Sandra: The Making of a Woman (1970)

 

Monica Gayle stars in this film about a smalltown girl who has a sexual awakening in San Francisco.  It's a Gary Graver jam, so it has that detached art-house vibe.

Sandra Cobb (Monica Gayle) is a lonely small town girl.

Her father, Titus, is an abusive drunk.

He does nothing but read skin magazines, get hammered and abuse Sandra.

Sandra is becoming a woman, and she checks out her boobs in the mirror.

Sandra sneaks out of the house to have sex with Bo, a local gas station attendant.

Gary Graver wastes no opportunity to show Monica Gayle naked.

Titus gets drunk, drives his truck into a ditch and dies.

As he's driving drunk, we have flashbacks to his wife cheating on him.  She humiliated him and laughed in his face. 

Hearing of her father's death, Bo comes over.

Sandra has sex, then packs her suitcase.  She's leaving town.

AS she waits for the bus, she's ogled by Leonard (Jean Clark), a local pervert, who has always enjoyed spying on Sandra.

It's a pointless little tidbit, but odd little scenes like Leonard's are why I keep coming back to early Gary Graver films.  He definitely tried to elevate the skin flick with an artistic vision.

The bus ain't coming.  But a city slicker's muscle car does.

A salesman headed to San Francisco offers her a ride.

She has a run in her pantyhose and he offers her a new pair.  Odd that he just happens to have extra pantyhose.... but we'll soon learn why.

He likes to wear women's clothing. Sandra has sex with him in his apartment.

Sandra is visited by Miss Lynn (Uschi Digard), sort-of an Avon lady.

They fool around.

But they're caught in the act and kicked out of the apartment.

Sandra finds herself very much alone in the big city.

A biker with a swastika jacket breaks into the apartment.

He rapes her.

But this being a seventies movie, Sandra starts to enjoy the rape.

So damn problematic.

The biker arranges for another visit. Good times.

Like Mary Tyler Moore, Sandra is a single woman looking for a break in the big city. 'You're gonna make it after all..."

Sandra gets a job working for a temp agency owned by Mark Taylor (Edward Blessington).

She's soon having sex with Mark.

The temp agency has her working as a secretary for Dr. Lockhart (John Vincent).

She has a wonderful romance with the doctor.

Uh-oh.  It's Bo from her home town.

Bo can't handle the "new" Sandra and leaves.

Sandra thinks back to a night Bo made her feel better by having sex. 

Sandra finally knows herself.

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A big fan of Monica Gayle, and I've grown to appreciate Graver's early stuff - but it still was a little too boring and melancholy to make a big impression. 

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆6/10