This week the roundtable takes a look at what may be the most shameful movie ever — TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN.

In a nutshell, TOYS is the story of a sexually confused young women who will do virtually anything to attract the love of her father. This 1973 masterpiece is available from Something Weird Video as a double feature packaged with THE TOY BOX.

You will be shocked by this film.

Stewart: TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN depicts the slow transformation of woman-child Jamie Godard (Marcia Forbes) from toy-playing innocent to man-laying miscreant. She harbors a massive Electra complex due to the physiological torment of her parents’ breakup and the ensuing years of motherly verbal abuse and fatherly neglect. To cope with the tragedy Jamie fixates on her toys thinking back to the joy they brought her as a little girl playing with her father.

While working at the local toy shop she meets Pearl (Evelyn Kingsley) a working girl who turns tricks out of her apartment with pimp Carlos (Luis Arroyo). Once Jamie realizes that Pearl knows her father (intimately, of course) she decides to join Carlos and Pearl and transform herself into the type of girl daddy would want — much to the chagrin of her neglected husband Charlie (Harlan Cary Poe). Imagine Jamie’s excitement to hear Pearl has set up a date with daddy!

OK. Just when I think I’ve seen something so foul I’ll never recover from the shock, along comes TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN — in some ways the most shameful thing I’ve seen at the House of Shame.

I don’t even know where to begin. The acting? The story? The editing? A little help gentlemen…

Andy: I’m not going to agree that this is the MOST shameful thing we’ve seen, but it WAS constantly unsettling, and eventually, very sad.

The movie opened with Jamie masturbating with her favorite toy and moaning “Daddy” over and over. I think we were all speechless in regards to the orifice of depravity we had just entered. After an intense scolding from her mother, in fairly rapid fashion, we are at Jamie’s wedding with soon-to-be-emasculated hubby Charlie. Immediately we’re confronted with the prospect that Jamie is about to lose her virginity - not a pleasant concept under any circumstances, made all the more bothersome by the fact we are privy to witness the awkward advances of her husband as he attempts to consummate the union. We cringe further when the critical, harsh words of Jamie’s mother echo through her consciousness, and she, completing the circle, repeats them to her husband to stave off his advances.

When we finally witness the defloweration, compliments of Carlos the Pimp, it’s equally disgusting. It soon becomes obvious that her motive is to become a prostitute to meet (and presumably, please) her father, who turned to working girls apparently after constant rebuffs from his wife.

Bill, I think you mentioned it last night, that the final shot of the movie represents Jamie as a doll - her expression is pale, her contorted pose, locked. She’s not just a doll, she’s a toy that’s been stripped of it’s clothing and discarded into a corner, which is what children do when they tire of something. But unlike Jamie’s toys, which she treasured through her youth and into adulthood, Jamie herself hasn’t been treasured at all by those who should have cared for her. Namely, her mother.

Shameful yes, but I found the whole exercise very, very tragic. There is very little nudity and no profanity that I remembered. But what a disturbing experience!

I appreciate that TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN doesn’t necessarily blame Jamie’s father for her condition. We never see any evidence of abuse, just that of a loving father figure married to a difficult woman. However, I wouldn’t exonerate him completely. The movie is told in flashback from Jamie’s perspective, so there is the possibility for repression. But if we read the film by the narrative that was presented, it’s a strong indictment of matronly abuse. Very unusual, and refreshing.

Stewart: The visual style of this film suits the subject matter perfectly. Harsh lighting and deep shadows ricochet off the actors faces enhancing their turmoil. The spaces are tight and claustrophobic, limiting the motion of the camera and making us feel trapped. We’re forced to take in this family’s nightmarish situation.

The age of Jamie’s innocence is questionable. She appears to be a woman yet wears childish dresses and has a jet-black china doll hair cut. But she thinks like a child and knows little about society or the world outside of her mother’s “dollhouse.” She’s 20 though. Was she never in school? Did these conflicts not surface until now? In a way the holes of the story work like the holes in the memory of our own childhood: A flash of familiarity here, a flash of recognition there. But we’re never allowed a perfect unobstructed view of the past. This idea most obviously pertains to the editing. Matched shots from different times convey the firing of Jamie’s synapses as she under goes the stress of an argument or terror of a rape. It’s brilliant really.

Charlie’s perpetual worry is burned into his skin which makes him look very much like the scarred RETURN OF THE JEDI-era Mark Hamill. This seems funny at first but a brief consideration of the incestuous subtext between Luke and Leia in the STAR WARS saga adds another thin layer of sleaze, however coincidental to TOYS.

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