The Stewardesses
Kino Lorber / Kino Cult
Original Release Date July 15th, 1969
Written by Allan Silliphant
Directed by Allan Silliphant
Starring Christina Hart, Ronald South, William Condos, Anita de Moulin, Paula Erikson
Language English
Purchase yours HERE from Kino Lorber
by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast
The Movie: Average
The Stewardesses is an odd bird. It's mostly a cheeky soft core flick with no plot, but then what's been tucked into the middle of that? A separate short film with a plot! And it's all shot in 3-D! So why does this deserve the physical release treatment, and maybe even a spot on your shelf? Because, for such a seemingly innocuous collection of cheap thrills, it actually has a few moments of historical cinematic importance. More on that in a moment.
We're introduced to some of the titular stewardesses aboard a flight in-bound to L.A. Once they land, everyone heads off to enjoy their down time. In the cheesecake-ier plot line, we have things like Tina (Paula Erikson) dropping acid and making out with a lamp, or a bunch of the gals heading to a local bar to play pool, or Wendy (Janet Wass) heading home with a soldier (Andy Roth) who's set to redeploy soon, or Jo (Anita de Moulin) and Cathy (Kathy Ferrick) having a little lesbian dalliance.
In between, we follow the dramatic anchor of the piece, Samantha (Christina Hart) as she meets advertising executive Colin (Ronald South) on the flight and agrees to have dinner with him. Their storyline is essentially a straight-up drama, and builds to a truly w-i-l-d climax which I will NOT spoil here. The interesting thing is that this dramatic storyline was added two years AFTER The Stewardesses was released! Allan Silliphant (directing under the pseudonym Alf Silliman Jr.) saw that, for whatever reason, his little non-explicit adult film was doing numbers in theaters, and thought that he could extend its longevity by adding a "serious" plot to the middle to attract "normal" audiences.
So The Stewardesses was re-edited while still actively available to public screenings! Wild stuff, but that combination of drama, casual nudity, and perhaps most importantly, the 3-D, led to The Stewardesses playing in theaters consistently for years! It ended up having a little something for everyone, so word of mouth meant it was a staple of the midnight movie scene. That alone makes it a remarkable footnote in cinema history, but don't forget: the 3-D. Typically, shooting in 3-D was a prohibitively complicated and expensive process. Allan Silliphant was the co-creator of StereoVision, the new 3-D process used in the film that, in brief, recorded both images needed for the 3-D effect onto a single strip of film, meaning it was impossible for them to go out of sync. StereoVision would go on to be utilized in 3-D films going forward, and is credited in large part with reigniting the 3-D craze.
The Stewardesses is half softcore titillation, half romantic melodrama, has a wild production history, and helped revitalize 3-D in the film industry by making it faster, cheaper, and easier to shoot, while also resulting in a more reliable end product. Do any or all of these facets earn it a place in your media library?
The Packaging: Excellent
The Stewardesses comes in a slightly sturdier blu-ray case, with a sleeve and a reversible cover. The cover image that also appears on the sleeve is a simple, high contrast, black and white illustration of six women in striped short-sleeved shift dresses, posed in a small huddle with some sitting, and some leaning in, as though for a group photo. A seventh woman looks back over her shoulder, dressed the same but with a pillbox hat and purse over her shoulder. Above them is the image of an airliner landing, rendered in the same style. The background is a series of concentric rings colored in vivid yellow, orange, and red with a white center. Off to one side, the stylized text "3D" zooms out from the background, with the StereoVision logo beneath it.
The reverse side depicts the same basic illustration, minus the plane and the seventh woman, but plus one couch for the group to pose on. This one has a plain white background with some additional text above the logo: "Now at last on the wide-screen--the most talked about girls in America--the one, the only..." Below the image and title is where the text gets interesting: "The unpublished novel is now America's most controversial film!" I didn't mention above that The Stewardesses was based on a novel of any kind, published or not, because: it isn't! This angle, along with releasing the original, softcore version with a self-imposed X rating, were attempts by Allan Silliphant to generate interest (the X rating was in vogue at the moment due to the recent, very respectable X-rated feature Midnight Cowboy). They're talking points. Fake ones, but talking points nonetheless.
The Audio + Video: Good
If you're approaching The Stewardesses from a place of seeking pristine visual or audio quality, I don't think it will meet your standards. It both looks and sounds like an older picture that has been, overall, admirably restored, but there are still flaws. There are some scratches and other artifacts on some footage; the sound has a mildly muffled quality where, no matter how much restoration is done, you can't make it sound like it was recorded on more modern equipment than it was. These imperfections did not bother me at all, however. How could they, when I was so firmly under the thrall of the third dimension!
The Stewardesses shines in 3-D. Like all films made with 3-D intentionality, the excuses to push objects into the foreground, and thus the audience's perceived personal space, are kind of always hilarious. Whether it's a shark swimming right into your face in JAWS 3-D (1983), or someone yo-yoing right at you in Friday the 13th: Part III (1982), it's just too fun for minor faults to dampen my enjoyment. Watching the gals shoot pool (legs, cues, and pool balls coming right at you), or a wildly canted angle shot of Colin with an amazing chandelier dominating the frame behind him, all of the 3-D was chosen with such a sense of purpose. It grabs your attention over and over again. It's a bit of a rollercoaster.
The audio mix is pretty quiet overall, but I will give it props in that it's all basically the same level of quiet, so no jump scares when I'd navigate to the menu or anything like that. The score was nice, but largely overshadowed by the visuals and the constant tonal whiplash of the narrative. It has some nice tropicália vibes at times, but the one stand out moment is during the culmination of Samantha and Colin's arc. Still, no spoilers, but I will say: we know it's a bad time because of the woozy, discordant music playing underneath. It's very effective, instantly adding a sickening gravity to a film that has otherwise been consistently flying the friendlier skies.
Special Features: Excellent
Much like the film itself, this Kino release has a little something for everyone, but before I detail any of that, I want to start with my one knock against Kino's release. The Stewardesses comes on two discs; one for the film in three versions: 2-D, "BD3D" (traditional stereoscopic), and anaglyph 3-D (the red/blue variety), and the other disc for the bonus features, with all applicable features likewise available in all three visual formats. This is great, no complaints here. My, admittedly minor, issue is that while both 3-D format options are clearly identified on the disc menus, locating the 2-D isn't. Turns out it's only an option in the "BD3D" sub-menu. Like I said, a minor issue.
Content-wise, this is a dynamite release. There's a really informative commentary track from author and film historian David Del Valle and producer / archivist Miles Hunter, a 21 minute documentary on the film's production and theatrical run, and two semi-related short films. Experiments in Love (1977) is an erotic 3-D short with a much sillier, more heightened tone and much more vivid hallucinatory imagery than The Stewardesses, while Parisienne Life (1953) (a.k.a. Murder in Paris, a.k.a. Paris After Midnight, a.k.a. French Life) is a stereoscopic 3-D short that MIGHT have been directed by Ed Wood! It's basically just two ladies dancing; the kind of thing that passed for erotic in a more chaste, more sexually repressed time.
These shorts, aside from being cultural oddities that might otherwise vanish as there is no real outlet for short films, (especially older films, and especially featuring any kind of erotic content) demonstrate the evolution of what The Stewardesses is. These types of films (which would once be considered pornography in the most pearl-clutching way, and are now almost quaint) have a lineage and with its strange, evolving theatrical release, The Stewardesses is a very interesting inclusion in that history.
- A pair of 3-D glasses
- Audio Commentary by David Del Valle and Miles Hunter
- Experiments in Love (1977) (28:25)
- Parisienne Life (1953) (11:10)
- Alternate Opening Title Sequence (1:17)
- Outtakes and Lens Test Footage (15:58)
- How The Stewardesses Took Off (21:37)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:42)
- Radio Spot (0:52)
In Summary: Buy it on Sale
I think the strongest argument that can be made on behalf of The Stewardesses is one of film preservation. As a film, a narrative, or even just a time capsule of the era in which it was made, The Stewardesses is pretty thin. But as a novelty, it's honestly hard to top. Samantha and Colin's storyline is straight out of an exploitation film. Here, in an abridged form, the story simmers and quickly boils over without much warning, and it's hard to appreciate the simmer because in between is all this very silly, light and stagey footage that's barely narrative at all; almost like stag film vignettes.
The juxtaposition is bananas but still pretty entertaining, but doesn't garner much as far as rewatchability until you take into account the 3-D of it all, when it suddenly becomes a much more enticing possibility. Add to that the incredibly unique backstory and I think this release becomes pretty fascinating. The Stewardesses is a frivolous Frankenstein's monster of a picture; one of a kind and tempting for lovers of the weird and unique.
