Let’s jump right in with The Feminist and the Fuzz.
Set the scene, shall I?
It’s Tuesday night, specifically January 26, 1971. You’ve just finished your weekly episode of The Mod Squad with the lovely Peggy Lipton. 8:30 P.M. Should you go to bed? Nah. The ABC Movie of the Week is about to start. Plus, Marcus Welby, M.D. is on right after. Ooohh, it’s The Feminist and the Fuzz. Quite the title. Who’s in it, I wonder? Barbara Eden! That’s right, I Dream of Jeannie has just ended after so many years. David Hartman? He has such a stentorian presence like a host of a popular American morning talk show.
Time to settle in for a straightforward romantic comedy. I have my Ding Dong and my TAB Cola. My last remaining worries of the day are slipping away.
Wow, I hope that crazy Manson Family goes to prison for the grisly Tate-LaBianca murders. I’m sure President Nixon’s a shoe-in for the next election. Should I go see Love Story or The Aristocats again? But gas prices are at a super high 40¢ and tickets already cost $1.50! Or, should I stay home and watch that new laugh-out-loud sitcom All in the Family? One thing I know for sure though, man, my TV’s visual quality is so state-of-the-art.
And, I’m excited to smoke my new pack of EVE cigarettes during the movie, especially since they told me it’s “Every inch a lady.” Finally a cigarette as pretty as me. *cough, cough, cough* So smooth.
>>> FULL MOVIE HERE <<<<
The Feminist and the Fuzz opens with a jazzy beat to follow a police car driving through San Francisco. One of the vehicle’s occupants, Officer Jerry Frazer, is looking through a newspaper for an affordable apartment since his building’s going to be torn down, which is proving to be a difficult task. You might say he’s a less-polished Donald Sutherland. After a car accident, Jerry questions a man about his bong but finds himself more interested in the apartment the victim’s just been evicted from for being a hippy.
Meanwhile, Dr. Jane Bowers is having trouble with a patient, a stubborn little boy who proceeds to bite her. A colleague, Dr. Howard Lassiter, offers to help but then gives her a tip on that same apartment in exchange for a dinner date. Jane brushes him off, but Dr. Howard proclaims that he sees “a beautiful women in the women’s liberation movement as a challenge.” Jane counters that it’s men like him that the women’s lib movement is all about.
Jane and Jerry separately rush to see the free apartment. Jerry notices that she’s run a red light so he stops her, demanding to see her paper driver’s license. He lets her off with a warning because he really wants to nab that apartment. Jane protests that he didn’t give her a ticket because she’s a pretty white woman. The on-duty officer blurts out this gem of a line:
“Doctor, with your looks, if you don’t want any special treatment from men, I think you’d better enter a convent. Now, if you wanna believe I was corrupted by your beauty, go right ahead. I’m a corrupt cop.”
– Officer Jerry Frazer
Jane calls him a “sexual bigot.” Jerry demands she spread eagle against her car, then has a passing elderly woman search Jane for weapons/bulges while she squirms and screams. The woman says while she couldn’t find any weapons, Jane did indeed have many bulges.
Afterwards, Jane and Jerry rush into the building. The landlord thinks they’re married. He shows them the apartment which has been trashed by the hippies, and the landlord exits the room with a shopping cart. Jane is embarrassed by the assumption of marriage. Jerry thinks she’s humiliated by the institution of marriage itself probably.
While leaving to discuss who should have the apartment, Jerry impulsively yells they’ll take it after he sees another woman eyeing it. Jane gives their married name as her own – welcome Mr. and Mrs. Bowers.
They sit at an outdoor cafe, where he upsets her by ordering for her without asking. He asks if she’s ever seen how beautiful Gettysburg is. She responds with “You don’t talk much like a cop.” He strikes back with “You don’t look much like a doctor.” Jerry asserts that it’s impossible to see her as anything but a woman because of those aforementioned “bulges.” Jane storms out.
Jane and Jerry then try to make the choice on the basis of need, followed by flipping a penny, which a kid steals. Jerry wins the coin toss but the kid is snappy against cops. Jerry refuses to take the apartment: “Ladies first, that’s just the way I was taught . . . I don’t understand you women’s lib . . . you’re just weaker.” Jane proudly proclaims her suffragette ancestry that gives her her feminist leanings. She won’t take the apartment if he’s giving it to her just because she’s a woman.
Both decide neither should have it. But then Jane proposes they share the apartment. Jerry is confounded by the proposal. Jane sees the potential though as she works all day at the hospital while he works the night shift and is also going to law school. Jane calls him predictable for potentially assuming that it meant she wanted to sleep together – “Can’t you think of any woman not as a sex object?” Jerry understands it as separate but equal. Jane can’t believe she’s just agreed to share an apartment with “a cop lawyer sexual bigot boy scout.”
Jane returns to a hospital in chaos. Her friend Dr. Debby Inglefinger is fighting with the louse Dr. Howard over whether a 9-year-old female patient actually has asthma or if the symptoms are psychosomatic resulting from a feminine identity crisis. Debby calls out Howard for thinking most women don’t have identities. He denounces her as “a living, breathing argument for female slavery.” Debby calls him sexist, he calls her sexless and storms off.
Debby goes to calm down in Jane’s office. Jane reveals that Dr. Howard was the one who helped her get her apartment, as well as what he expected in return, what Debby refers to as a “couple kisses and a good mauling.” Turns out she’s in a militant radical feminist group called W.A.M, or Women Against Men.
Jane is moving into their new apartment when she brings by her fiancé Wyatt Foley, a liberal civil rights lawyer. Jerry, for fear of being caught by Wyatt, hides and sneaks around the house, finally ending up on the fire escape. No worries though, Jane’s already told Wyatt who is totally cool with the arrangement. He claims that he doesn’t have any room to judge or pass approval over Jane’s life. Guess he sees Jane as a real person. Also, Wyatt lives with his mother, a “very groovy lady.”
Unfortunately, Jerry hasn’t been so forthcoming with his own girlfriend, Kitty Murdoch, the radiant Farrah Fawcett. Realizing he hasn’t informed her of the arrangement, Jane calls Jerry a “chest-beating hysterically masculine gorilla.” Jane agrees to pretend like they don’t know each other.
Kitty gives Jerry a portrait of her in her Playboy Bunny outfit to hang over his bed. She’s eager to see his messy apartment so she can clean it and embrace all the gestures of domesticity (“girly stuff”). However, he’s able to get her out before she notices anything amiss.
Later that night, Jane and Jerry are typing out a written agreement and schedule for their living arrangement. Despite having told her fiancé, Jane remains mum on telling her father. When the phone rings, neither know who should answer based on who it might be. Jane, clad in her moo-moo, picks up the phone and puts on an unknown accent (Chinese?) and claims to be an answering service.
Over the next several weeks, they live solitary lives in the apartment, following a strict schedule and using a bell in the bathroom to make sure they don’t run into each other. Debby and W.A.M. take Jane to a self-defense class where all the female members have black belts. Meanwhile, Jerry picks up a familiar face for solicitation, a young woman named Lilah McGuiness, played by the incomparable Julie Newmar.
Jane and Jerry’s lives start to collide through a series of mishaps. One morning, Jane blows a fuse when she’s using her iron, hair curlers, and TV while Jerry shaves. Then, Kitty drops by unexpectedly. Later that week, Jerry switches shifts so he can surprise Jane with a little dinner. Unknown to him, Jane is letting Debby hold a W.A.M. meeting in the apartment, where they’re discussing what kind of protest they should organize, going from holding a sex strike to holding someone hostage (e.g. Gregory Peck, Woody Allen).
Unfortunately, the members discover Jerry’s portrait of Kitty in the closet, giving them the idea to protest the Playboy Club. Jerry comes by and proceeds to get his ass kicked by a karate-chopping Debby. Jane is forced to pretend she doesn’t know him, fearing what Debby and the women of W.A.M will think of her. As a result, Jerry pretends he’s just a cop responding to a complaint. Debby counters that “those Gestapo stormtrooper tactics won’t work on us.” Fierce.
Unable to return to the apartment, Jerry sleeps in his car and eventually comes back with a stiff neck, lamenting that he had hoped to surprise Jane. Feeling remorseful, Jane starts to massage Jerry until they sit intimately on the couch together. With Jane now in front of him, Jerry builds the tension when he starts to massage her. They kiss and embrace. Jane tries to reason out loud why she would be doing this since Jerry represents “everything she’s against.” They kiss again.
Jane runs to her room, begging Jerry not to “confuse” her anymore. He makes a joke. Tension eased for now.
Jane and Jerry begin to spend more time to get to know each other, going out for lunches and antique shopping. Like friends. When Jerry comes to pick Jane up for dinner one evening, Jane turns him down because she has a previous obligation with Debby.
As it turns out, Debby was the one who fought for Jane to get her job after the hospital claimed to have reached its female doctor quota. Jerry presses Jane to find out if that’s why she’s a part of women’s lib, gratitude. He just can’t seem to understand why an intelligent, well-educated, respectably employed, pretty woman would involve herself with such things.
Jane goes onto to explain that she was a bit of an ugly duckling until college. Used to being ignored, she realized that once she blossomed, men would never leave her alone even if she was mean to them. The only way to turn them off was to show them how smart she was. That’s when she understood what men really seemed to value.
Jerry asks whether women’s lib is supposed to change how men value women while Jane hopes that it’ll change how women value themselves. As she’s starting to care what Jerry thinks about her, Jane reassures him that she isn’t a “crazy lady,” also known as a radical militant feminist.
Cut to the Playboy Club. Jane, Debby, and W.A.M. have shown up in trench coats to protest what the establishment represents to women – oppression, humiliation, etc. Debby karate chops the manager. The women shed their coats to reveal swimsuits and banners. Men begin cat-calling, completely missing the point. Jane reluctantly removes her coat and the drunk men react to her bikini.
Debby starts recruiting frustrated women from the crowd to undress in public, protest their oppression, and show their husbands they aren’t property. W.A.M. links arms and a fight breaks out. The cops are called and their Captain warns them to be gentle since the protesters are women. The raid begins and women are just straight up karate-chopping cops.
Jerry recognizes Jane and carries her out over his shoulder. Kitty, a Playboy employee of course, notices and follows them. Jerry sends Jane home in a taxi, but Kitty would like some answers. Jane returns home furious and calls her father to tell him she’s coming to visit him soon as she’s having some personal issues.
Jerry, returning to the station, encounters Lilah who needs his help. Apparently, she threw her back out doing sex work and told her boyfriend/pimp/promoter named Charlie, who hopes to turn her into a porn actress, that she couldn’t work due to her injury. He belted her, so she left. She wants Jerry to arrest her so she can have a place to stay for the night. Jerry takes her back to his apartment, gives her pajamas, and promises to help her find a day job.
Jerry finds a note Jane left explaining why she’s leaving the apartment as soon as possible. A grateful Lilah makes a move on Jerry but realizes he’s not interested.
The next morning, Jane’s father Dr. Horace Bowers, shows up at her apartment because he’s worried by last night’s emergency phone call. Meanwhile, at the hospital, Dr. Howard is making fun of the women of W.A.M.’s bodies in the news photos. Jane declares that she was there too and is surprised when her dad calls her from the apartment. Howard gives her the day off and they have this exchange:
– Howard, you’re still a louse. – Jane, one day, you’re going to come to your senses and appreciate me for the sweet, considerate, sexy man we both know I am.
Jane v. Howard
Back at the apartment, Papa Bowers encounters Lilah, who thinks he’s a john that Jerry sent her way. Instead, he fixes her back as he’s a chiropractor. Apparently, he thinks that Lilah is Jane’s roommate but is very surprised to discover that she’s an aspiring X-rated actress.
Meanwhile, Jerry finds out that Jane and her father are in the apartment. Then, Papa Bowers finds out that Jane and Jerry are roommates. Jane and Lilah proceed to talk in the kitchen while Jerry and Papa talk it out in the master bedroom. Then Kitty shows up. And Jerry proposes to Jane. And Wyatt shows up with Debby. And Kitty joins W.A.M. Finally, Jane runs away.
Wyatt expresses masochistic tendencies when Debby manhandles him. A new couple perhaps?
Jerry runs after Jane, announcing that he loves her even if he is a “masculine supremacist, sexually-bigoted, chest-beating, insensitive gorilla.” Ooops, the landlord found out they aren’t married. To be fair, he had already suspected after seeing Kitty and Wyatt around all the time.
Chasing her into the middle of the street, Jerry starts to kiss Jane. As she spouts women’s lib tenets, Jane is eventually silenced by Jerry’s embrace. The End.
NOW, this film is not what I’d call objectively bad, but it is most definitely not good. If anything, it’s competent at best (except for some sound inconsistencies). Here’s what I can say, Julie Newmar as the sex worker Lilah is fucking gold. That’s pretty much the only compliment I could give here. Plus, no white people sex jazz in earshot!
In execution, The Feminist and the Fuzz is corny, cheesy, and staggeringly dated. But on paper, Jesus Christ, it is borderline horrific. When plotted out in writing, every moment is completely stripped of any comedic or romantic intentions and just comes off as uncomfortable, from the portrayal of radical feminism and feminists to gender relations in general. What compounds the issue is the sense that the film thinks itself to be hip and up-to-date, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but either way, that’s a NO.
Well, that about does it. Tune in soon for more of that . . .
White People Sex Jazz 