Three in the Attic

Yvette Mimieux

Richard Wilson's Three in the Attic is an above average AIP exploitation flick from 1968. Yvette Mimieux is the top billed star, but this film was primarily designed to exploit male lead Christopher Jones after his success in AIP's Wild in the Streets. Screenwriter Stephen Yafa adapted the film from his novel Paxton Quigley's Had the Course. In the film, Jones plays Quigley, a young Lothario allegedly attending an all male college in Vermont. The role is within his range, a preppy James Dean who reads Kierkegaard. His main squeeze, Toby (Ms. Mimieux), attends a nearby all female school. She is an All American gal with an incredible wardrobe who is trying to steer Paxton into a commitment. John Beck is in support, dependable as always, as Paxton's best pal back at the frat. 

Beck's character is always counseling Paxton to steer clear of the wimmun, but the boy can't help himself. Every time he runs into a chick there is a gimmicky boing editing effect that signals a future conquest. The first is an African American gal named Eulice (Judy Pace, who had a pretty good film career and was at one point Mrs. Curt Flood) who he picks up hitchhiking. Eulice is both a student, an accomplished painter, and a kindergarten teacher. She teaches an afternoon class that is all black, an anomaly in Vermont, but not in North Carolina where the picture was filmed. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill stands in well enough as the two campuses. Eulice speaks in a playful southern drawl and calls Paxton "Poopsie". She has Paxton pose nude for her, but ends up only painting his face. When he ask why, she replies, "I only wanted to take a peek." On his way to a tryst with Eulice, Paxton runs into a self-described psychedelic Jewess named Jan. Jan and Paxton have sex, sample "magic" brownies and, de rigueur for a 1968 flick, paint flowers all over each others' nekkid bodies. Paxton juggles his three women for awhile, but the audience knows his Captain's paradise can't last.

Once Paxton's hound dog ways are exposed, the three women plot revenge with Toby taking the lead. They imprison Paxton in a sorority attic where they have him sexually service each of them. Paxton goes on a hunger strike and the authorities become concerned about the missing student. A kindly and pipe smoking Dean (an effective Nan Martin, most famous for her dual role in Nightmare on Elm Street 3) susses the situation and counsel Toby to forgive Paxton so she can move on. Toby relents, but wants Paxton to offer a rationale for his misbehavior. Something, of course, that he is unable to do. Toby heads to the bus station, but Paxton stops her from leaving in a sequence that shamelessly cribs from the then recent hit, The Graduate.

Christopher Jones and Judy Pace

I would not quite call Three in the Attic a good film. It is padded by ineffective musical montage sequences which serve as the film's Hamburger Helper. The music alternates between songs by Chad and Jeremy, already has-beens by 1968, and an anonymous raga rock score by Chad (Stuart). The latter is used to ridiculous effect in one sequence in the attic when Paxton gets lost in a book of Hindu erotic sculpture. However, the film charmed me more than I thought it would. It seems like no one took the making of this sex farce too seriously, certainly not director Wilson who was a past associate of Orson Welles. The sexual politics of the film holds up. Each of the female characters is given sexual agency and even Paxton redeems his porcine side by trying to prevent the molestation of a stripper at his frat. In full egalitarian mode, we see as much of the naked Jones, though not Jones' Johnson, as we do of the ladies. The portrait of frat life in the 1960s is reasonably accurate. Three in the Attic is a much better film than Wild in the Streets and most sex farces of that era such as Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.