Deep End (1971)

Takes me back to the days when folks had to go to a bathhouse - we'd get half an hour and I'd share with my sister. Carbolic soap! Anyway, don't remember having attendants quite as easy on the eye as "Susan" (Jane Asher) and "Mike" (John Moulder-Brown). Most of the film is taken from the perspective of the latter, constantly horny, young lad who has the serious hots for his colleague. He's young and innocent and so gets his fair share of attention (and tips) from the clientele too - especially Diana Dors! "Susan" lives her life to the full, and that doesn't suit the increasingly possessive young "Mike". He starts to follow her and soon realises that she has a pretty drippy boyfriend "Mike" (Christopher Sandford) and is having a fling with his teacher (Karl Michael Vogler). Somehow he manages to get hold of a full-sized cardboard cut out of his dream girl as the latter half hour of the film descends a little too much into hormone-driven farce for me. It was rated X for the nudity, of which there is a little towards the end, but for the most part the sexual content is confined to the young man's head and JMB is quite good at imbuing his character with a degree of sexual frustration that I suspect we can all relate to. Asher, likewise, is quite effective as his manipulatrix and for an hour or so their teasing cat and mouse antics (she being the cat) are quite fun. Thereafter, though, I sort of lost interest and found it dragging. It's certainly worth a watch, but it's lost most of its oomph I'm afraid.