Taglines: Would you give a home to a girl like Luci?
Baby Love movie storyline. Poor Luci (Linda Hayden), she is a 15 year old English schoolgirl about to embark on a promising career as the high-school mattress when she comes home one day from school to find her Mum as dead as a door knob in the tub. You see her Mum has cut her wrists after a long unrewarding career as the town mattress. Fortunately for Luci, her Mum’s childhood friend is now a very successful upper-middle class doctor who has decided to take Luci home to his family (on a trial basis).
Luci’s new family (The Quayles) has a few issues. The father’s libedo is on the wane and he has a stick permanently stuck up his butt. The mother was “convent schooled” and misses the good old days of snuggling up with a pretty young girl. The son is an amateur peeper without the libedo problem but also with a stick up his butt. Luci arrives in the midst of all this with her one suitcase, a bit unbalanced from her mother’s recent suicide, and does everything she can to fit in with her new family – more or less.
There isn’t a whole lot of nudity or explicit sex. I’ve read that the film was originally given an “X” rating but don’t let that fool you. This was 1968. Many films which would barely make an “R” rating today got an X in those days. In any event, it was released on video in the 1980s with an “R” rating and the copyright was abandoned in the U.S. in the mid 1990’s. The video is “Deleted” in England.
Baby Love is a 1968 British drama film, directed by Alastair Reid and starring Ann Lynn, Keith Barron, Linda Hayden, Diana Dors, Dick Emery, Derek Lamden, Patience Collier, Sheila Steafel, Marianne Stone, Yvonne Horner, Christine Pryor and Vernon Dobtcheff
Alastair Reid went on to work in television, while Linda Hayden, who was only 15 at the time of filming, later appeared in sexploitation movies, including two of the entries in the Confessions film series, Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) and Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977). The film features an uncredited appearance by Bruce Robinson, later to direct Withnail & I (1987).
Film Review for Baby Love
“Baby Love” is some baby. She is a sensual 15-year-old, who is slightly unhinged after finding her mother a suicide victim. Sheltered by the family of the dead woman’s former lover, she proceeds to wreck the household with sexual allure, childlike wonder and animal cunning. The film, a British import that opened yesterday at the Coronet, has been put together with diabolical brilliance.Ugly as it is in flavor and content, the picture is a genuine pint-sized spellbinder in construction, mood and mounting tension.
Take one “Lolita,” add the framework of the old movie “Guest in the House,” put a trim cast into expert technical hands, and you have this color presentation from Avco Embassy Films.As for the credibility of the story, adapted from the novel by Tina Chad Christian, it does seem likely that the disturbing young heroine, played by Linda Hayden, would have been sent packing well before the ironic climax.
The easy-going family—Keith Barron, a doctor, Ann Lynn, his wife, and Derek Lamden, their teen-age son—are each magnetized by the girl but, rather naively, are unaware of each other’s reactions.Furthermore, while the picture avoids both sensationlism and an explosive finale, the unresolved fadeout keeps it a superficial teaser lacking real substance.But on this level, it is a hypnotic eyeful, solidly performed by the four principals and beautifully directed by Alastair Reid, one of the three scenarists. The movie seems psychologically sound as the nubile, neurotic girl moves into the comfortable home and fixes the family with a wide, speculative eye.
The excellent color photography and the quick-cut editing don’t miss a trick. Nearly every inch of footage builds the atmosphere of tension and sexual magnetism.There is explicit suggestion — no more — that Miss Lynn, as the wife, has unwillingly succumbed to the sensual youngster. This is meaningful and even moving.”Baby Love,” however, is basically a chiller, like the dripping water with the initial credits—a drop, a trickle and a cold flow.
Baby Love (1969)
Directed by: Alastair Reid
Starring: Ann Lynn, Keith Barron, Linda Hayden, Diana Dors, Dick Emery, Derek Lamden, Patience Collier, Sheila Steafel, Marianne Stone, Yvonne Horner, Christine Pryor, Vernon Dobtcheff
Screenplay by: Guido Coen, Michael Klinger, Alastair Reid
Production Design by: David Griffith
Cinematography by: Desmond Dickinson
Film Editing by: John Glen
Costume Design by: Harry Haynes
Art Direction by: Scott MacGregor
Makeup Department: Anne Box, Bunty Phillips
Music by: Max Harris
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: AVCO Embassy Pictures
Release Date: April 20, 1969 (United Kingdom), March 19, 1969 (New York City)
Visits: 507