We start with two girls who are studying ballet in Manhattan. Sonya is rather timid but she’s a nice girl. Her best friend Toni isn’t quite a bad girl but she is rather wild. They’re both ambitious. But while Sonya is artistically ambitious Toni is more focused on fame and money. Toni thinks her big break has come - she’s landed herself a TV commercial. Sonya has a chance to dance with a top European ballet company in Amsterdam.
Toni’s break has come through her boyfriend Seymour. He’s a producer. He’s also married but that doesn’t bother Toni. Her only interest in Seymour is in what he can do for her career. Seymour takes her to a party. It turns out to be a crazy sex and drugs party. Toni can’t get her clothes off quickly enough. Toni likes excitement.
We also start with a guy named Frank who is visiting his psychiatrist. The shrink is trying desperately to persuade Frank to admit himself to a mental hospital. We can’t help feeing that the shrink is spot on. Frank is angry, unstable, disconnected from reality and has issues with women. Unfortunately Frank doesn’t think he needs to be in a hospital.
Frank was one of the guests at the sex and drugs orgy. Toni attracted his attention. Frank abducts Toni and rapes her.
Toni’s problem is that she has that TV commercial shoot coming up and she now has lots of bruises. Now they might not want her for the commercial. She decides it’s all Seymour’s fault. And she turned down the Amsterdam offer, which is how Sonya landed it.
Frank found Sonya’s address in Toni’s handbag and now he’s stalking her. He finds her at the ballet school.
Toni keeps thinking about Frank. He’s her kind of man. This is not a movie that could be made today.
It’s a fairy typical roughie but with a few twists. The big ironic twist at the end is foreshadowed but it’s still not quite what you expect in this type of movie.
I doubt if any of the cast members used their real names. The guy playing Frank overacts outrageously but he certainly gets the point across that Frank is crazy and bad.
The two female leads are quite adequate in the acting department.
Toni has a bit of complexity. She’s not really totally bad. She’s young, her judgment is poor, she’s selfish and self-centred but mostly she’s just immature emotionally. The kind of girl who just needs to grow up.
There’s plenty of nudity to provide the necessary exploitation elements. There’s no frontal nudity and the scenes of violence are not in the least graphic.
The movie’s main problem is that it lacks the touch of the bizarre that makes the best roughies so fascinating.
The orgy scene is quite well done. The masks are typical of good very low budget film-making - they would have cost almost nothing but they achieve the desired effect.
The trippy electronic music early on adds to the disorientation and Brassloff throws in some equally trippy camera tricks.
Arlene Farber as Toni is the movie’s biggest strength. She’s sexy and she does the wild girl thing very well. A couple of years later she would star in Female Animal (1970), a movie worth watching for her wonderful performance.
Two Girls for a Madman isn’t top-tier American sexploitation but it’s entertaining enough if you’re a fan of the genre.
This movie is part of a Something Weird triple-header DVD which also includes the flawed but interesting Mr Mari's Girls (1967) and the delightfully oddball Tortured Females (1965). It’s a DVD worth picking up if you’re a roughie fan.
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