Watch The Harrad Experiment For Free

Touches You

Too much of everything

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It took 11 years for Robert Rimmer's novel written in 1962 to get to the big screen. In that time America had undergone a cultural sea change in its values. So a novel written in the beatnik years is updated to the middle 70s where it certainly would have been less shocking than the experimental college of Harrad headed by James Whitmore and Tippi Hedren had been brought to the screen in 1962 when the omnipresent Code was still in place.This college promotes coed rooming and in this carefully selected group of students Don Johnson and Laurie Walters are paired as are Bruno Kirby and Victoria Thompson. It's the story of these four students that is the basis of the plot.I won't go into it, but it is Johnson who challenges the mores of society far more than Whitmore and Hedren ever expected. The movie made quite an impact when it came out, but by today's standards seems like really tame stuff. It's also quite a display of 70s fashions as well for kids and adults. Viewers will still find it enjoyable.

I just watched a bowdlerized version of "The Harrad Experiment". I'd heard of this movie, but had never seen it. It stars Tippi Hedren, James Whitmore Jr., and a very ( almost unrecognizably ) young Don Johnson. The story concerns a small college which has gone co-ed to an extreme. Boys are deliberately room-mated with girls, and the couples are encouraged to have sexual intimacy. Now, had that sort of film been made, today, you'd have a mind-boggling, no-holds-barred sex-fest; but back in 1973, they made a sort of tentative pastel-water-color story with bland characters and dialogue, sprinkled with curses the actors seem to choke while saying. Mind you, I wasn't disappointed, I was relieved. This movie is sort of an icon of modern 'sex as salvation' subject matter in film. The movie comes off as a kind of bland, sex-driven "After-School Special". The script is vanilla and cliché-ridden; with lots of pop-psychology and not-quite-there challenges to 'old-fashined' mores. Hedren and Whitmore are the married professors conducting the experiment. We never quite know whether they're actually ( hypocritically ) condoning 'free-love' or whether they're trying to point out to the students that monogamous relationships really are the strongest. Either way, they are dangerously close to law-suits. The curriculum is so wishy-washy that, in comparison, Alfred Kinsey's 'research' looks like the Sodom and Gomorrah Pride Parade ( actually, it probably was ). Intimacy seems to be their real goal, rather than merely pandering to one's sexual gluttony, but they are terribly stupid in encouraging 'sexual freedom' as a means of discovering that. The style of the film is so typically early-70's with its light, cheerful, guitar background music and sunny edge-lit cinematography; that I expected Karen Carpenter to start singing "Rainy Days and Mondays". It renders the film, unintentionally, quite funny. There are three folk/pop tunes sung in the film's background, two beautifully performed by Lori Lieberman, and the last by ( what?! ) Don Johnson, himself, and not badly, either. Other than the Lieberman songs, the only real highlight of the film is an amusing improv team ( The Ace Trucking Company -- featuring a young Fred Willard ) performing on the topic of 'group marriage'. Most likely, the film would have seemed maybe 2% edgier with all the nudity and G-D's left in, but I seriously doubt it. I could tell where the cuts were made and there was precious little eye-poison in this watery Lorimar Production. A real surprise is that one of the writers was ( and I blinked twice when I read his name ) Ted ( Lurch, the butler ) Cassidy. He has a cameo early in the film. I can't recommend the film, due to its themes ( insipidly as they were presented ), but I'm glad that I've been able to check off and discount another cheesy step on the ladder to our current gradual cultural downfall ( "The April Fools", "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" being others ).

I had seen the release version without "regional editing for content," at the Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk VA.It was an amazing, poignant, multi-faceted tale about inhibitions, and boundaries.There was A LOT of casual frontal nudity, male and female.Seeing this movie on DVD recently, AND I WISH I KNEW THE BRAND NAME TO TELL YOU WHICH TO AVOID, It was a hacked third rate print that had the sound cut-out on moderate swear words; and virtually ALL frontal nudity.It angered me that when the film first traveled around the country, some power mongers, wanted to dictate what others should not view, after getting a good show themselves, of course.This particular print was battle-scarred, but still had enough TRUTH sneak through the overzealous censors, who were too stupid to notice that while they cut out the nudity and profanity, the subtle dynamics of the various relationships SCREAMED for freedom. BOTH for the Characters AND the Viewers.In respect to the plot, about students attending a co-ed school wherein the genders were integrated in the same dorm rooms, and physical relationships encouraged to be activated; the movie IF remade today would press forward with RACIAL STEREOTYPING and SEXUAL ORIENTATION as well.I Fear, however, It would be, at the loss of the beautiful, lingering frontal nudity of 1970's American Art Cinema.This beautiful little film, more especially if you can get a pure print, is a MUST-ADD to your movie appreciation club's program.

The 1970's brought the movie rating system. The system allowed both nudity and overt sexuality into American films. Hollywood was trying to capture the youth market in a way they never had. This led to a number of "hip" youth low budget oriented movies. Some tried to capture a moments in time such as "The Trip". Some worked only as satire such as "The Seniors". Some tried social commentary as "The Harrad Experiment". All had common dominators: young people, sex and skin.Some hold up as a time capsule, "The Trip". Some as a silly nudie farce, "The Seniors". And some are just dull. "The Harrad Experiment" falls into this category. What was shocking to one generation, such as "The Chapman Report" and "Peyton Place", becomes boringly silly to future ones.It's not a bad film, its just a dumb film. Still, if you are interested in seeing youngish Tippi Hedren in bra and panties or a very young Don Johnson's backside; it's worth a look. Just remember, you've been warned.