This vintage piece exudes a sense of adventurous sensuality, artistry and style that has been lost in the intervening decades, both in the now cheap and voluminous porn industry, and the edgy sexualised segments of the Indy "mainstream" film industry. "Score" is a creature if its time, and whilst it gives a somewhat contrived view of the magical but brief post-sexual-revolution/pre-AIDS era, it speaks to certain freedoms and a sense of adventure and newness that is lacking in our age of internet-annihilated innocence and clinical political correctness. This film reminds me of the more philosophical prognostications I snuck readings of from my step fathers antique 1970s Playboy and Penthouse magazines - those where they laid out musings about a more sexually liberated future, where open sensuality and psychedelic exploration of our bodies, minds and the world around us would usher in a new era of universal love, sharing and luxurious living. Whilst we may be far more sexualised and open minded than the average suburbanite was in 1974, and unquestionably far less innocent and naive, we have also lost a certain warmth and exploratory openness that seems to be in the DNA of this film and the era it gives a window to. Our loss; but at least the spirit of the era has been preserved on film to be peered at in wonderment by future generations.

"Score" is a very interesting film! I was captivated with it the very first time I saw it, and it was even inspirational to me. Score's main characters are Jack and Elvira. They are married and bisexual swingers in a swanky fashion. They play a game of seduction in which each takes a turn trying to seduce someone of the same sex. This time it's Elvira's turn, and her target is a younger, married girl named Betsy. Elvira seems to be having some trouble getting Betsy in the sack, and her time limit is fastly approaching. Jack seems to take an interest in Betsy's husband, Eddie, as Elvira continues to attempt to seduce Betsy.

"Score" is an adult comedy/drama, and the sex scenes are interestingly crafted. The film is full of tacky charms, witty lines, and memorable images. It's a great reflection of the swingin' 70's, and the sexual revolution. I think "Score" deserves repeated viewings.

Being a woman, it's hard to find erotic entertainment that doesn't insult my gender or rely on the simple tastes of men (sorry guys, you know it's true). It's also very hard to find erotica where women come out on top, much less their needs even acknowledged. While het-porn is happy to explore girl-on-girl as long as she ends up with a dude at the end, god forbid there's guy-on-guy action for the rest of us to watch. Happily, Metzger is the exception: always presenting strong beautiful women, and adding style and substance along with the erotic bits. And in "Score" he evens the score (pardon the pun) by including vulnerable males, bisexuality, and more.

If you're reading this you're probably already a Radley Metzger fan or fell in love with his glossy erotic dramas like "Camille 2000" or "Carmen, Baby" and are looking for similar, but "Score" marks a turning point in Metzger's career from romantic tragedies to a full-on nudie comedy. It's still obviously a Metzger film, set in some unspecified Euro rental, with attractive people and another groovalicious soundtrack, but in "Score" the budget seems to have plummeted. Little or no time is wasted on rehearsing the actors, or dressing the sets with Metzger's signature mod furniture. The overall feeling is chintzy compared to his earlier efforts. The actors spend as much time naked as clothed -- it's not as explicit as today's porn, but it's clear that Metzger has abandoned his high concept orgies and classic 19th-century novels for full frontal nudity and frank sex talk.

But I'm not knocking "Score", it is a sparkling example of campy 70's porn. Compared with the icy "Camille 2000" or the pretentious "Lickerish Quartet", "Score" is a tongue-in-cheek party film! I watched it with my favorite gay and we howled with laughter-- more often WITH it than AT it. The hokey dialog is deliberate, and the conversations so over the top it almost lampoons adult movies. I've fantasized more than once about turning the script into an off-off-Broadway play....

THE PLOT: A married couple (Elvira and Jack) scoff at middle class morality, but she's become bored with the kind of easy swingers who've answered their ads in sex magazines. Seeking a challenge Elvira invites unsuspecting vanilla newlyweds over for dinner, drugs, and seduction (not necessarily in that order). As the young couple proves hard to crack due to a smorgasbord of immature sexual disorders, Jack bets that he can score before she does. Think "Lickerish Quartet" meets "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" with the script from "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and you start to get the idea. It's extremely campy, and refreshingly unrepentant.

The sex is only simulated, but kinky and fetishistic, and it does not embarrass by being overly graphic or banal. The actors are reflected in sheets of mylar and other psychedelic touches (although Metzger has done better), and the editing inter-cuts between men's and women's bodies mirroring at times their positions and movements. There is a lot of nudity but it is never clinical. Metzger gets creative in the men's sex scenes: an undone belt is grasped as if it were an erection, and other phallus-shaped objects stand in for oral (including an amyl nitrate cartridge -- ooh, it's SO decedent!). Metzger attempts to keep even the straightest guys aroused during the guy- on-guy action with lots of abstract tension and no scary erect penises, meanwhile the women play complex top/bottom roles exchanging rapid fire dialog that draws you into their psychological games.

If you have friends who consider themselves the decedent type who might throw on a porno for laughs, try sneaking this one on them as a campy swingers movie and see who you can turn bi. Or make it into a drinking game (everytime they take a drink or smoke a joint in the movie, you do too! har har.) I give it 7 out of 10 stars: although the production is sad compared to earlier Metzger films, the result is a Trojan horse of a too clever script disguised as a trash-fest. "Score" makes you laugh and holds your attention, delving gleefully into taboos, drugs, and nudity that no "legit" movie could touch.