The First Time (1968)

"You guys are acting like a bunch of sex fiends!"

The Story:

Kenny’s (Wes Stern) dad has a job that requires a lot of relocating, so he soon finds himself forced to move when his dad takes a new position. This separates Kenny from his buddies, Mike and Tommy (Ricky Kelman and Wink Roberts), whom he still stays in touch with by writing letters. One of his correspondences mentions a Canadian whorehouse he frequents, so the Mike and Tommy hop on a bus with the intentions of joining their buddy on his exploits. The only problem is that said exploits are entirely fictional, so the three guys head to the Great White North in search of a house of ill repute that doesn’t even exist; instead, they find a normal girl (Jacqueline Bisset) whom they mistake as a prostitute.

The Review:

The big intrigue of The First Time is seeing a virginity quest done in 1968; this type of film wouldn’t really take off until the 80s, where theater and video stores were suddenly full of horndogs looking for easy girls. Despite being born out of the free love era and being distributed by United Artists (technically still an independent studio at the time and releasing edgy material), The First Time still remains rather tepid, opening with then-risqué shots of boys peeking at girls’ bare legs. Perhaps more scandalous is the shot of Kenny ogling an older woman who swivels her ass as she walks before him in a tight mini-skirt. That’s pretty much as wild as this one gets, as it never quite transcends its quaint, sitcom-esque trappings and terminal lameness.

This isn’t a bad film because it isn’t some sort of oddly-prescient sexual romp--that much is to be expected given the circumstances of the age. Instead, it’s not very good because it quickly becomes a glorified travelogue for Canada as we watch the guy basically sight-see around the Niagra Falls area for the entire middle act. The underlying humor here is that Kenny is leading them around on a wild goose chase and stalling whenever he can since he’s sold his buddies such a line of crap; maybe the funniest part in the whole movie comes when he volunteers to frankly ask a stranger where the nearest whorehouse is. He’s expecting a quick rebuff, but is shocked when the guy actually points him down the road, leaving him with no excuses to give Mike and Tommy. Upon entering the place, they think they‘ve found the quaintest little whorehouse in Canada, but it’s really just a bar, albeit with scantily-clag go-go dancers. This is where they finally pick up Bisset, who is a radiant presence among these total dorks; she’s vaguely exotic, beautiful, and is kind of made to play dumb so she can be smuggled back over into the states.

The boys are all too eager to help her since they believe she’s a prostitute, and she doesn’t do much to disprove their theory when she accompanies them to their hotel room and even lies down in their bed when they offer it to her. The way they see it, they’re doing her a favor, so she’ll “do them three favors.” And if you’ve ever seen this sort of movie, this is where it typically gets pretty funny--when the boys gather around in the hallway and try to figure out how to pull this off before getting their balls completely busted. If this movie were made a decade later, there’d even be the chance that they’d completely pull it off, but The First Time refuses to play this as comedy, instead opting for sappy melodrama and sexual anxiety. It’s a film that likes to assume that boys will be boys, but that they also just like to talk a big game.

I suppose the biggest problem with this movie is that all the guys just aren’t really all that cool or fun; later films of this type would always have at least one finicky nerd, but all three of the guys here fit the bill. They’re good-natured enough, I suppose, but they feel like false caricatures of teenagers, even in 1968--there’s just an “aw shucks” cloyingness about them that’s hollow. In many ways, The First Time feels like a 50s sitcom that’s been begrudgingly dragged into the 60s, and it’s kicking and screaming against its sexual revolution, ultimately trading in a virginity quest for a virginity pact. Even the film’s pseudo-scandalous one night stand doesn’t come without some sense of moralizing (though the pre-martial sex and non-traditional gender dynamics of the climax probably left some audiences aghast). A lot of 70s and 80s comedies thrived on the dissonance between the innocence of their period settings and their raunchiness, but this one is kind of the opposite because it feels like it's trying to desperately cling to that innocence. 

Still, this film should be a definite curiosity among enthusiasts (read: fellow horndogs) of this sort of material, and MGM’s Limited Edition disc will give them the chance to satiate that curiosity; even though the disc carries a warning about being made from the best available source material, it looks quite good and reflects the film’s sprightly, colorful cinematography quite well. At first blush, The First Time feels like it should be one of those weird precursors that laid the foundation for films to come; in reality, though, it’s just sort of got the skeletal outline of the films that would eventually go all the way in terms of bawdiness. This one is just sort of gets stuck on first base in that regards. (Brett G.)

Tale of the Tape:

5 out of a possible 10 inches.

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