THE BLUE HOUR is a sexploitation indie made with an arthouse sensibility. It's virtually indescribable, playing out as episodic and dream-like, and has been dug up from the obscure vaults for modern viewers by the dedicated talents at Vinegar Syndrome. The film follows an ethereal young woman called Tanya as she goes on a bizarre journey of discovery through an avant garde Los Angeles, encountering strippers, sex fiends, lovers, sleazy men, and rampant sex. The fan gets their money's worth with plenty of nudity and the like, while the directorial flourishes lift it above the level of a normal low-grade indie.

Troubled young lass Tania (a fine and affecting performance by fetching brunette Anne Chapman) falls in with a bad crowd in Los Angeles while struggling to come to terms with her grim and enigmatic past.

Directors Sergei Goncharoff and Ron Nicholas -- the latter also co-wrote the intriguing script with Carl K. Hittleman -- relate the compelling elliptical story at a steady pace, maintain a haunting downbeat tone throughout, deliver a satisfying smattering of tasty female nudity, and make artful use of a fractured editing style that keeps the viewers on their toes from start to finish. Moreover, the disjointed oddball plot offers a poignant and provocative central point about the impossibility of running away from one's dark and tragic past. The sincere acting from a capable cast holds the picture together, with especially praiseworthy contributions from Edward Blessington as Tania's concerned and caring boyfriend David, Mary Beth Hurt as an evil manager of models, and William Bonner as a belligerent bearded biker. Voluptuous knockout Diane Webber has a memorably sexy bit shaking her scorching stuff as a belly dancer in a nightclub. Robert Maxwell's handsome cinematography provides an attractive bright look as well as boasts several neat dissolves and freeze frames. The melancholy piano score by Harry Fields hits the moody spot. Worth a watch for fans of offbeat 70's fare.

Not much you can say about this witless film from hunger. It's undisguised soft core porn that somehow B beauty queen from the 40s Mary Beth Hughes got somehow talked into making. I don't think Hughes who had a brief and memorable scene with Henry Fonda in The Oxbow Incident ever thought she would wind up in something like The Blue Hour.

None of the rest of the cast you ever heard of. Our protagonist is a young woman from Greece who came to the USA and is mired in the soft underbelly of the porn and criminal scene in Los Angeles. Flashbacks to her sexcapades in Greece tell us why.

The acting is horrible, the direction in non-existence and it looks like it was shot with my father's old Bell&Howell. Outside of that it's a classic.

Mary Beth Hughes plays a lesbian madam. What were you thinking Mary Beth?