Specimen: Female

Pitched by streaming distributor Exploitation.TV / Vinegar Syndrome as an X- rated take on William Wyler's THE COLLECTOR, SPECIMEN: FEMALE is only an adaptation to the barest extent possible. While it shares an initial fixation on captive females and butterflies, it quickly runs off in a totally different (and less successful) direction, leading one to wish it had stuck closer to its ostensible source material.

The nominal plot concerns a creepy loner in the mold of Terence Stamp's collector, who, after some rumination, decides it's finally time to capture his own specimen of the female species. Nabbing his prey via an anti-war petition ruse (firmly marking the film as a product of its time), it's not long before the greasy haired guy has the young woman back at his place, tied to his kitchen table while he rapes her. Strangely, before all this, as the girl lies tied up in the guy's van, the film inter-cuts a bizarre interlude featuring the girl and a curly-haired guy making love in a field, a sequence the film renders strangely poetic and beautiful through the use of rotating prismatic lenses. Whether this is supposed to be a memory or just some drugged-out fantasy, and what any of its significance is, is left unclear, but it's a beautiful sequence nonetheless. By contrast, the table rape is grimy and grotesque, an appropriately grotty treatment suitable to the sleazy subject matter.

With the film already half-over and barely through its initial set-up, it doesn't take a genius to guess that it's going to seriously run off the rails from this point on. That it does, completely jettisoning any COLLECTOR comparisons by this point and wandering off in a totally random direction. Joining his friend at his auto body shop in Hollywood, Collector, Jr., rambles on about butterflies interminably before noticing that his friend is distracted by a comely blonde making her way down the street. Beating a hasty retreat, it's not long before the sweaty guy is back (just in time for the shop to close), and carrying the prone body of the blonde inside his van. The two guys tie the girl to the body shop's car elevator and simultaneously have their way with her, in what would be a bravura sequence if there were any kind of surrounding narrative to support it.

Back at the creep's house, the guys tie both girls up and disappear to another room to try to figure out what to do with them. Eventually wheedling themselves free, the girls (naturally) dive headlong into a sapphic encounter that drives a final nail in the coffin of any realism the film may have been cultivating. This lesbian scene eats up most of the rest of the time, with a generic "shock" ending tagged on in the last 15 seconds, the de rigeur solution for pornographers who have run out of time or ideas.

Having long tempted porn fans (or at least me) with a tantalizing ad found on a couple of Something Weird Video XXX trailer comps, the film is, of course, a letdown. What's disappointing is that it doesn't even try to come up with a coherent story, squandering a wonderful premise by running off in a completely irrelevant direction (the superfluous 2nd kidnapping) and leaving itself no time to develop any of its characters or plot threads more fully. Of course, this is pretty much par for the course where hour-long Richard Mailer flicks are concerned, though the nifty opening credits (a rapid-fire montage of butterflies that plays like a fun little student film) and elegant initial set-up nevertheless tricked me into raising my expectations. Alas, it's a rare case of a porn adaptation (if we're still sticking with Exploitation.TV's party line) introducing *more* characters and plot than the film its adapting, and SPECIMEN: FEMALE unfortunately suffers for it. If anything, it's saved by some good camera and editorial work, but considering what could have been, this counts as a hollow victory at best.