Jennifer on My Mind

Jennifer on My Mind (1971)

BOMB (out of 4)

Rich boy Marcus (Michael Brandon) meets rich hippie chick Jennifer (Tippy Walker) on a trip in Italy and follows her back to America where she's constantly wanting him to get her weed. We're told all of this in flashbacks because in the current time Jennifer has died and Marcus is trying to figure out a way to get rid of her body. When then go back to the flashbacks to see Jennifer dump, disrespect and humiliate Marcus at every chance she gets. United Artist was apparently so embarrassed by this movie that the ended up cutting out fifteen-minutes worth of additional footage including some of Kim Hunter. It's also clear that the studio was embarrassed by this thing because for nearly forty-years it was impossible to see as it never had a VHS, Laserdisc or DVD release but thankfully MGM finally put it on Netflix just so people can see that the film's horrid reputation was deserved. I'm really not sure where to start on this thing because every single second is a complete disaster and for the life of me I can't understand what they were trying to do with this thing. The screenplay is without question one of the worst I've ever had the misfortune of seeing because the thing jumps around so much that you have to wonder why. Even stranger is why on Earth they have Marcus head over heels with this girl when there's never a single reason for him to care about her. They really don't have any relationship outside her treating him bad and the screenplay never makes it clear why he keeps going after her. The screenplay also doesn't know if it wants to be a comedy or drama because one second drugs are cool and then the next they're bad. One second you have some sort of fake love story trying to be told and then you get comedy adventures of Marcus trying to get rid of the body. One of these adventures includes him being attacked by Hells' Angels and another has a group of rednecks running him off the road. Brandon seems lost for the majority of the running time and Walker doesn't do much better. Her heroin fit towards the end of the movie is extremely poor and almost seems like an outtake from some of those drug movies of the 30s. I had been wanting to watch this movie for a good two decades now because of Robert DeNiro playing a Gypsy taxi driver. He's only in the film for a few minutes but there's no doubt that his steals the film and actually delivers a rather funny performance. Barry Bostwick and Jeff Conaway have small roles as well. JENNIFER ON MY MIND is without question one of the worst films of the decade but at the same time it's almost a must-see just for how bad it is. Fans of DeNiro will certainly want to see his pre-Scorsese trip in the taxi as it's the only thing that saves this from being one of the worst of all time.