Take an Easy Ride 1975
director: Kenneth F. Rowles
Genre
Country
Great Britain
Cast
Helen Bernat Margaret Heald Pauline Bate Christianne Derrick Slater Jeanne Field Sam Avent Tony Doonan Charles Erskine Jenny Nevinson Stella Coley Terry Francis Frederick Hogarth Sue Allen Carstairs Ron Patric
Synopsis
A TERRIFYING EXPOSURE ON THE PERILS OF HITCHING A RIDE...
TAKE AN EASY RIDE ...Deals with the Perils [sic] girl hitch-hikers are exposed to and, conversely, the danger drivers can experience if they inadvertently pick-up hitch-hikers who prey on their kind. Short interviews with youngsters who have hitch-hiked in America and on the Continent giving their views and experiences. The Most Tragic... two girls going to a pop festival are picked up by a sex maniac, attacked with a knife and raped. Another girl is picked up by a seemingly respectable couple who give her dinner at their hotel and persuade her to stay the night. Too Late the girl finds the woman is a Lesbian[sic]. Two young girls steal from a roadside cafe and then thumb a lift from a young man. When he stops to drop them off, they knife and rob him. Two other girls get a trouble tree lift from a middle aged lorry driver, but as the film ends we see them accepting, heading for the inevitable. The Sex Maniac.
TAKE AN EASY RIDE ...Deals with the Perils [sic] girl hitch-hikers are exposed to and, conversely, the danger drivers can experience if they inadvertently pick-up hitch-hikers who prey on their kind. Short interviews with youngsters who have hitch-hiked in America and on the Continent giving their views and experiences. The Most Tragic... two girls going to a pop festival are picked up by a sex maniac, attacked with a knife and raped. Another girl is picked up by a seemingly respectable couple who give her dinner at their hotel and persuade her to stay the night. Too Late the girl finds the woman is a Lesbian[sic]. Two young girls steal from a roadside cafe and then thumb a lift from a young man. When he stops to drop them off, they knife and rob him. Two other girls get a trouble tree lift from a middle aged lorry driver, but as the film ends we see them accepting, heading for the inevitable. The Sex Maniac.
Other Releases
Formats
Average User Rating: 3 Vote(s)
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 Not Available | Purchase this movie on DVD! |  Amazon UK |
| Distributor | IFS (Iver Film Services) |
| Catalogue Number | GG37149 |
| Release Series | |
| Release Date | May 1981 |
| Duration: | 38m 22s |
| Printed Classification | |
| Notes | Read more about this video, which is featured in the book The Art of the Nasty |
User Reviews:
Kenneth Rowles was one of the great 'nearly men' of British exploitation. In 1970, he created a thirteen-part series based around the physical charms of actress Luan Peters called [i]Go Gir[/i]l, but it was promptly shelved and remained unreleased for years. His last directing job was a tribute to Her Majesty the Queen in 1987. 1976 proved to be Rowles' banner year, as he produced the dismal but profitable sex comedy [i]the Ups and Downs of a Handyman[/i] and directed this controversial offering, which started life as a public information film intended for television broadcast before the Wardour Street fraternity heard about it and turned it into a full-blown exploitation quickie, proudly wearing its X rating and occupying one Soho cinema for the best part of a year.
If you've ever wondered what a cross between John MacKenzie's [i]Apaches[/i] and Wes Craven's [i]Last House on the Left[/i] would look like, [i]Take an Easy Ride[/i] will satisfy your curiosity. The dangers of hitch-hiking are spelled out in typically sensationalist manner, with two bad girls who think nothing of stealing the tips jar and a knife from a motorway cafe before stabbing some poor sod who was dim enough to offer them a lift, an attractive blonde who finds herself seduced by a middle-aged bisexual whilst her portly husband (sporting a nasty pair of nylon Y-fronts) takes photographs, and a couple of female hippies en route to a rock concert get driven into the woods by a pornography addict who subjects them to a graphic and pretty disturbing ordeal - all shot in the same cruddy, bleached-out, grainy 16mm stock as the Central Office of Information's galvanizing daytime fillers ("I am the spirit of dark and lonely water..."), edited with a breadknife and a pot of glue, and accompanied by library music from the DeWolfe catalogue. Clocking in at just under forty minutes, [i]Take an Easy Ride[/i] doesn't outstay its welcome and is best viewed nowadays as one of the genuine curios of the golden age of British exploitation.