Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

SnoopyStyle Cheryl Stratton came out to L.A. from Cleveland with Judy. The roommates have a fight and she pleads with Aunt Martha for a place to stay at her rundown downtown hotel. The hotel houses a motley group of strange personalities and a serial killer among them.This is Paul Bartel's first full length film. It has his outlandish tastes and quite frankly his amateurish style. This is an indie black comedy horror. The lead Ayn Ruymen can be stretching too hard at times to be this wide-eye innocent. She's not the best actress. Lucille Benson who plays Martha is the best of the lot. The characters are weird but jokes are not widespread. There is a quirky indie charm about the whole enterprise. It's quirky weirdness with a water doll, Psycho peeping, and serial killings. Like many first times, it's a bit messy. It's awkward at times. Not everything works but some of this is unforgettable.

Predrag "Private Parts" tells the story of the runaway teen Cheryl Stratton (Ayn Ruymen) and her stay in her aunt's shady San Francisco hotel. Cheryl's story is not one of those pleasant coming of age films knee deep in moral values or road movies that enlightens the viewer about the importance of the journey. No, director Paul Bartel, in his first feature, has something completely different in mind, as he presents an extraordinarily bizarre tale of voyeurism, sexuality, and passionate murder. The voyeuristically loaded opening credits apply camera flashes and exposed body parts, which cue the audience in the direction of the story's sexual nature. The subsequent scene presents the sexual nature of the film in a much more tangible manner, as Cheryl sneaks a look at her friend and her boyfriend. However, Cheryl finds herself caught peeping. It places her in an awkward situation, which she avoids by leaving after she has stolen her friend's money. Here "Private Parts" pays homage to "Psycho (1960)" with similarities such as having a girl with stolen money seeking room and board at a hotel. Additional parallels to "Psycho" emerge as the film unfolds; for example, there is an intriguing bathroom scene.This was a very odd movie, and I really enjoyed it. The story may not be all that unique, but it's told with flair, originality, and a dark, comic undertone that kept me interested throughout (the seediness and squalor of the characters quickly overshadows that of the hotel and its surroundings). The really interesting aspect for me was how, as the movie started, it just seemed a series of loosely connected events and strange details not really leading anywhere, but later on I began to realize this wasn't the case, as there was a sly subtly in the hinting of the material in terms of the various relationships and past occurrences with the hotel and its residents. Bartel made a number of films, some of them not so great, but when he's working with material that suits him, as is the case here, wonderfully tacky things ensue.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

runamokprods Both an unsettling horror film, and a very dark comedy, this is my favorite Paul Bartel film.Avoiding the sometimes too overt self-congratulatory humor of "Eating Raoul", this story of a "nice" young girl who comes to stay at her aunt"s creepy hotel, only to be surrounded by all sorts of disturbingly depraved types frequently leaves you both laughing and cringing (in a good way) at the same time. Only the less than stellar (in fact sometimes near porn film level) acting keeps this from being a classic of disquieting, semi-surreal cinema. But there are scenes and images that stick with me, and Bartel creates a lot of atmosphere with his use of music, compositions, and light.

GroovyDoom In the 1970s there was a genre I like to refer to as the "70s doom" film. I'm not sure if "Private Parts" qualifies, as it's much wilder than most of the ones I hold most dear (like "The Pyx" and "Don't Look In The Basement"). But it's definitely got the aesthetics down pat, and if it seems a little too deliberate or *too* well made to be authentic, it's at least an unforgettable experience.Groovy 70s chick Cheryl (pronounced "CHAIR-ul") is on the run with her friend Judy, who freaks out on her when Cheryl spies on her having sex with a groovy L.A. hunk. Cheryl packs her suitcase and takes off, along with Judy's wallet, and heads out into the sleaziest part of L.A. looking for her long-lost Aunt Martha's hotel. Unfortunately for Cheryl, she finds it, and Aunt Martha takes her in.Aunt Martha is a stout, homely woman with no tolerance for worldly ways. She insists that Cheryl wash "that paint" off before joining her for dinner, and lectures her on the evils of sex. Cheryl plays along for a place to stay, but she soon finds out that the hotel is full of loonies of all types. There's a gay priest who has a thing for male bodybuilders, a drunk guy who doesn't do anything except pass out in his room, and an old lady who wanders around looking for a girl named "Alice". Oh, and don't forget the reclusive photographer, George, who shows his affection for Cheryl by spying on her through cracks in the wall, leaving her pornographic reading material in her room, and offering her fetish gear to wear for his amusement. Cheryl craves the attention, but she's not aware that people are being murdered in the hotel, or that someone may cut her head off with a machete one of these days. Is that what really happened to "Alice", anyway?Not all aspects of the movie work. I wasn't a big fan of the music, although others have raved about it and found it reminiscent of Bernard Hermann (!). It seemed too grandiose for this film, and I longed for the cheesy thriller cues from "Don't Look In The Basement". I also found the movie overall to be a little too polished. Paul Bartel has a great eye for detail here, many of which don't really mean much except to add an otherworldly quality to the movie, but it's almost too calculated. It also comes apart too soon at the conclusion, when outside authority figures come to the hotel and reveal themselves to be as weird as the residents there. It detracts from the notion of the hotel as being a microcosm of insanity.But there is a lot to love about it. Some of the strongest images in the film come as a shock to the first-time viewer, so make sure you don't watch the trailer included on the DVD (it's one of those that reveal all the twists in the film, including who lives, who dies, and who's doing all the machete chopping), but this movie will not make anybody jump out of their seat. Instead, it gets under your skin, particularly a see-through vinyl blow-up sex doll that George likes to dress as Cheryl, complete with an enlarged photograph of her face attached to it. George fills it with water, and never has vinyl looked so disturbing and bizarre as it does here while the doll slowly unravels, snake-like, taking human form gradually while still looking completely alien. It's a low-key chill, but something that I've never seen in a film before this one. What a shock some of this must have been back in 1972.Even today it's still bizarre. It's the kind of movie that infuriates some people for being too vague and meandering (and thus boring), while other people will read into it and find it fascinating. I'm one of the latter.