Search - The Harrad Experiment (Edited Version) on DVD

Classic(?) 70's Moives---Buy At Your Own Risk

The Pinto Kid | New York | 04/25/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I bought this a few years ago because I wanted to see two of the three movies(Born to Lose, and The Harrad Experiment)and I though that with Sissy Spacek, how bad of a movie could Katherine be ?
Well, Robert Deniro stars in Born To Lose(for about five minutes playing cop number two).
If you like George Seagal, then this is a decent movie-Segal give a good performance as a down on his luck drug addict who's caught betweeen the cops and the dealer that he ripped off.
Katherine seems to be a kind of retelling of the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga(sort of).(Henry Winkler(in a really early roll) and Art Carney(I guess the rent was due)also star-To be honest I was bored after 10 minutes and went ahead to --
The Harrad Experiment--Don Johnson stars as a student in the first Co-ed dorm at Harrad College-again to be honest although I like this movie,the print was so bad(jumps,fading colors) that I couldn't really enjoy the movie.(Tippi Hedren and James Whitmore also star).
So there you have it ,three movies with one decent print(Born to Lose).Buy at your own risk."

A Very Bad Experiment

H. F. Corbin | ATLANTA, GA USA | 01/26/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Harrad Collge is where students go to experience sexual freedom, have roommates of the opposite sex, have co-ed classes in naked yoga, etc., etc., etc. The best thing about the movie is the college campus where the action takes place. It is quite inviting and lovely. On the other hand, the acting is amateurish, the cinemaphotography leaves much to be desired, much of the dialogue will make you laugh-- the four letter words are bleeped out to protect the viewer-- for all the wrong reasons. At the end of the movie someone sings something about "it is not over," but the credits rolled; and thank goodness, it was over.

Nobody has a right to make such a bad movie."

Ignore Reviews NOT Pertaining to this 3-Movie 1-DVD Release

Gift Card Recipient | Santa Barbara, CA | 04/01/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"HARRAD EXPERIMENT - IMDB says the running time is 97 minutes ... this version runs @1:28 or @88 minutes - are there 9 minutes excised from this film? I did not see the original so i can't tell. I can tell you there is plenty of nudity (no male frontal other than some long shots - so was that what was cut?) but plenty of female nudity as it should be - otherwise, a movie about a free love college makes very little sense without some nudity. The end credits are a little choppy and there are some segments where the editing seems jerky - clearly they did not remaster from a pristine negative ... it looks like a grindhouse print unspooling at a $1 theater ... so, most likely this version lost some running time just from putting the reels together which that explains away a few minutes of the difference in running time. IMDB lists the UK running time at 91 minutes so then only 2-minutes are lost if this is the UK print - which means a few seconds here and there because of the jerky cuts-splices and maybe the loss of the lead actor's frontal nudity? The story seems pretty complete - not exactly great storytelling but the women are attractive and the nudity copious - plus Tippi Hendren in a bra standing out in a field. An interesting period piece - worthwhile for a look.

The other two films don't amount to much - GEORGE SEGAL and KAREN BLACK are in BORN TO WIN. Another gritty urban film of the early 1970's ... for those who know NY well, it's fun to see the mean & dirty streets of NYC 40 years ago but other than that, not much to the film.

KATHERINE - the Sissy Spacek movie is not very interesting plus they made her up like a guy so - guess they figured her character was so ugly, they had to make her so?

But $6 for three films and probably the only (mostly?) unedited version of the Harrad Experiment floating around makes it worthwhile. For NYers, it's an amusing travelogue back in time in BORN TO WIN. And while KATHERINE is ultimately not much of anything, you do get to see a lot of young actors we all know from their future work so good casting for a not so great project.

None of the three films are remastered - they seem to be transferred from random working prints but then none of these films are lost classics and it's much better to view them imperfectly for $2 a movie ... so a solid deal for film fans.

Make sure the other reviews you are reading refer to THIS 3-movie DVD edition and not some other. The reviews collected here seem to be a hodge podge of releases"

Echo Bridge's DVD of "The Harrad Experiment" Seems to Be Amo

C.-P. Gerald Parker | Abitibi region of Québec | 01/03/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This DVD edition from Echo Bridge Discs of the sexy 1970s classic, "The Harrad Experiment" is one to pass over in making a choice of which edition to acquire of this legendary film. (Another in a collection of three films, "Classic 70s Movies", however, would be a good choice for the sake of its surprisingly high quotient of the film's nudity.) Almost all issues of "The Harrad Experiment" on the various DVD and VHS releases of "The Harrad Experiment" have censored out, albeit to varying extent, far too much of the striking nudity of the film's actors (their frequent nakedness being essential ingredient to the movie's story and to the success of this film). Some of the actors were quite beautiful guys and gals and the film intended to show them in the full glory of their memorably naked youthfulness. In this case, even the DVD's front picture of Don Johnson is all wrong. Johnson in the photo (or drawing from one) is older, albeit still handsome, than he was at the time that "The Harrad Experiment" was filmed, when Don Johnson was the gorgeously androgynous teen (or "twenty something"), sweetly lovely, ruby-lipped, and delectably smooth, with silkily wavy hair, of that time of his glamourous life. The other sexually coupled characters, and the actors who play them, are well suited, dressed or buck-naked, to their respective roles.

Regarding that irksome matter, of moments of nakedness having been excised from almost all of the commercial VHS and DVD editions of "The Harrad Experiment", which prevents the home viewer from seeing Don Johnson and the other actors in the most graphic full frontal nudity in the film, the Internet Movie Database (as accessed on 29.XII.2009) states that "[t]he late-1980s Wizard Video version contains the film completely uncut and unedited. This is the only version like this known to exist on video." Just try finding nowadays that elusive videotape (if you would like to undertake an exercise in frustration), on that label which so long ago went out-of-business!

The film, like the novel of the same title by Robert H. Rimmer, reflects the values of those years (1960s and early 1970s), when students yielded to the desires which youthful temptations stirred up in their loins and hearts. Alas, the results of those yearnings and of yielding to such longings through recklessly fornicating promiscuity, often led to tarnished and barren lives in later adulthood and to loneliness in the subsequent years of advancing age, but the novel, and the two films based on it (this one and its sequel, variously titled "Harrad Summer" or "Love All Summer"), retain the glow of the youthful aspirations and of the sensual abandon of the so-called "Sexual Revolution" of those two decades. Two Amazon stars here for this edition of "The Harrad Experiment", since the film is just too unbeatably good (and quite touching), even so treacherously censored, to rate a single star in almost any edition, but, really, isn't it time to release widely an uncensored DVD edition of this classic?"