one side with more serious entertainment on the other. Even now, this unfamiliar mix of genres seems refreshing; the past three decades have given us plenty of porn and plenty of mainstream entertainment, but very little that really dares to push the envelope the way "Score" did, combining the two extremes. Other groundbreaking movies of the 1970s like "The Story of O" and "Emmanuelle" also accomplished this (and disasters like "Wild Orchid" promised to, but didn't).Today audiences are lamenting that more films like this don't exist -- films with admirable production values which nevertheless aren't afraid to take the provocation initially hinted at to an explicit level. Thanks to an unfortunate distribution choice by Image Entertainment (a company that made its initial living releasing XXX hardcore porno such as "The Girl From S.E.X. to video), audiences only get a "softcore" version and continue to miss out on the relatively mild (by today's standards) but ultimately necessary climaxes in "Score".

"Score" is an amazing cult classic that should be seen by everyone. Even though I have only seen one other of Radley Metzger's movies ("The Lickerish Quartet"), I don't hesitate in calling him an "auteur of adult film." To call his movies "soft-core porn" would be an insult. "Score" and "Lickerish Quartet" are both top-notch turn-ons.What I liked about "Score" was the fact that nothing about it ever seemed gratuitous, given the subject matter. The same-sex seduction scenes in the movie were fun and genuinely erotic. I especially loved the oh-so subtle ways the characters would flirt and come on to each other. The fact that the nudity was used very sparingly only added to the erotic tension. The movie literally teases and arouses the viewer from beginning to end. And the love scenes between the two men (Jack and Eddie) and the two women (Elvira and Betsy) were done in beautiful taste.While very elegant and aesthetically pleasing, "Score" never takes itself too seriously. I think anyone could easily be hypnotized by this movie if they give it a chance. It is beautiful.

Jack and Elvira, 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 unbelievably horrible, but the dialogue is hilariously arch, the cast is attractive, and director Radley Metzger, the undisputed master of the classy Eurotrash film, 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.