The Velvet Trap (1966) Campy Exploitation Noir

West Coast Exploitation Noir from director Ken Kennedy.  It's a 1966 updated version of what can happen to a "wayward" girl or an independant women. Think of Stella in Fallen Angel (1945). The old double standard morality is quite touching.

Twenty-one years later.

The film opens with a shot of a night time highway. A truck looms up and we get to listen to an inside the cab conversation of the two drivers talking about the charms of a waitess at the truckstop up ahead.

You have your 20 something blond, hash slinger Julie (Jamie Karson), working out of some two lane blacktop roadside beanery. Julie is the star attraction. Truckers head to this lunch counter like ducks to water. Their favorite pastime, a nightly ritual, is feeding Julie change to drop in the juke box for them. When it lights up and plays her selections they all get a free show of Julie's ample assests, her waiterss uniform becomes quite transparent as she wiggles to the beat.

Drivers are not all she attracts.

Talking' about Julie

Julie (Jamie Karson)

money for the Juke Box

yowser!

Julie's free show

 Julie has a lecherous boss, and many road warrior admirers. She lives on site, in a flop room attached to the diner. Her boss has the room next door. He's a real creep, a drunk and a voyeur who spies on Julie through a peep hole he bored through in the wall.

The Boss

peeping

Julie is awakened by the ringing of the payphone out in the diner. It's a late night phone call from one of her most ardent admirers Brad Collins (Alan Jeffory) a "model" photographer. We think, man, he must have a serious case of "blue balls," he wants to get married to her in Vegas the very next day.

While all this conversation is going on her boss sneaks into Julie's room and hides in her closet. When she returns he attacks and rapes her.

rape!

I guess it's nothing that a hot bath can't cure

As if nothing happened, Julie is ready to go the next day as she and Brad drive over to Vegas to get hitched. Brad is also supposed to meet one of his models flying in for a Vegas photo shoot at the Stardust, so he is combining pleasure with a little business. When she doesn't show he tells Julie it's because she's sick.

Vegas bound

Stardust Casino shoot

However there wasn't any model at all its all a ruse for him to get Julie volunteer to pose for cheesecake. That night, their wedding night in the hotel, Brad takes nudie shots of an unsuspecting Julie while she takes a shower. The next morning Julie wakes up in an empty bed. Brad has cleaned out her purse and left her a note saying that it ain't working out. Nice guy.

With no money and stranded in Vegas, Julie pawns her wedding ring for $7. She auditions for a job at a casino and in the process gets her clothes ripped off and is almost raped again. She has her purse with the rest of her belongings things stolen, and is offered a ride back to California by a "good" Samaritan who turns out to be in the white slave trade. He hauls her off to a bordello.

Of course, just when you think it can't get any worse for soiled dove Julie, her first trick
at the whorehouse drops dead on top of her. She freaks out predictably, and it all spirals right into a dead end in Noirsville

Noirsville

The Velvet Trap whorehouse, no expenses spared, cinder blocks and velvet curtain decore 

Casino audition is a bust

the white slaver

Julie's first trick

the recently bedded

dead in the saddle

Freaked

This is probably the most iconic shot in the film..... Bravo!

By today's rating standards the film is quite tame, there's a bit of T&A, and some of the Las Vegas locations shots circa 1965 are interesting, but most of the interior sets are all pretty low budget cheap. The Velvet Trap, I guess, alludes to the Nevada whorehouse presided over by an ex silent film star madam, that seems to have all the rooms hung with log velvet curtains. The acting is uneven and at times amateurish, but there are occasional set piece shots that are quite powerful and do really work (see above).

Even though Five & Dime pulp fiction book racks of the day were full of this type of sleazier subject matter, studio Hollywood wasn't gonna touch it straight on even with the demise of the code, they always teased their audiences peripherally. It was the Hollywood outsiders who put these films together, occasionally they'd get actually to the A List in later careers, director Kennedy made The Legend of Grizzly Adams (1990) BTW, but most would never get a foot in the door and sink into the obscurity of straight porn production. Cinematography was by Elmer Hohnber, Don McIntosh, and Ray Dennis Steckler (director of The Thrill Killers (1964)). An interesting Noir artifact worth a view, 5-6/10.