The title has for some reason been changed, because this is the infamous "Love Is a Four-Letter Word" from Lee Frost and Bob Cresse. I had looked in vain for this film ever since I saw color stills from it in Playboy magazine circa 1968. (Playboy had a "sex in cinema" section back when, believe it or not, even a little nudity on the screen was a big deal.) Years ago, an expert in the grindhouse field informed me that LIAFLW had undoubtedly been lost forever, but a print has at last turned up. It has obviously been restored, too, since a film that spent 43 years in some cardboard box couldn't possibly look as good as this one does.
The film itself shows the real title as well as the correct production date of 1966 (not 1964 as is commonly found). For people who didn't experience that decade, there was an enormous difference between the early and the late 1960s in terms of what could be shown in a theater. This picture could not have been made in 1964: what you're seeing here is how far Frost and Cresse dared stretch the limits in 1966. Compare this movie, though, to what they were making two years later, such as "Love Camp 7," and it's obvious that the rules were changing fast in what have accurately been called the "sick, sick sixties." Oddly, though LIAFLW depicts nothing close to explicit sex, it could not be made in 2009, either. It is among the first wave of a particular genre of underground sleaze that existed from the mid-1960s through the "Ginger" movies of the early 1970s.
Viewers who didn't experience that era will watch this picture and think, "So what?" But it's a classic to those who remember another age. It was worth the long wait, so thanks to whatever grindhouse archeologist scrounged through that abandoned old theater on the seamy side of town and dug it out!
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