Barbarella (1968, Fr./It.)

This 'adult' sci-fi fantasy sex-capades comedy from French director Roger Vadim (featuring his new wife Jane Fonda) with a screenplay by Terry Southern was edited to receive a PG rating. Based on the French comics by Jean-Claude Forrest, it contained many sexual references, and numerous instances of Barbarella's interstellar love-making. The story set in the 41st century involved Barbarella's journey to a distant galaxy to save humanity. There was a teasing joke about Barbarella experiencing traditional or "old-fashioned" physical-penetrative copulation instead of the latest virtual sex (consumption of exaltation transference pills).

The cult film opened with an infamous credits sequence that teasingly stripped French comic-strip heroine Barbarella (Jane Fonda) of her black space-suit outfit in zero gravity. Her gloves, leggings, and then helmet were gradually removed, before she became completely exposed and nude, although often obscured by floating and jiggling white letters.

Barbarella (Jane Fonda): The Opening Credits Sequence

The title character also made love with the aid of a gigantic 'orgasmatronic' type machine (an organ of love) - and was sentenced to death by multiple orgasm (delivered by the 'Excessive Machine'). Durand Durand/Concierge (Milo O'Shea) attempted to torture and kill Barbarella with pleasure by orgasmically "playing" her with the euphemistic pipe organ (with the tune "Sonata for Executioner and Various Young Women"). He promised a swift but pleasurable death, as he began playing, and her clothes were expelled:

Barbarella: "Oh, oh, what is this thing?"
Durand: "You will soon see, my dear. 'Sonata for Executioner and Various Young Women.'"
Barbarella: "Hmm. Oh, it's sort of nice, isn't it?"
Durand: "Yes, it is nice, in the beginning. Wait until its tune changes. It may change your tune as well."
Barbarella: "Oh goodness, what do you mean?"
Durand: "When we reach the crescendo, you will die - of pleasure. Your end will be swift, but sweet, very sweet."

To his amazement, she completely enjoyed the lethal experience, exasperating him even further by orgasming. He was aghast at the sexually self-determined female for defeating the machine and causing it to smoke and burst into flames:

"I don't believe it. It couldn't be. Wretched, wretched girl. What have you done to my excessive machine. You've undone it. You've undone me. Look, look! Energy cables are shrinking. You've turned them into faggots. You've, you've burned out the excessive machine! You've blown all its fuses!...You've exhausted its power! It couldn't keep up with you. Incredible. What kind of girl are you?! Have you no shame?!...Shame, shame on you! You'll pay for this!"

Candy (1968, It./Fr.)

Director Christian Marquand's semi-vulgar, hip, 'psychedelic', anti-establishment sex farce was created by scriptwriter Buck Henry from Terry Southern's updated, racy (and supposedly 'unfilmable') 1958 novel (originally based on Voltaire's 18th century Candide). Voltaire's story about Candy was later the basis of two other "adult" porno films by writer/director Gail Palmer, starring Carol Connors: The Erotic Adventures of Candy (1978) and Candy Goes to Hollywood (1979).

Nubile, vacuous and sexy nymphet Swedish blonde Ewa Aulin (a former Miss Teen Sweden in 1965 and Miss Teen International in 1966) starred as the title character, high-school student Candy Christian. The naive waif experienced a series of bizarre sexual exploits, misadventures, experiments, and strange erotic encounters with a succession of men.

The big-budget, sexist, and crude film flopped miserably with its misogynistic subplot (now badly dated) that starred big names in mostly embarrassing roles within vignettes, such as:

• Grindl (Marlon Brando), a fake Hindu mystic guru
• MacPhisto (Richard Burton), a drunken eccentric Welsh poet
• Emmanuel (Ringo Starr), a Mexican gardener
• Brigadier General R.A. Smight (Walter Matthau), a patriotic, sex-starved military general
• Dr. A.B. Krankheit (James Coburn), a mad New York surgeon
• Dr. Arnold Dunlap (John Huston), hospital administrator

The Detective (1968)

Director Gordon Douglas' frank and adult-oriented crime drama was based on the Roderick Thorpe novel. The film was controversial for its portrayal of homosexuality, star Frank Sinatra's use of the words "penis" and "queer," and the character of Sinatra's sexually-promiscuous ("nymphomania") and estranged wife Karen (Lee Remick).

It starred Frank Sinatra as dedicated police sergeant Joe Leland working within a homophobic police force. It told about his underground investigation of murdered/mutilated wealthy homosexual man Teddy Leikman (James Inman) (due to a dispute between two gays, that led to a wrongful confession and execution of an innocent man).

In one overwrought sequence (narrated with a cynical voice-over) now seen as repugnant, a middle-aged tormented homosexual Colin MacIver (William Windom) went to the grungy and dark waterfront docks in search of homosexuals, where he found sinister-looking individuals lounging around and snuggling:

"The thought of turning, turning involuntarily into one of them frightened me and made me sick with anger. I went down there. I had heard about the waterfront. People giggle and make jokes about it. I had had only two experiences before, once in college and once in the Army. I thought I had gotten it out of my life, but I hadn't. I looked at them. Is this what I was like? Oh God, twisted faces, outcasts, lives lived in shadows always prey to a million dangers. People don't realize what we go through. I was raised in a family that would not even admit that there was such a thing as a homosexual in this world. And here I was and I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't stop."

As in a number of similar films in the 60s, the homosexual character met a terrible fate. In a violent scene, after MacIver was picked up at a bar by Leikman, his detestation of homosexuality caused him to kill Leikman and then take his own life.

Flesh (1968)

Director Paul Morrissey was responsible for this avante-garde low-budget experimental film from pop artist Andy Warhol. It was one of a trilogy of Morrissey films produced by Andy Warhol:

• Flesh (1968)
• Trash (1970)
• Heat (1972)

This cult film was an explicit, X-rated underground film with non-chalant, frequent male nudity (including one of the earliest instances of an erect penis in a non-pornographic film). It also featured transvestite drag queens (i.e., Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis in their film debuts), exotic strippers (including sexploitation actress, "super groupie" and stripper Geri Miller - before breast implants), fellow hustlers and johns.

The film was essentially a candid chronicle of one day in the life of handsome, heroin-addicted bisexual hustler Joe (Joe Dallesandro) in New York City. His objective was to make $200 to pay for an abortion for the pregnant lover-girlfriend Patti (Patti D'Arbanville) of his wife Geri (Geraldine Smith).

He also spoke to ex-girlfriend Terry (Geri Miller), a stripper who announced that she was considering breast implants to help get more customers ("I know they're too little, especially for dancing topless"). She also wanted Joe to become more interested in her breasts ("Joe, you don't seem to like them like you used to. Are you turning gay or something?...Well, if you want it, you got it").

Joe (Joe Dallesandro) with Ex-Girlfriend Terry (Geri Miller)

In the film's final sequence, Joe was in bed with Geri and Patti when they undressed him, but then they became intimate with each other - while Joe became bored and fell asleep (mirroring his sleeping in the opening scene).

Greetings (1968)

Director Brian DePalma's third feature film (and his first major film) was an episodic, improvisational anti-war (and anti-military) satire of late-1960s events, manners and mores among the 'under-30' counter-culture. It was originally rated X (it was the first film in the US to receive the 'new' X rating, predating I Am Curious - Yellow (1967) by a few months) but later was re-rated to R.

Topics in a series of NY based sketches included draft-dodging, free love and computer dating, voyeuristic and amateurish 'peep art' film-making, the JFK assassination and conspiracy theories, Vietnam and politics embodied by LBJ.

In one of the film's episodes, JFK conspiracy nut Lloyd Clay (Gerrit Graham) drew diagrams of bullet paths on the nude body of his sleeping girlfriend, a Bronx Secretary (Ashley Oliver) to prove that the doctors provided the Warren Commission with false information.

In another scene after viewing her shoplifting in a bookstore, shy amateur film-maker Jon Rubin (Robert De Niro in his debut film) was able to persuade aspiring actress Linda (Rutanya Alda) to disrobe down to her see-through underwear in front of the camera, for one of his filmed "peep art" shows (to record "a private moment"). She was pretending to be in her apartment - viewed (and filmed) entirely from the perspective of someone watching her undress on her bed through her window. The scene ended when Jon stepped into the frame and joined her in bed.

Hugs and Kisses (1968, Swe.) (aka Puss och Kram (1967))

Director Jonas Cornell's notorious parody of Swedish sex comedies was noted for breaking more nudity barriers in its story of friendship - a love triangle between a woman, her husband, and one of his friends. It told of a young, middle-class bohemian couple, Eva (Agneta Ekmanner) and Max (Sven Bertil-Taube), and eccentric young writer John (Hakan Serner) who lived with them. In the plot, Eva slept with John as a ploy to rid John of his girlfriend - typing instructor Hickan (Lena Granhagen).

It included the first extended full frontal view of female genitalia (actually pubic hair). In the 'celebrated' scene, the film's heroine Eva undressed in front of a full-length mirror, wandered around the room and looked at her reflection.

if... (1968, UK)

This British coming-of-age social drama from Lindsay Anderson was one of the first films to mix color and black-and-white footage in an impressionistic way. It was notorious and controversial for its frontal male nudity (in a shower scene) (excised by censors), female nudity, sex, violence and homosexuality.

It was originally X-rated (but subsequently edited and re-rated as R) and most noted for its controversial finale - a violent, vengeful bloody revolt, uprising and shoot-out from the roof of the school building at a conformist British public school (a symbolic microcosm of a repressive Establishment-oriented society) during Founders' Day.

The rebellion was led by anti-authoritarian anarchist Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell in his debut film role) accompanied by his girlfriend - earlier, he had said: "one man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."

In one scene, reportedly the first instance of a full-frontal female nude passed by the British Board of Film Classification, the wife of the House Master Mrs. Kemp (Mary MacLeod) walked down a hallway stark naked (seen in long-shot), and entered the washroom area where she was seen naked from a side-view. In exchange for the stark nudity, the male frontal nudity in the shower scene was excised.

In another questioned scene, Mick and friend Wallace (Richard Warwick) went joyriding on a stolen motorcycle during a truant day from school. In a graphic scene in a coffee-shop, Mick rudely flirted with the waitress (Christine Noonan). After she slapped him for stealing a kiss, she came up behind him at the jukebox and animalistically taunted him:

"Go on, look at me. I'll kill you. Look at my eyes. Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror and my eyes get bigger and bigger. I'm like a tiger, I'm like a tigress."

Animalistic Sex Between Mick (Malcolm McDowell) and The Girl (Christine Noonan)

Their ritualistic mating (using the metaphor of two tigers) was accompanied by growls, sniffs, clawing, hissing, and biting - and suddenly they appeared naked as they rolled around and wrestled each other on the floor (in a ten-second sequence).

Inga (1967, Sw., US release in 1968) (aka Jag - en oskuld (I, a Virgin))

Director Joseph Sarno's daring, X-rated soft-core film (and box-office smash) for the late 60s was a pretentious foreign film art-house import that was a milestone in erotic cinema, although most of its sexuality was implied through facial expressions and cut-aways to off-screen.

It was a sexual coming-of-age, soap opera tale that starred beautiful ex-ballerina and star Marie Liljedahl (in her film debut) as an orphaned, nubile 17 year-old virgin named Inga Frilund. The film told how the orphaned teenager was forced to live with her scheming 36 year-old Aunt Greta Johansson (Monica Strömmerstedt) in Stockholm - and eventually stole away her expensive, live-in young lover Karl Nistad (Casten Lassen) for her own love-making. Its scenes of nudity, masturbation, and intercourse are considered tame today.

Liljedahl also starred in the erotic drama Ann and Eve (1970), and in director Jess Franco's Eugenie (1970) (aka Eugenie...the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion), based on one of Marquis de Sade's novels titled Philosophy in the Boudoir, in which she was systematically degraded (drugged, raped, and tortured) and corrupted by her father's mistress/older lover Madame Marianne de St. Ange (Maria Rohm).

Due to the successful exploitation of the sex star, a color Inga sequel was made by Sarno, The Seduction of Inga (1971) (aka Inga 2), and released in the US in 1972. Soon after, Liljedahl retired from making films. [Another young Swedish actress, buxom Christina Lindberg made her film debut in a similar film, titled Maid in Sweden (1971).]

Other Films With Marie Liljedahl
Ann and Eve (1970)	Eugenie...the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion (1970)		The Seduction of Inga (1971)

The Killing of Sister George (1968, UK)

Director Robert Aldrich's milestone 'lesbian' film was noted as the first X-rated film by a respected director and actors, and the first film to openly depict a lesbian love scene in a mainstream feature film. [Note: Before this film's release, the German Maedchen in Uniform (1958) was the only lesbian film seen publicly in America, although it wasn't released in the US until 1965).] This film was re-rated a few years later as "R," like most X-rated films in the late 60s.

Two of its scenes brought controversy and demands that the film be banned in several locales:

• a lengthy scene in a real-life lesbian bar (the Gateways Club in London)
• a notoriously raw, extended lesbian love-making scene

The encounter took place between:

• closeted TV producer/executive Mercy Croft (Coral Browne)
• younger, doll-collecting and passive, girlish-acting Alice McNaught (Susannah York) (nicknamed 'Childie')

Alice was the live-in lover of aging, often drunk, bull-dyke actress June 'George' Buckridge (Beryl Reid) (she played the 'killed-off' BBC soap-opera character of Sister George in the film's title).

In the scene in Alice's apartment bedroom, Mercy opened Alice's blouse to expose her breasts, further caressed and played with her left nipple, then kissed her neck and moved down to her nipple to kiss it, and had her experience an orgasm - until they were both discovered in a mutually-seductive position by an enraged June who argued with Mercy:

"The 'poor child' you've got there is a woman. She's 32 -- she had an illegitimate child at 15. She's got an abandoned daughter who's almost old enough to be of interest to you, Mercy dear."

Romeo and Juliet (1968, UK/It.)

The Franco Zeffirelli-directed Shakespearean adaptation Romeo and Juliet (1968) appealed to the youthful, counter-cultural generation of the late 60s with its realism, the passion of the lovers, the brief nudity of the couple on their wedding night (morning), and its contemporary feel. Filmed on location in Italy, it was the most commercially successful Shakespeare film and its most entertaining, refreshing and natural rendition - a passionate celebration of young love.

It featured the unequivocal sexuality of young teens and star-crossed lovers:

• Romeo (17 year-old Leonard Whiting)
• Juliet (16 year-old Olivia Hussey)

The two spent one honeymoon night together in the nude in this updated version.

Romeo (Leonard Whiting) And Juliet (Olivia Hussey): Honeymoon Nude Scene

There were a few long-held shots of Leonard Whiting's nakedness as he lay in bed with Juliet and then stood by a sunlit window, and a split-second scene of Juliet hastily rolling out of her shared bed.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Polish director Roman Polanski's definitive first American feature film Rosemary's Baby (1968), his second, scary horror film told about a young newlywed couple who moved into a large, rambling old apartment building in Central Park West, and began a loving, post-honeymoon period. After a nightmarish dream of making love to a Beast, the paranoid, haunted, and hysterical bride believed herself impregnated so that her baby could be used in evil cult rituals.

The young, newly-married 60's couple was:

• unemployed, struggling actor Guy Woodhouse (Oscar-nominated director and actor John Cassavetes)
• frail, waifish wife Rosemary (22 year old Mia Farrow)

"Dizzy," woozy and disoriented after eating some tainted chocolate mousse (laced with sleeping powder), Rosemary hallucinated a Black Mass, imagining herself on a mattress drifting on the ocean, and then as a passenger on a presidential yacht. Undressed, shivering and naked, and then abruptly wearing a bathing suit, various images assaulted her: the Birth of Man paintings on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a typhoon at sea, and a naked descent into the hold of the ship, where a fire burned and Rosemary was lying on a mattress. She was surrounded by many chanting, overweight, elderly naked figures (of the Satanists' coven), including Guy and neighbors Roman (Sidney Blackmer) and Minnie (Ruth Gordon) Castevet.

A bloody-red liquid was painted with rune designs on Rosemary's bare chest. A person resembling Mrs. John F. Kennedy (Patricia Ann Conway) who wore a white diaphanous gown descended a staircase and suggested tying her legs down in case of convulsions. Attendants spread her legs apart and bound them. In her dream-like sleep, Guy began making love to her, but then his appearance changed into a grotesque beast-like figure resembling the Devil, with yellowish eyes and clawed, scaly hands. He stroked the length of her body with his hairy claw. While being 'raped' during this horrific ritualistic copulation scene, as everyone watched her having intercourse with the Beast, she realized:

"This is no dream, this is really happening."

The next morning, Rosemary questioned mysterious scratches she found on the side of her body. She was appalled that Guy admitted making love to her while she was passed out - supposedly from mixing alcohol - "It was kind of fun in a necrophile sort of way." She remembered something quite different from Guy's recollection - a demonic, inhuman rape:

Rosemary: "I dreamed someone was raping me, I think from someone inhuman."
Guy: "Thanks a lot. Whatsa matter?"
Rosemary: "Nothing."
Guy: "I didn't want to miss the night."
Rosemary: "We could have done it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn't the only split-second."
Guy: "I was a little bit loaded myself, you know."

The Sergeant (1968)

Director John Flynn's controversial, R-rated, sexually-frank and socially-relevant debut film provided an insightful view of repressed homosexuality, in an era when intolerant views were rampant.

It was set on a US military base (a petroleum supply depot) in rural post-war France in 1952, where strict Master Sergeant Albert Callan (Rod Steiger) was in charge of the camp.

The self-despising, predatory closeted homosexual Sergeant Callan (with "just one weakness, just one" as the trailer put it) became attracted (almost subconsciously) to one of the recruits - handsome young heterosexual PFC Tom Swanson (John Phillip Law). To keep him close, the self-loathing and tormented Sergeant made Swanson his private orderly room clerk, and jealously refused him passes to date his French girlfriend Solange (Ludmila Mikael). He also was insulting to Swanson about his relationship: "If you want to get laid, why don't you get one of the whores in the meadow?"

At one point, half-drunk in a public bar, the Sergeant came up to Swanson, begging:

Sergeant: "I need you. I need you. You're everything that counts. You're mine."
Swanson: "No, you're wrong."
Sergeant: "I'm not wrong. I've been through hell, Swanny, and I'm not gonna go through it again. You're mine."
Swanson: "No, you're wrong. Now you listen to me. Now I'm leaving. And I'm asking you please, Sergeant, just leave me alone. Don't follow me and don't come around me."

As Swanson departed the bar, the Sergeant grabbed him in a bear hug and boldly and forcefully kissed him on the lips. Swanson punched him in the stomach and pushed him to the floor. The rejection led to the tortured and miserable title character's further alcohol abuse and suicide with a bullet to his head (with a rifle) in the woods, after he was relieved of his duties.

Therese and Isabelle (1968, W.Ger./Neth./Fr.)

Radley Metzger's atmospheric, soft-core, black and white German language tale of self-discovery was based on the racy memoirs of French author Violette Leduc, an admitted lesbian. The film was composed of flashbacks by an older Therese to twenty years earlier during a visit to the school.

This was the first and still one of the most realistic treatments of an adolescent lesbian love relationship - between two French boarding schoolgirl classmates (two adult females):

• Therese (Essy Persson), brunette with pouty lips
• Isabelle (Anna Gael), blonde with big eyes, older and more confident

In addition to the love-making scenes between the two of them, there was one auto-erotic scene and one unpleasant heterosexual experience, both for Therese. The girls' first sexual experience together occurred clothed in a toilet stall and then in the school chapel, where Therese remembered how they clutched at each other's uniforms, sobbed and grabbed at each other on the floor:

"I hugged her with all the strength of my repentance, I breathed her in, I pulled her tight against my belly and made a loincloth for myself. She was melting my ankles and knees into delicious decay. I had burst with warmth like a fruit. I was running with the same liquid sweetness. There were pincers softly tearing at me, oh so softly. I was following everything inside her. I could see with my inner eyes the light in her flesh. In my head, I had a Therese with opened legs straining up to the sky, who was receiving all that I was giving. We hugged to our hearts all the Thereses and Isabelles who would make love to one another later with other names. We rolled intertwined down a slope of shadows. We held our breath so that life and death should come to a halt. I stormed her mouth as one storms a beleaguered city. I was hoping to plunder and destroy both her entrails and my own. Isabelle cried in panic, but I persevered. Isabelle called for help."

Isabelle described her own rising passion before experiencing an overwhelming orgasm and confessing "I love you" to Therese.

They also made love naked in bed (when Isabelle delivered oral sex to the reclining Therese) which the narrator described (in voice-over):

"She applied herself with such concentration that suddenly, everything became unreal. I thought how much I wanted to give her what she was giving me. My mind focused on her tongue. I didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing from her point of view, but if the pearl slipped away from her, she found it again. She was silent, intent on her own sensations. I was receiving what she was receiving. I was Isabelle's. Her efforts, her rhythms were exciting me. The pearl was what she wanted. She was discovering the little male organ all of us have - the eunuch taking hard again. I felt stigmata open my entrails. I gripped Isabelle with a scissor movement of my legs. She became short of saliva. She created more. Suddenly, three fingers entered me. Three guests for the pleasure to cling to. I had a maddening eel battering itself to death against my inner walls. My eyes heard. My ears saw. Isabelle was injecting me with her own brutality. The rubbing was burning and painful. My limitations were even more painful still. The stubborn finger wakened my flesh. Each of its blows made my pleasure sharper than before. I drew it into myself. I forced it out again. I transformed it into the sex of a dog, red and naked. I was a maddened sun whirling through my flesh. My calves were ripening now that they had drunk their fill. I was wholly softened into an effable pique."

Outdoors in the woods, when they both vowed their steadfast love and undying devotion to each other, Therese's voice-over recalled their "irresistible forces."

"We sank into unconsciousness, but we remained a single block, opposed to the darkness around us. There was no end to it as I crumbled from bliss to bliss, until I was all dust. Crushed her to me, quivering like the tips of brittle grass in winter. We did it from memory as though we'd caressed one another before we were born. She was reflecting me, I was reflecting her - two mirrors making love. I listened with her finger to the song my fingers were singing to her. I rocked her, sharpened her, I restored her confidence. Seeping streams of langour, cracks of sweating sweetness, washes of secret delight, walking on the water. I knew what that meant as my thighs glowed in that great river."

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Director Norman Jewison's caper plot abounded with sexual chemistry, completely overshadowing the modernized remake by director John McTiernan that was attempted in 1999 with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.

The original film was noted for its over 6-minute, erotic, sophisticated, almost wordless chess game (a metaphor for seduction) between the two main characters:

• Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen), bank heist mastermind and Boston millionaire-playboy
• insurance investigator-sleuth Vicky Anderson (Faye Dunaway), wearing a sexy backless dress

The game began with the lines:

Thomas: "Do you play?"
Vicky: "Try me."

With long pauses between moves during the heated and exciting game (with obvious sexual imagery), they both touched their lips (in close-up), capped with a closeup of her slow fingering of the length and tip of the phallic-shaped bishop chess piece (he smiled knowingly at her). When she had him cornered and in "check," he stood, hesitated, considered his next move, then grabbed her arm and proposed: "Let's play something else."

After-Chess Seduction Between Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) and Vicky (Faye Dunaway)

Their seduction scene was filmed with a circling and overhead camera (representing her investigative circling of him), ending with a 70 second kiss that dissolved into a blur of colors, although they eventually double-crossed each other.

[Note: The original film was explicitly reshot in 1999, with art thief Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) and a renamed Catherine Banning (40+ Rene Russo) - but without the chess game. It was replaced with a sexy society ball scene between the two as they danced to a rumba. Catherine appeared in a slinky, black see-through cocktail dress with a red sash. The scene merged into a montage of their sweaty love-making in locations (including in the hallway, on the marble staircase and on Crown's book-covered office desk) throughout Crown's luxurious townhouse.]

Vixen! (1968)

This over-the-top, definitive Russ Meyer ("King of the Nudies") soft-core sexploitation skin-flick was typical of his independent underground films with aggressive, big-breasted starlets. It was the first of Meyer's films with Vixen in the title, followed by Supervixens (1975), and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (1979).

Its various themes included incest, lesbianism, promiscuity, violence, inter-racial rape, and racism - all in one film.

This highly profitable, low-budget film from the independent film producer/director was one of the first US films to receive the newly-formed MPAA's 'X' rating, for its many sex scenes. The film asked about Vixen: "Is She Woman...or Animal?" while the trailer described its plot:

"The story of a girl who loves the joy of being alive, and gives herself innocently to the merry chase of life..."

Erica Gavin as Vixen

It featured dark-haired brunette Erica Gavin as the sexually-voracious, bisexual title character Vixen Palmer, married to naive Canadian bush jockey Tom Palmer (Garth Pillsbury) and living in a remote cabin. Illustrative of her sex-crazed, promiscuous and incestuous character, Vixen showered with her own motor-cycle riding younger brother Jud (Jon Evans), and expressed racist attitudes toward his black friend Niles (Harrison Page), a Vietnam War draft-dodger.

Vincenne Wallace also starred as Janet King, the redheaded wife of one of the couples who came to the cabin, along with her husband David (Robert Aiken). On a fishing trip, Dave was seduced by Vixen in a stream and later, a drunk, unhappy and depressed Janet was also one of Vixen's conquests.