TAKE AN EASY RIDE
DVD region 0. Odeon.

No one hitch-hikes these days, what with a rapist round every corner and a paedophile behind every bush, but in the 1970's it was the coolest way to get around, as any film of the era would tell you. Mini-skirted dolly birds were forever clambering into cabs with leering lorry drivers, driving the lecherous old devil wild with excitement by crossing their booted legs and flashing their knickers. I know this to be true because such a scene appears in Take an Easy Ride, and the documentary approach of the film gives it an air of credibility that I for one am happy to accept as completely true.

Shot in 1974, Take an Easy Ride began as a grim-faced TV docudrama shot under the influence of Ken Loach and ended up as a sleazy exploitation film that played sex cinemas for years. As you might expect, it's pretty schizophrenic stuff, veering from po-faced interviews with hitch-hikers and hippies discussing their experiences to archetypal softcore fumbling, all packed into 40 minutes.

There's no plot as such - instead, we are presented with a variety of hitch-hiking vignettes, which are intercut throughout the film. Two girls hitch their way to a pop festival, only to be picked up by a faceless man who we've earlier seen reading a porn magazine whilst wearing leather driving gloves - so you know he's a wrong 'un! Also spliced in here for no immediately obvious reason, is vintage footage of Soho - a sex cinema showing Love Under 17 (a title you're unlikely to see again), sex shops and a bored-looking stripper provide vintage chuckles and a brief respite from the hitch-hiking. Of course, this particular adventure ends badly - both girls are raped and left for dead, leading to a particularly - though unintentionally - hilarious pay-off in a hospital later. I won't spoil it for you.

Elsewhere, two girls are picked up by the aforementioned old lech, in a sequence that goes nowhere, while - to give the other side of the dangers involved with hitch-hiking - a helpful driver gives a lift to two doped-up harridans who we first see stealing cash and a knife from a shop. This also ends badly.

The sexiness is almost entirely confined to one sequence, clearly the one crowbarred in when the film moved from melodrama to sexploitation. A Scandinavian bit of cardboard is picked up by a helpful couple in a Rolls, who wine and dine her before 'forcing' her into a clumsy threesome, shot with all the erotic panache you would expect from a British sex film - ie none whatsoever. This sequence too has a killer final line, so don't nod off.

Take an Easy Ride is entertaining stuff, though even at 40 minutes, it sometimes drags. Simon Sheridan, in his sleeve notes, calls it "Britain's most astonishing exploitation film", which suggests he hasn't seen as many British exploitation films as he'd like you to think, but as a squalid slice of Seventies sleaze, this is worth checking out. And this version is probably the best the film has ever looked!

The DVD also features the unseen pilot for an aborted TV series, Go Girl, which is an interesting failure. Telling the story of a go-go dancer caught up in some vague sort of criminal intrigue, the show aims for a comic-book feel, complete with animated links between scenes - unfortunately, the animation is rubbish and the live action too gritty looking to work. But Luan Peters - better known for the likes of Lust for a Vampire - makes an appealing lead, and Francoise Pascal looks impossibly cute in a supporting role.

The rest of the disc features a badly made featurette with director Ken Rowles, and trailers for Odeons's other Brit Smut releases.

DAVID FLINT

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