Pretty Maids All in a Row

Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek. He gave us a hopeful future where humanity had evolved past its worst impulses. Then he wrote this.

Adapted from Francis Pollini’s 1968 novel, Pretty Maids All in a Row plays like a fever dream beamed in from some alternate 1971. Rock Hudson is the high school guidance counselor. He’s also a serial killer. Also the football coach. He’s murdering teenage girls between pep rallies, and nobody seems to care because the team keeps winning.

This shouldn’t work. Young John David Carson plays Ponce, a sexually frustrated virgin who discovers a female classmate’s nude corpse while hiding in the bathroom waiting for his erection to subside. The movie lurches between sleazy sex comedy and murder mystery, executing neither with competence. The comedy is leering male fantasy. The mystery has no suspense. Bodies pile up off-screen while the camera ogles every woman who crosses the frame.

But here’s the trick: It’s all deliberate.

Roddenberry and director Roger Vadim have built a Trojan horse. They’ve disguised a savage satire as exploitation trash. The seemingly incompetent tonal whiplash is the point. This is a film about a society so corrupted by surface values that murder becomes acceptable if the murderer delivers wins on Friday nights. Consider Roddy McDowall’s principal, beaming after a mass funeral: “I’m so proud of our community. Everyone insisted we not cancel the game.”

Telly Savalas stalks through as a detective, representing a police force that’s both racist and useless. Keenan Wynn bumbles alongside him. They’re searching for a killer everyone subconsciously wants to remain free. The film makes you complicit. You start rooting for Hudson’s “Tiger” McDrew because he’s charming, because Rock Hudson is charming, because the movie knows exactly how star power works.

Speaking of Hudson: He’s playing the ultimate masculine ideal while being gay and closeted in real life. Another layer of cynicism to a film already drowning in it.

Then there’s Angie Dickinson. She’s 39, fearless, doing full nudity as a substitute teacher who transforms from prey into predator. The film exploits her, then empowers her, then reveals the empowerment is just another form of exploitation. Her seduction of Ponce should appall us. The movie makes us cheer. Even in granting her agency, Roddenberry traps her in male fantasy.

This is “free love” as con game. Sexuality as currency in a rigged economy. The setup predicts 80s slashers where sex equals death, but the kills happen off-screen because the violence isn’t the point. The point is a community that shrugs at murdered girls but panics at the thought of losing a football game.

I went in expecting trash. The opening feels so heavy-handed I nearly bailed. But Vadim never lets his cast wink at the camera. The performances stay sincere even as the material grows increasingly deranged. That commitment creates the dissonance. The fairy-tale lightness of the tone makes the darkness underneath even more disturbing.

Could this all be accident? Could I be finding meaning in mere incompetence? Doubtful. If this much talent assembled for a cash grab, they’d produce something boring. This film never bores.

That said, your mileage will vary. Some will see only the surface incompetence. But those who tune to its frequency will find something rare: a Trojan horse that actually works. If you appreciate straight-faced black comedy, if you can handle a film that appears to be failing while actually succeeding, seek this out.

It’s subversive as hell.