I bought this movie believing that it was a low-budget but essentially straight-forward drama from the early 70's, which it isn't. It is low-budget, and it is from the early 70's, but it's basically a soft-core porno movie...a bi-sexual one at that. What prompted me to buy it was the fact that Lynn Lowry, a beautiful and talented cult actress who appeared in some great...or at least enjoyable...films ("Shivers", "The Crazies", "I Drink Your Blood", etc.), was the "star". I've always had a "crush" on Lowry. Too, I had just finished a biography of Cal Culver aka Casey Donovan, a gay porno actor who died of AIDS and had a long-term affair with author Tom Tryon (who wrote "The Other" and "Harvest Home"), and it said in the book ("Boys In The Sand: Casey Donovan, All-American Sex Star" by Roger Edmonson) that "Score" was Culver's attempt to break into legitimate film. So I decided to give it a try, without really being aware that director Radley Metzger was essentially known for soft and hard core porno, and only soft and hard core porno.
Set in Croatia, the plot basically concerns a jaded American couple attempting to seduce another more naive American couple. In other, more competent hands, it might have been a worthy project reminiscent of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Instead, the characters are horny, unconvincing caricatures, and all that's missing is the guy delivering pizza (although there is a phone repairman). "Score" originated as an off-Broadway play, and the star of that play, Claire Wilbur, recreates her role for the movie (she's very attractive, and seems as if she might actually possess talent; sadly, she died in 2004 of lung cancer, known primarily for her performance in "Score"). Gerald Grant, supposedly a descendant of Ulysses S. Grant, is her husband, although his character acts as if he'd rather be married to Culver (Ulysses must have been rolling over in his grave when the film got released). Culver and Lowry play the naive couple who are pretty easily, and idiotically, seduced. Wilbur and Lowry do their best, but the dialogue and the situations are ridiculous, and seem as if they were dreamed up by a hack writer of pornographic paperback novels rather than an off-Broadway playwright. Culver, sad to say, couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. If this was supposed to be his attempt to break into "legitimate" film, it's easy to see why he ended up back in hard-core porno. (Both Culver and Grant died in real life of AIDS.)
The sex is soft-core (although there is supposed to be a hard-core version of this film floating around) but if you're uncomfortable with homosexuality, you should probably stay away from the film. I didn't necessarily mind seeing Wilbur and Lowry rolling around together in the nude, but, while I'm not a homophobe, I didn't really need to sit through the same kind of scenes with Grant and Culver. And there are a lot of those scenes. I suppose "Score" can be watched as a cinematic relic from a more carefree time (before AIDS made sexual adventurism such a scary proposition). Other than that, though, the film has little value. Its "drama" is pretty preposterous, and in sexual terms, it's less than titillating. Basically, "Score" is a boring "Sexploitation" film that has little to recommend it to either a heterosexual or a homosexual audience (I don't think bi-sexuals will find it worthwhile either).
