Unambitious in the extreme in terms of plot, TEENAGE COUSINS is theoretically little to write home about; thankfully, the filmmakers still seem concerned with making it interesting, demonstrating how much difference a little care makes in terms of churning out anonymous one-day wonders.

Reminding me of Richard Mailer's similarly slapdash INNOCENT GIRL, which I had the non-excitement of watching recently, COUSINS concerns a similar set-up: big city girl's cousin Helen has come to visit from out of town, but gets sidelined upon arrival, ending up in the apartment of smooth-talker Rudy, who's more than willing to take advantage of her naivete to gain an easy lay. With Helen ending up loving it, she beds down there, continuing to ball Rudy and, eventually, his landlord, Mr. Goldfarb (Bobby Astyr, once again leaning heavily into schtick and playing an *extremely* exaggerated stereotype). When Helen finally stops screwing around long enough to call her sister, she and her handsome boyfriend George rush over to collect her, instigating a sexual free-for-all for everyone.

Impressively, COUSINS actually has even *less* plot than the aforementioned Mailer film, which ended up with its naïve newcomer sidelined into a prostitution ring. Here, nothing really happens: Helen just comes to the city and shacks up with a stranger, with the two sharing three repetitive sex scenes in succession (Astyr drops in on the third to liven things up). Cutaways to George and his girlfriend (I didn't catch her name) alternately looking for Helen and having sex add little to the proceedings. What does keep things interesting is some unusually engaged editing, as well as a soundtrack of wall-to-wall '60s and '70s top artists: The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, The Allman Brothers Band, Focus, The Grateful Dead, and more. Stolen music has always been a secret arrow in the quiver of low-rent '70s porn, and COUSINS shows how to do it right, combining great tunes with solid photography and editing to craft engaging sex scenes that keep the film rolling instead of bogging it down. If you're going to keep your ambitions low, the least you can do is not be boring, and COUSINS manages to pull that off with aplomb, making a silk(ish) purse out of the sow's ear from its non-starter of a story.

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Teenage Cousins

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