Taglines: Father… mistress… daughter… friend… wife… The story of the sensuous family!
Glass Houses movie synopsis. Victor is a bored, married businessman carrying on an illicit affair with his attractive, new age girlfriend Jean. He is an executive at a company which manufactures board games along with colleague, and friend, Ted. Victor’s sexually-frustrated, vivacious wife Adele involves herself with community civic meetings to do ‘something’ for her neighborhood. Victor and Adele’s marriage has been slowly unraveling, with Victor coming home late many evenings under the guise of ‘working late’ at the office.
Victor and Adele’s nineteen year old daughter Kim is a young woman in search of her identity and place in the world. She has a young hippie as her acquaintance, but the relationship with him remains on a platonic level for one major reason. Kim has a secret attraction to her father of which she cannot let go, and stays up late into the night to see him return home from his liaison every night.
As Kim cannot have her father, she takes up with a man of the same age, this being her father’s business associate Ted. At one of her civic meetings the lonely, ignored Adele bonds with her neighbor, pipe-smoking sex novelist Les Turner and has an affair with him, albeit with ambivalence. The guilty Adele tells Les that they must end their affair as it was wrong to have happened in the first place.
Events in the film reach a head when Victor and Jean bump into Kim, and her older lover at the ‘Institute of Encounter Awareness’, a health and wellness resort. The pairing of Kim and Ted causes a falling out of the two men, and for Victor to reassess his relationship to the spirited Jean.
The film concludes with Victor coming home after leaving his daughter at her friend Linda’s house, looking for his wife. He is shown watching television in the living room, laying on the sofa, when it appears that Kim is at his side, or is she? Does Kim actually have her way with her father, or is it all just a fantasy, and if this is so, whose fantasy is it?
Glass Houses (1972) is an American independent film released by Columbia Pictures in 1972, although it was actually filmed in 1970. It is of interest in film history because of the credentials of its key personnel.
Glass Houses was directed by Alexander Singer, notable for his work on the Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was one of the earliest screen appearances of actress Jennifer O’Neill, best known for her role in Summer of ’42 (1972).
Glass Houses cinematography was by eminent cinematographer George J. Folsey, whose credits include films such as Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954). The score was composed by David Raksin, famous for his musical score in Laura (1944).
Glass Houses (1972)
Directed by: Alexander Singer
Starring: Bernard Barrow, Deirdre Lenihan, Jennifer O’Neill, Ann Summers, Phillip Pine, Clarke Gordon, Eve McVeagh, Rhoda Anderson, Janice Barr, Alma Beltran, George Berkeley
Screenplay by: Alexander Singer, Judith Singer
Cinematography by: George J. Folsey
Film Editing by: George Folsey Jr.
Music by: David Raksin
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: January 7, 1972 (United States)
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