Dark Force Entertainment Restores Director Gerri Sedley's Teenage Hitchhikers For Blu-ray Release On May 12

Dark Force Entertainment, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a new film transfer (from the original uncut 35mm camera negative) of director Gerri Sedley’s 1975 sexsploitation classic, Teenage Hitchhikers, ready for a Blu-ray push on May 12.

Starring Last House on the Left’s Sandra Peabody as “Bird” and Chris Jordan as “Mouse,” (aka: Kathie Christopher; aka: Kathy Everett — The Clamdigger's Daughter, Deep Throat Part II, etc.), this road trip exploitation film hit theatres in the Southern California area during early December of 1975 as a double-feature teamed with writer/director Anton Holden’s Teenage Tramp. 

You sort of get the picture who the target audience was for Teenage Hitchhikers back in the mid-1970s.  You have to remember that Deep Throat had become mainstream by this time, so filmmakers working the exploitation market could safely hit the “R-rated” sweet spot with material that just a few years earlier would have saddled them with an “X-rating.”  

A great example, is director Frank Perry’s 1969 film adaptation of the Evan Hunter novel, Last Summer, starring Barbara Hershey, Richard Thomas, Bruce Davison and the late Catherine Burns.   Allied Artists saw the film saddled with an X-rating … R, maybe, but by today’s standards Last Summer would be PG-13.

So by 1974/1975 the old “smokers” and sexploitation films of the ‘50s and ‘60s had gone mainstream with a wide range of viewing choices — Trip With the Teacher, Massage Parlor Wife, The Sister-in-Law, Pom-Pom Girl, Blazing Stewardesses, etc. etc.   Throw in the blaxsploitation and chopsocky flicks and you can easily see that the 1970s were a golden era for cinema … the arrival of VHS would fracture the market and give rise to the “Direct to Video” film market (but that’s another story).

In Teenage Hitchhikers, we have two sweet young things (Bird and Mouse), for reasons of their own, who decide to hit the open road … and have adventures, often related to sexual encounters and “gentlemen” looking to take advantage of them.   

The pair more than hold their own and pick up another traveling companion along the way, Jennie (Nikki Lynn; aka: Jenny Lane — Sexteen, Barbie's Fantasy), which brings them to the “morning after” — after an all-night sexy orgy — to find that they are right back where they started and … ready for more adventures.

Bonus goodies for this Blu-ray edition of Teenage Hitchhikers from Dark Force Entertainment include commentary from Bill La Mond, the director of photography (he would go on to be a producer and writer, with the Hotel television series — with James Brolin and Connie Sellecca — being among his producer credits) and newly-prepared video session with director Gerri Sedley (aka: Claude Goddard — Teenage Step-mother, Barbie's Fantasy, Winter Heat).