Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 6:7	Budget Medium

In 1974 Slyvia Kristel starred in Emmanuelle (note the two m's and l's). The movie made soft porn history with its "it's only sex" attitude and its frequently naked 22 year old star. In 1981 Sylvia starred in Private Lessons which also made a boat load of money. I don't specifically remember seeing this film in my youth and viewing it now so far removed from the 80's is more than a little disquieting.

We open watching two 15 year old boys spying on a teenage party by a pool. After being caught peering in a window, the school teacher who is apparently chaperoning the party, tells Philly (Eric Brown) he needs to find a more age-appropriate girlfriend. The next day Philly is lamenting to his buddy, Sherman (Patrick Piccinni) that he will not be going fishing with his dad because a business trip came up. Sylvia Kristel's character, Nicole Mallow (who is frequently referred to as Miss Mallow) is introduced standing on a ladder picking an orange. As Dad is leaving he mentions that Mom is dead. The chauffeur, Lester (Howard Hesseman), drives Philly home and drops him off at the servant's entrance and continues to treat him rudely over the next few days. Miss Mallow, however, teases Philly and when she catches him spying on her, asks him in to watch her undress. When Lester and Miss Mallow spend a few minutes together we find out that Lester is forcing Miss Mallow to have sex with Philly for some nefarious reason. Eventually Miss Mallow and Philly have sex at the end of which Miss Mallow pretends to be dead. Lester helps hide the body but a ransom note appears the next day demanding 10,000 dollars. Miss Mallow shows back up and confesses to Philly and together they foil the plans of the evil (and possibly gay) Lester. Miss Mallow quits her job and leaves but not before having sex with Philly again. When school starts up and Philly meets the teacher from the party again, he asks her out and she accepts.

Eric Brown was about 17 when he filmed this and Sylvia was just about 30. Kristel is about 5' 6" or maybe taller, she is not much shorter than Hesseman, but Eric Brown is barely 5 feet and skinny. Sylvia was still gorgeous with a wonderful body and a soft sensuous face, and Eric looked like a mouseketeer. He is either googling wide eyed or has a half stoned smile on his face. When he goes in for a kiss, the silly look on his face and the size difference is more than a little unsettling. To make matters worse, Eric Brown would play another high school kid having sex with an older woman three years later. His on screen partner for "They're Playing with Fire" was 5' 7" Sybil Danning and I was worried for his life during their sex scenes. While I might imagine Sylvia being adventurous and curious, I think you'd take your life in your own hands with Sybil. At any rate even three years after this movie, it still looked like Eric hadn't gone through puberty. So the groping and sex in Private Lessons left me a little cold. Still I got to hand it to Eric Brown, the guy only did about six movies, but managed to star with Sylvia Kristel, Sybil Danning, Becky LeBeau, Michelle Johnson and Meg Foster. Very impressive.

But apparently, I am the only one who didn't much care for Private Lessons. This movie grossed a ton of money for the producers. In fact, two years after this Ben Efraim would produce "Private School" and two years after that "Private Resort" all with the same theme. The copy I viewed was the 25th Anniversary Special!! which was a mediocre cropped transfer and the only special feature was some clips of Sherman. So apparently the producers are still milking the film for all it is worth. Another odd thing was that there were a couple of scenes where the camera panned across Miss Mallows nether regions and this little white blob appeared so that you couldn't see any pubic hair. I gotta believe that this was added after the initial release and it shows how little care went into this special edition.

Okay, so this annoys the heck out of me. And not just because I don't get to see Sylvia's nether regions. I have seen Emmanuelle, so it is not like I've never seen them before. It is because this is marketed as a 25th Anniversary edition. So I would expect the producer to spend a little time and money to make it special. As it is, I doubt that this is from the original negative, it looks like a decent (not terrific) transfer from video. This blurred spot makes me wonder when and why it was put in. Was it before the theatrical release or was it afterwards so that it could play in more places (like Kansas and Japan). This also makes me think that the DVD was mastered from a video meant for cable. Why is there no commentary included on the DVD? Maybe a quick interview with someone involved with the film who can discuss the impact the film had.

Pamela Jean Bryant yet another Playboy model trying to break into films, plays Joyce who is apparently Sherman's sister and whom we see mostly in the background or filler shots. She accidentally falls into the pool wearing a white dress early on and the boys peer through the window as she changes, but the camera doesn't linger on her. When she shows up later in a bikini at the pool, the boys chase her away. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good Playmate to me.

Still, even though the plot was pretty silly and the characters' motives hard to understand, there are some reasonably good actors in this. Hesseman plays a pretty messed up character very well. He brings more depth to the role than it deserves. His Lester never seriously rises to the level of a threat for any of the other characters. Ed Begley Jr shows up to chew a little scenery playing a tennis instructor who gets talked into impersonating a cop. Sylvia outshines all the other actors carrying the film and providing all the pivotal points. Wisely the producers and writers put the plot in the hands of some very competent actors and left the silly low brow humor to the boys. It may be that Miss Mallow was supposed to be a "free spirit" but Sylvia plays the character in a much more solid way. While she may have originally agreed to the scheme because she did not like the father, once she starts liking the son she backs away from the plot and eventually reveals it to Philly and helps him set things right.

But let's talk about Lester for a minute. We know from the start that Lester is not well liked. Philly, his dad, Sherman and even the gardner make disparaging remarks about him. Dad even hints that he might be gay. He clearly is a petty bully who pushes around Philly once Dad has left and he threatens Miss Mallow with deportation if she does not go along with the plan. When Begley is posing as a cop he searches Lester's closet and finds a dummy wearing a mask. So poor Lester is equal parts asshole, bully and gay. There is no more weight put on the fact that he might be gay than on his being a bully or an asshole. There may even be a insinuation that Lester pretends he is not gay, but doesn't fool anyone, much like his bullying doesn't scare anyone. In the entire movie, Lester never does anything nice nor does anyone do anything nice to Lester. There is also the matter of the ransom. $10,000. In today's terms this is maybe $25,000 which just does not seem like enough to bother with such a convoluted plan. Maybe if this was just to set the hook so that you could continue to blackmail someone it makes sense, but Lester already has plane tickets out of the country. On ten grand you could live like a king for about a week. I think this is just meant to show that poor Lester is such a loser that he can't get anything right.

Then there is the music. I wonder if you get a better deal on music rights if you buy an artist's entire album? Rod Stewart has three songs and they use Danny Whitten's original version of "I don't want to talk about it" that Rod also recorded. Eric Clapton is credited with one song, but I think I remember at least a couple. Some movies dig really deep for their music and strive to match definitive but lesser known songs to important scenes in the movie (Black Snake Moan). Private Lessons uses "Hot Legs" as it pans across the girls dancing at the opening party, something that does not really show much imagination. For some reason Clapton's "Next time you see her" is played during one of the rough spots in Philly's and Miss Morrow's relationship and it makes no sense at all. Really the music seemed to be what they could get that was popular and cheap. While they use good songs, but the time the third Rod Stewart song plays, it gets really repetitive. Even more so if you don't pay enough attention to realize that it is not Stewart doing the Danny Whitten song.

So is it worth seeing? Umm, no, but yes. There is a reason that sex comedies feature 20 something actors in the lead roles, we don't really want to kids playing these roles. On the other hand, Sylvia does spend a fair amount of time naked. This is one of the earliest "kids losing their virginity" films, "Porky's" would come out a year later and "The Last American Virgin" a year after that. The Cheerleader movies of the previous decade often featured teenagers and sex, but rarely virgins. It is worth viewing to see Sylvia and Hesseman but is not really worth seeking out.

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