The Babysitter (1969)

The Babysitter is a 1969 Crown International release so it’s very much a drive-in movie.

It starts with an outlaw motorcycle gang tying up, stripping and brutalising a young woman (just so we know this is really going to an an exploitation movie) but then almost immediately the scene switches to peaceful suburbia.

George Maxwell (Goorge E. Carey) is an ambitious middle-aged public prosecutor with high hopes of becoming District Attorney. He and his wife Edith (Anne Bellamy) have a young baby. It soon becomes evident that they’ve probably only had sex once in the last decade, with the baby as the result. Now they’re off to a dinner party (for strictly political reasons) at the Harringtons’ so they’ve hired a pretty young blonde named Candy (Patricia Wymer) as the babysitter.

So you’ve got a sexually frustrated middle-aged married man and a young sexpot babysitter. What could go wrong?

Well for starters, once the Maxwells leave for their dinner party engagement Candy invites a few of her friends over. They turn the basement play room into a discotheque, complete with band. They have a pleasant evening, grooving to the music and of course all the girls take their clothes off. Then Candy hears the Maxwells arriving home so she has to hurriedly sneak her friends out and then get her clothes back on so she can act like she’s just spent the evening watching TV and watching the baby.

George drives her home and he can’t help noticing that she’s wearing a very short skirt and she has legs that go all the way up. He’s practically drooling. Which is OK by Candy. She thinks George is a sweetie and she’s sympathetic about George not getting any sex from his wife (he didn’t tell Candy that but she figured it out pretty quickly). Candy thinks sex is good because it makes people happy. Candy likes people to be happy.

George Maxwell has a teenaged daughter named Joan and she’s just arrived back (we don’t know where she’d gone). Joan has a few of her friends over and they’re lazing by the pool. Then she and her special gal pal retire to the steam bath where they can get to know each other better. Much better. And it’s easier to get to know someone if you both take your clothes off. Yes, the respectable aspiring D.A. has a lesbian daughter.

Which is where the motorcyle gang comes into it. The woman that they brutalised died and now one of them, Larry, is being prosecuted by - you guessed it - George Maxwell. And he’ll be asking for the death penalty. Larry’s girlfriend Julie is determined to save her man and since she happens to know that young Joan Maxwell likes to make it with other girls she figures there might be a chance of blackmailing George. Julie makes friends with Joan and so she’s on the scene (with a camera) when Joan and her gal pal are getting it on in the steam bath.

While Julie is trying to take some candid snaps of Joan’s lesbian romp she notices something even more interesting - she notices George and a topless Candy cavorting in the pool in a way that George’s wife probably wouldn’t like. This place is like a blackmailer’s dream.

George is in a very awkward position. He’s obsessed by Candy’s nubile young body and by Candy’s sense of fun. Candy is the sort of bubbly cheerful girl you can have fun with even when she has her clothes on, although she’s even more fun when she’s naked. George’s sexless life with his shrewish wife seems less and less appealing. George has discovered that he likes having fun. And bridge evenings with his middle-aged friends no longer seem like fun but unendurable torture.

Of course there are those snapshots and wth the trial coming up George's life is likely to all come crashing down.

Writer-director Don Henderson only made three feature films, one of them being a 1970 sequel (or remake or reboot) of The Babysitter, Weekend with The Babysitter. As a director he’s barely competent and technically a bit on the sloppy side.

The cast mostly comprises people who had brief careers in exploitation film-making and then disappeared into obscurity. Which, in the case of Patricia Wymer, is a pity. She’s really very good (and she’s also as cute as a button). George E. Carey is good also. It’s their performances that make this film work.

Both Candy and George are likeable and they’re  little bit complex. Candy is about to take a wrecking ball to George’s life but she really means no harm. She likes George. Maybe she even loves him. She just doesn’t understand how much chaos she’s capable of causing. George would have been quite happy with his marriage if only his wife had understood that even if she’s no longer interested in sex he is. And George doesn’t want to treaty Candy like his bit on the side. He’s genuinely fallen for the girl. Neither of them really wants anybody to get hurt.

The movie ticks all the exploitation boxes - there’s plenty of T&A but no frontal nudity (and the actresses are pretty darned cute), there’s some mild simulated sex, there’s some girl-on-girl action, there’s some rough stuff with women tied up and having their underwear sliced off with knives. Everything the drive-in market wanted.

This movie is included in Mill Creek's Drive-In Cult Classics 32 Movie Collection. The transfer is fullframe but that seems to be correct as it seems to have been shot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Image quality is extremely good.

The Babysitter offers titillation, decent acting, characters who are not quite cardboard cutouts and a frequently nude Patricia Wymer (the latter obviously being its main selling point). It’s not a bad drive-in movie. Recommended.