LGM Film Club, Part 383: Deep End

Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1970 film Deep End received mixed reviews at the time and while its reputation has grown over the years, I can see why. It’s basically a French New Wave-style film, but filmed in English with a Polish emigre director. It’s yet another film about the psychosexual issues of teenage boys, which at the time was evidently seen as the most interesting topic in the world. A kid (John Moulder-Brown) gets a job at some public baths. All sorts of inappropriate sexual stuff goes on there, some of which is hilariously rendered. The kid is smitten with a hot redhead (Jane Asher) who works there. She would be seen, in the parlance of that time, as a “tart.” She has a fiance, but she also sleeps with lots of other people, including the kid’s high school gym teacher (Karl Michael Vogler). The film basically explores this obsession and while some of it genuinely funny, the film gets much worse as it moves to its grotesque and clumsily foreshadowed conclusion. Meh. You can in fact watch the entire thing on YouTube, but it’s a terrible copy with awful sound. So here’s an excerpt instead.