User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** Brutally honest and uncompromising, minus any political correctness, look at middle, if not the entire country, America in the mid 1950's that takes place in the little town of Freedom Kansas. Spinster and dedicated high school Latin teacher Miss Evelyn Wyckoff, Anne Heywood, is going through a mid-life crisis in that she's pushing 40 and is still a virgin. With her hormones starting to kick in and feeling that she's missing out in her never having a sexual affair, married or not, with a member of the opposite sex Evelyn seeks help from her gynecologist Dr. Neal, Robert Vaughn. Seeing that her problems are mental as well as psychical Dr. Neal recommends that she sees a psychiatrist that he know in Wichita Dr. Steiner, Donald Plesence, who specializes in sexual matters for help in what's bothering her.

Told by a very interested and probing into her sex, or non sex, life Dr. Steiner, whom you can see really enjoys doing his job, that all she really needs is a dose of O'l fashion style "Good Lovin" from a man to get her back on track. Evelyn soon finds that man in the bus driver Ed Eckles, Earl Holliman, on the Freedom to Wichita route who as she so sadly later finds out is married! As things soon turn out just as the two start getting it on and about to go study Ed checked out on both his wife and young daughter as well as Evelyn leaving her high and dry without a male companion.

It's when Evelyn is at her lowest point that the African American high school student and part time janitor who's also the star halfback on the school's football team Rafe Collins, John Lafayette, sensing just how desperate Evelyn is makes a play for her and it has nothing at all to do with football. At first resisting Rafe's crude sexually explicate and in her face advances Evelyn later finds herself trapped after school hours in her own classroom where he brutally ends up raping her. Suffering from what was later in the 1970's to be described as "Stockholm Syndrome" or the love of one's abuser Evelyn continues her affair with a very abusive Rafe that is to end in a total disaster for her! That's when the two are caught, doing it over a steaming radiator, in the act by two students assigned to mop up her classroom!

Disgraced humiliated and shunned by everyone in town even her best friend and fellow teacher Beth, Carolyn Jones, there's nothing left for Evelyn to do but leave town and find a new teaching job where no one knows her and what she was involved in. It was a sad ending for a really crazy mixed up woman Evelyn Wyckoff who looked for love in all the wrong places, among her students and philandering bus drivers, and finding nothing but suffering, both emotionally and psychically, in its place.

You can find a lot of things shocking in "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff" in how it depicts racial relations back in 1954 America and how a desperate and emotionally unbalanced woman like Miss Wyckoff who was as open minded and liberal as they come, back in those Cold War segregation and McCarthyite years, having her both social and political feelings tested to their absolute limits. Yet it's hard to fault the film by it being so openly as well as brutally honest about that explosive subject matter that would now be avoided by practically all the Hollywood film studios. And with the film not at all trying to cop out by putting or injecting into it's screenplay 25 year in advance politically correct ideas to make it acceptable to those of us watching it.

This movie makes uneasy viewing for some streteches. The audienced is exposed to long scenes of really unpleasant sexual intercourse. They are camp but typical for the era (I was reminded of "Coming Home", released a year earlier which features a very long sex scene, showing that a tetraplegic can also supply orgasms). OK, the intention is to make a point there but this is an instant in which graphic detail is used in a wrong and misleading way.

The title character is a teacher of good social standing, a woman with an opinion, moral principles and with guts. But she is sexualy repressed. Following a recommendation she sees a shrink and responds well to the "treatment". Then she is the victim of a brutal rape. Just a she is "opening up", the door is forced. Unfortunately this dramatic event does not tie in well with the earlier story. Rather surprisingly, the title character loses all sense of reason and duty and does not report the incident but lets herself be bullied around and humiliated by the perpetrator. The inevitable consequences ensue and lead to a decent ending.

It ist not a bad melodrama - as a matter of fact the story would have been perfect for a director like Douglas Sirk. I wonder what he would have done with the material and the same actors. (Incidentally, Dolores Malone has a small part - she was always great in every performance)

There is no "Good Morning Miss Dove", no cheers for Miss Bishop, and no warning that a newcomer is going up the down staircase. There is lust, there is violence, there is racial hatred and there's the resentment in a society against one supposedly betraying an entire race.

This is indeed not an easy film to like with a leading character (Anne Heywood) so troubled and a supporting character (John Lafayette) so vile in his obsession is that getting through it is a miracle in itself. Heywood plays a 40+ year old virgin, subject to embarrassing questions by therapist Donald Pleasance, nosy inquiries by fellow teachers (which include Carolyn Jones, Doris Roberts and Dorothy Malone) and passive/aggressive understanding by principal Dana Elcar.

The only ones seemingly understanding of her are truck driver Earl holliman (only briefly seen) and psychiatrist Robert Vaughn. This covers a few years of Heywood's life as a teacher, having struggled to help integrate the school, and paying for it with the obsessive love of Lafayette who exposes himself to her one day and rapes her brutally the next. She can't get over the feeling of the physical neediness and before long, they are having an affair that reveals her innermost thoughts, his hatred towards all humanity (even questioning her in her sincerity for her assistance in obtaining equal rights), and the bigotry of the mid-1950's, particularly in the midwest where this is set.

This is very racy for a film of the late 1970s, showing Lafayette fondling himself blatantly and later on exposing his naked body completely as he orders her to crawl to him. His character is violently hateful one moment and tenderly loving in the next, having taking her kindness a bit too far when it developed feelings for her. The scene where they are caught is truly horrifying, and the aftermath shows humanity at its lowest form, especially as her so-called friends turn against her.

However, in spite of its harshness, it shows the world in a way we wish we would never have to face, and the bravery in that is impressive. I can see the writing of William Inge (an apparent unpublished story) and the desire to film it. But it is obvious that this would never have a mainstream release, and obviously, it was too racy for television in the pre-cabpe era. Heywood and Lafayette are amazingly realistic in their performances which makes this film all the more disturbing.

Anne Heywood plays a schoolteacher who is slowly going insane (literally) because she has never had sex (!). A doctor tells her, "Nature intended us to use our bodies---if we don't, they dry up!" Shortly afterwards, she is brutally raped by a "grinning black thug", a character who seems to have walked right out of a racist Ku Klux Klan brochure. Instead of calling the cops, she starts a lurid sexual affair with her attacker, and in the end, she is run out of town by the local rednecks.

The film is "politically incorrect", borderline racist, and morally reprehensible, BUT having said that, the film actually is somewhat engrossing and compelling on that level, just as long as you know what you are getting into before you watch it. Okay? "Name" actors appear in cameos, and they probably didn't know the details of the film. Supposedly based on a story by William Inge---I wonder how faithful it is?

#spoilers In 1956, a Jr. College instructor has emotional problems. Her doctor says she needs a psychiatrist and to get laid.

The 40-year-old virgin starts seeing a psychiatrist and to live a little. Her plans fall through, however.

At work, an insolent 24-year-old Black work/study student rapes her. In 1956, she would be equally if not more blamed. After she doesn't report the rape, he demands more sex. She finds she likes it.

The story proceeds as expected. They are discovered and she is forced to leave town.

The student loses part of his scholarship, but will be forgiven after his next touchdown.

Contains explicit scenes and concerns an uncomfortable subject.

When I read some reviews on here, I think to myself, did we actually see the same movie?

Perhaps this is "Politically Incorrect by Today's Standards", and to that I reply, well the setting is 1954 and this is a fresh Brown v. Board of Education instillation what else is it supposed to be? Are we supposed to scrub it up to a sanitized effort so the newer generation can feel safe?

If one is needing to make it more clear how else do you show the obvious backlash that can and did occur in that time with racial desegregation in schools?

While I won't go into a rehash of what has been said here on plot points, all I can say is watch the film and ask yourself, where did the character start and where did she end?

I found the story to be uplifting and despite the harsh reality of those times and her poor judgment (in continuing the "relationship" at least in that setting!), the facts are that she is a more confident person and has looked possible death in the eye and spit it out in all its glory. If you checked out before the last few moments of the film, shame on you. They even gave a warning at the beginning of the film!

I wish more films were like this: unapologetic and raw and most of all honest in their delivery. Anne Heywood no doubt got some hell for her excellent performance and that is a shame indeed.

To call her looking for love or to even pass it off as some simplistic sex is to miss the point. Shouldn't great character have dimension and not be explained away in some cookie cutter Hollywood formula?

This is a great film, and while it has been correctly labeled as a melodrama, it is in many ways an understatement to pass it off as one of many of its kind. The emotional core is what made this film impact me the way it did, and I felt a duty to defend it as being not just any old melodrama, but the best of its kind.