freakboy on film: TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE (1970)

Long before I hustled down 42nd Street with Andy Milligan…

Way before I tripped beyond my dreaming with Russ Meyer…

Years before I became a hair-hopper with John Waters…

There was Edward D. Wood Jr, more affectionately known as Ed Wood.  

I was a kid when I first heard of Ed Wood and it wasn’t long before I was reveling in his magnum opus PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1957).  It was love at first Criswell and I eventually experienced more of his other films, including GLEN OR GLENDA (1953).  His weirdly backwards, yet way ahead of it’s time, tale of gender reassignment and transvestitism clicked in my young queer mind and is still a personal favorite.  

Honestly, I had never heard of TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE until this year.  My love of Wood mainly centered around his early horror and crime stuff.  His later sexploitation flicks never interested me, but then I stumbled upon TRADE on the Vinegar Syndrome website.  Sadly, the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack was out of stock and it was nowhere to be found on Amazon or even eBay, which shocked me.  All I could turn up on eBay was a Something Weird Video VHS of outtakes from the film, but more about that later.  A Google “shopping” search located a reasonably priced copy at Forbidden Planet in NYC.  I ordered it on a Friday and it arrived the following Monday.  This was using the cheapest shipping method, so I was very satisfied with Forbidden Planet.  However, a question remains…

Was I satisfied with TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE? 

Well…yes and no.  

On one side, the threadbare plot about a snooty couple hiring Mac McGregor, private investigator, to find their 20 year-old daughter Shirley is just an excuse to show T & A…& V.  The inept and beyond sketchy private eye  uses the case to literally travel around the world ogling naked women as they walk up and down a staircase, play pool and basically engage in soft-core porn.  In other words, TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE is definitely aimed for a hetero-centric male audience…

…or is it? 

On the flip side, when the film is focused on the actual plot, we are introduced to LGBTQ+ characters that, for a 1970’s skin-flick, seem revolutionary…and I am not talking about the prerequisite lesbian sex scenes.  After P.I. Mac McGregor roughs up Sleazy Maisie Rumpledinck, a drug addicted hooker who could have escaped from a John Waters film, she tells him Shirley is with “that drag queen Alecia.” 

Well, that drag queen is played by Ed Wood himself and it’s a glorious moment.  Dressed in orange angora  and a green miniskirt, with long white go-go boots, and topped with a blond wig, Alecia snaps, crackles and pops in a tragically brief scene.  It’s easy to see that Ed is having a good time here, which is why this scene is awesome!  I just wish Alecia would’ve been the main character or at least got a spin-off film, but it was 1970.  Anyhoo, the private dick roughs her up a bit and she reveals  Shirley took off with Paul and Henry, two “nice boys.”

After an extended montage of naked staircase walking and billiards, we finally meet Paul and Henry.  These “nice boys” have been married for two years and they have a “house-mother” who picks up tricks for them.  Paul and Henry blur the lines between gender and traditional marriage roles, which make them a joy to watch.  Surprisingly, Mac McGregor doesn’t rough them up for information.  Instead, the P.I. questions their “house-mother” Ruth in her bedroom, if you know what I mean. 

Does the private investigator find the missing Shirley?  Will her snobbish parents pay up?  Will the title make sense by the end?  Does it matter since the plot is secondary?  I am not going to spoil you with answers, even though this may not be the easiest film to find.

Despite the differences from his earlier work, TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE is very much written and directed by Ed Wood.  First, take insane dialogue.  “Show me a person, man or woman, who can say sex doesn’t enter their minds more than they care to admit and I’ll show you a dead human.”  Mix this with debatable acting.  Ed Wood is easily the best actor in the bunch, which probably says a lot.  Finally add some crazy visuals.  What appears to be indoor lightning suddenly flashes before a set of curtains in one scene.  Then a woman walks by a painting while holding an umbrella in another.  Both scenes are repeated throughout the film, leaving the viewer wondering what it all means.  Only the late Ed Wood knows for certain, but the random nonsense enhances the film.  

According to the audio commentary and the liner notes, TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE was maybe or maybe not shown in one theater back in 1970 before disappearing into the filmic ether.  Then, in the 1990’s, Something Weird Video unearthed over an hour of silent outtakes and released it on VHS.  This footage is included on the Blu-ray, and it’s an interesting historical document with an eye-popping scene or two.  Thankfully one print of the film was discovered and released by American Genre Film Archive & Something Weird Video.  From my understanding, actor/stuntman Ray “Crash” Corrigan had been sitting on the print all this time.  If anything, it gives me hope that Andy Milligan’s lost films will one day be found. 

In conclusion, I am left with mixed feelings.  When focused on its plot, TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE is brilliant and brilliantly absurd, but the sexploitation scenes quickly become boring and repetitive.  So, I recommend TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE with a suggestion.  

Don’t hesitate to hit the Fast-Forward ⏩ button. 

(Click here for IMDb’s shockingly incomplete cast list) 

Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words. 

Freak Out,

JLH 

P.S.  TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE was the first place winner in a Twitter poll I conducted to decide which film I should review now that my blog serial is over.  

So click the pic ⤵️ for the second place winner…

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Click the pic ⤵️ to read my blog serial…