Heatwave movies: I want to see "Cycle Sluts" ....

"I suppose all the guys you pick up are air-conditioned"!

Yes, its a return visit to THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT, that 1970 treat that drove us (my pal Stanley and I) delirious at the time, with all those quotable lines. Barbra Streisand and George Segal certainly had their finger on the pulse then .... It was such a treat to see Barbra in her first modern role, as Doris Wilgus the prostitute whom Segal gets evicted from her apartment so she turns up on his doorstep - boy, is his day and night going to get a whole lot worse .... It was a hit play of course. Segal is nerdy Felix Sherman, as our mis-matched couple, fight, yell, and finally get close.

Can a bickering odd couple in Manhattan become friends and maybe more? Owlish Felix is an unpublished writer who vents his frustration by reporting to the super that the woman in a neighboring flat takes the occasional payment for sex. She's Doris, more wildcat than pussycat, and when Felix's peeping-tom-tattle-tale routine gets her bounced from her apartment, she knocks at his door at 3 AM, aggressive and ticked off. They yell, lose another apartment, and pick up where they left off in a friend's flat and beyond. Dancing by the light of the moon seems unlikely for this owl and pussycat. "You had a bad day? I lost my job, I didn't get paid, I got thrown out of my room, I got nowhere to go, it's raining and I'm stuck in a crummy room with a pervert!"

Along the way we take in Doris's porno movie CYCLE SLUTS ("I want to see Cycle Sluts", "overcoat"?, "no", "wanna hire one"?) or ("Take that cycle slut into the room", "not the room", "yes, the room", "take that, you cycle slut"); ("What's that thing?...and what's that other thing?") ("You can't put that there!" . ."Maybe you can!")

Its certainly one to love, virtually a two-hander, as our mis-matched couple grow to like each other, with that climax in Central Park., as Pauline Kael put it: "Were Hepburn & Tracy this good? Maybe, but not better"!.Directed by Herbert Ross (one of his better outings), with script by Buck Henry from Bill Manhoff's play.The humour is very 1970s as Doris accuses Felix of being a fag and teases him mercilessly; its funny too when they are stoned in the tub (below) as the owners return ...