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Gene Roddenberry’s 1971 sexploitation film “Pretty Maids All in a Row” came in the wake of “Star Trek,” which finished its original NBC run in June 1969. The film was the only feature the creator ever wrote. Sadly, it failed to impress any critics, least of all Roger Ebert, who dubbed Roddenberry’s movie “embarrassing” — though most of that criticism was leveled at director Roger Vadim.
In 2009, Ebert provided his take on the phenomenon of super-fandom. “A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself,” he wrote. “It’s all about them. They have mastered the ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Star Trek’ universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion.” It’s unlikely there’d be a world in which Ebert was ever going to be identified as a Trekkie. But while he had an obvious distaste for the evolving fandom of Roddenberry’s legendary sci-fi franchise, he seemed to regard the franchise itself as important in its own way. At least, during its creator’s tenure.
The famed film critic described the Roddenberry years as a time when “stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy,” before decrying the way in which the modern franchise had replaced those stories with “loud and colorful action.” What’s more, Ebert never gave any “Star Trek” movie less than two out of four stars, which is pretty good considering the lowest a film could get on the Ebert-meter wasn’t one star but an abject “thumbs down” (or as with Oscar-winning war movie “Mediterraneo,” the dreaded Ebert walk-out).
In all, then, Ebert certainly wasn’t anti-“Star Trek,” and even seemed to respect Roddenberry’s original creation. But Roddenberry’s first and only film did not receive Ebert’s approval.
Pretty Maids All in a Row was a strange sexploitation film that Roger Ebert disliked
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Roger Ebert handed out several perfect scores in his time. So far, however, no “Star Trek” alumni have managed to elicit such praise. In fact, they’ve mostly upset Ebert, who tore apart Spock actor and multi-time “Trek” movie director Leonard Nimoy’s “The Good Mother” for being a film that “has no idea what it wants to say or how to say it.” He was a tad less harsh with his appraisal of “Pretty Maids All in a Row,” though he certainly wasn’t a fan.
The film is an adaptation of Francis Pollini’s 1968 novel of the same name, which was originally reworked for the screen by William Hanley before Gene Roddenberry had another crack at the script and eventually signed on as a producer. French filmmaker Roger Vadim was brought in to direct, having overseen a slew of films which, though they ranged in genre from romance and drama to horror and sci-fi, were all infused with a strong sense of erotica. With “Pretty Maids All in a Row,” then, he was in familiar territory.
The film stars Rock Hudson as Michael “Tiger” McDrew, a football coach at Oceanfront High School who seemingly can’t help but attract attention from multiple female students. Unfortunately, he’s also killing them, and the police are on the case. Meanwhile, John David Carson’s Ponce de Leon Harper is an awkward, sexually-frustrated student who develops a crush on his teacher, Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson). At the behest of Tiger, Miss Smith seduces Ponce as the police close in on the killer coach. If that sounds like the kind of thing that would irritate Roger Ebert, it did.
Roger Ebert was embarrassed for Gene Roddenberry and Roger Vadim
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In his two-star review of “Pretty Maids All in a Row,” Roger Ebert was less scathing than in other negative reviews. Ebert hated a lot of films (many of which are actually worth watching) and was not shy when it came to lambasting those that didn’t meet his approval. Gene Roddenberry’s weird little sexploitation movie didn’t earn the critic’s full ire; Ebert acknowledged that Rock Hudson’s casting as “a high school coach, counselor, and sex murderer” was “interesting.” But the film certainly didn’t get much praise beyond that.
As far as Ebert saw it, “Pretty Maids All in a Row” was the result of a director being unsuited to the material. Rather than taking aim at Roddenberry’s adaptation, the critic attacked Roger Vadim for the way in which he handled the scenes between Ponce de Leon Harper and Betty Smith. “We’re supposed to laugh at the older woman’s sophistication and Ponce’s discomfort,” he wrote, “but Vadim handles the sequence so awkwardly we’re embarrassed.” Ebert did note that the director was “able to observe an American high school with a certain degree of macabre accuracy” but ultimately decided the film was “embarrassing.”
Why? Because, according to the reviewer, “Vadim’s personal hang-ups don’t fit the nature of his material,” which is to say Vadim’s interest in sadomasochism only works in what Ebert described as more “straightforwardly decadent movie like ‘The Game Is Over.'” High school, on the other hand, was not “an appropriate background for decadence.”