Rated: NR    Runtime: 85 mins.
Stanley Brassloff | USA 1972 | 85mins. | 35mm print

courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive

One of the most revered exploitation films of the 70s among true trash connoisseurs, Stanley Brassloff’s Toys Are Not For Children is a thoroughly demented Electra-complex tale with plenty of meat and no morals to speak of. Jamie is a teenage girl who idolizes her absentee father (who her grouchy mother frequently refers to as lecherous scum) and stays emotionally stunted in childhood as a result. Her affection for toys is considered “unnatural”, but it isn’t half as unnatural as her creepy longing for her own father. When she meets an aging prostitute named Pearl, who she suspects is an acquaintance of her estranged father, Jamie finds herself attracted to this seedy lifestyle and becomes a prostitute herself, specializing in older johns who like it when girls call them “daddy” while she awaits the long-anticipated reunion. Truly one of the most unnerving, squirm-inducing experiences you will ever have in a theatre.