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Very disappointing...

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

When the unknown leading lady (Holly Mascott in this instance) also wrote the screenplay and did production design, you're probably watching a vanity production, and that's the case of JOSIE'S CASTLE, an overwritten example of what I term the Lifestyle segment of the soft porn genre. Though IMDb has all sorts of info about it listed, it is a bit mysterious in terms of its history.Apparently it was showing at Film Festivals as early as 1971 but as often is the case did not really find its final form and release until several years later. I was not aware of it under any retitling on the '70s drive-in circuit and assume it achieved only limited bookings.As described in heavy voice-over by Holly, the story set in San Diego in 1966 is about three young divorced people who hook up, rent a lovely old mansion (cheap because it's scheduled to be torn down) and live together communally as dropouts from regular society. Author Holly packs in endless detail and subplots, in the familiar manner of a neophyte first time filmmaker (as is the director, obviously her relative, Laurence Mascott) and it is clearly a project that got tinkered with quite a bit. An early scene has the trio at a drive-in watching Pam Grier in THE ARENA, paired with an older film WOMAN HUNT. Since THE ARENA was not released until 1974, that means if the IMDb history is true, then JOSIE'S got plenty of footage added years after its first showings. I'm guessing that footage was the usual sex scenes and nudity to spice up a pretty dull picture.Holly is peppy and does bare her breasts, whole co-star Tom Holland, a future film director but a lousy leading man, goes Full Monty, yet the big breasts and nipple shots that recur at various points in the movie must have been tacked on.Third member of the triumvirate is the reason the movie has any residual interest at all -George Takei post-Sulu role in TV's "Star Trek". As is often the case with mainstream talent reduced to playing in fly-by-night productions (recall that "Star Trek" was initially a TV flop with its cast scattering to the four winds until the movie franchise version was created in the wake of STAR WARS' success), Takei is pretty squeaky clean -no nudity, no sex, not much for him to do as the third wheel -as the commune is not a sexual threesome, it turns out. Holland becoming a drug dealer (eating up a lot of the running time as a tiresome and poorly handled subplot) naturally estranges him eventually from the other two, as their mini-utopia falls predictably apart.Ambitiously trying to portray the Hippie era in California and various themes of the mid to late '60s, JOSIE"S is an utter failure. Emphasis on an annoying (and fairly stereotypical) Gay character who pals around with trio, played by Barnaby Shackleford, plus an even more annoying full-time drug dealer who is Holland's mentor, John Bakos, the film drifts into pointless filler. Often, especially at the end, Holly's voice-over narration sounds disturbingly like the dime-store philosophy doled out by Ellen Pompeo on "Grey's Anatomy", and I mean that as an insult.

Three free spirits -- moody Ken (George Takei; Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek"!), feisty Josie (a lively performance by lovely brunette Holly Mascott, who also wrote the cornball script), and easygoing Leonard (the hunky, but hopelessly wooden Tom Holland, the future director of the horror cult favorites "Fright Night" and "Child's Play") -- all get divorces from their spouses, decide to throw repressive everyday square conventions to the wind, and move in together in a nifty big house. Naturally, things go smoothly for a while, but eventually everyone's differences complicate things. Director Laurence E. Mascott treats the silly 60's new age sensibility at work in the screenplay with misguided seriousness, which in turn results in plenty of unintentional hilarity (the definite gut-busting highlight occurs with a gloriously wild anything-goes swinging party that boasts groovy dancing, funky music, and people making out like rabbits). Moreover, the flimsy plot meanders all over the place and the extremely uneven tone clumsily alternates between giddy and carefree and dark and depressing with often inadvertently sidesplitting results. Josie's dopey narration, the sappy soft-rock soundtrack, and several goofy music montage sequences further add to the uproariously substantial kitsch factor. The oddball secondary characters are pretty amusing: John Bakos as cheery eccentric pot dealer Sean, Irene Martin as meddlesome hick land lady Mrs. McAllister, and Barnaby Shackleford as flamboyant homosexual Bartholomew. It's a total hoot to see Takei sport long hair and use hip slang words and profanity. The scenes between him and Holland have a weird homo-erotic undercurrent to them. Of course, we also get oodles of tasty bare distaff skin and a few soft-core sex scenes. Plus the ending even comes complete with a groan-inducing idiotic morale about finding yourself. Frank Stokes' fairly polished cinematography gives the picture an attractive bright look and offers lots of nice shots of the sunny San Diego locations. An enjoyably inane period curio.

It might surprise some avid Star Trek fans that George Takei (who played Hikaru Sulu) stared in a sexploitation flick that made the drive-in rounds back in the early 70s.That film is "Josie's Castle" which was also released as "Teenage Divorcée" and "The Young Divorcees." As the story opens "Josie" is getting divorced from her boring husband so then she and a couple of also-divorced guys (including Takei) rent a condemned "castle" for cheap.They immediately make it into a hippie pad complete with parties, group sex, and pot smoking, much to the concern of their nosy landlady.The landlady eventually calls the cops who escort the groovy trio to jail for drug dealing.Josie also gets jealous because she thinks Takei & her boyfriend are gay.Does Takei appears nude with Josie & gang (or just almost nude)? I'll never tell. Just see it for yourself at a theater probably nowhere near anybody (LOL) or demand that it gets put on DVD soon.I'll give it a 6-plus.