Score (film)

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Score is the name of a sexploitation film directed by Radley Metzger that was part of the brief porn chic fad in the early 1970s that also included The Devil in Miss Jones and Deep Throat.

It was based on an off-Broadway stage play that ran for 23 performances at the Martinique Theatre in late 1971 and that featured Sylvester Stallone in a brief role. The play was written and directed by Jerry Douglas, who later became a mainstream screenwriter, and was set in Queens. The film, however, was filmed in Yugoslavia on a relatively high budget and was set in a mythical land. It has been released in both soft-core and hard-core versions. The most recent DVD release, a soft-core version, shows a renewed copyright date of 1976 but the film itself was first shown in 1972. Even the hard-core version, however, reflected its theatrical origins and had relatively little graphic sexual activity compared to today's typical pornographic film.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story concerns a swinging bisexual couple who make a bet as to who can first seduce one of the members of an apparently straight and very attractive young couple. The cast was only five people: as the sexual sophisticates, Claire Wilbur, repeating her theatre role, and Gerald Grant; as the other couple, Cal Culver, better known as the late gay porn star Casey Donovan, and Lynn Lowry; with Carl Parker in the Stallone role as a repairman.

[edit] Trivia

The entire film was shot in what is now Zagreb, Croatia.

There is a sixth speaking role in the film, the actress who plays Gerald Grant's photography assistant. She is uncredited for her one line, and has never been identified.

According to Radley Metzger, the interior scenes of the house owned by the swinging couple were shot in two different homes. This was necessary as they lost the rental of the first home before shooting was completed.

According to the biography on Lynn Lowry's homepage, Claire Wilbur (a veteran stage actress) became upset during filming on discovering that Lowry (a newcomer) was earning three times as much money as Wilbur. This created tension that lasted throughout the shooting.

Of the five main actors in the film, only Lynn Lowry is alive today. Culver/Donovan, Grant, and Parker all died from complications related to AIDS, and Wilbur died from cancer in 1995.