Sarah T. - Portrait Of A Teenage Alcoholic

If "Reefer Madness" and an "After School Special" laid a blanket in the back of a VW bus, turned on the 8-track player and let the mood get real groovy, they'd eventually produce "Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic."

There's so much to savor in this delightful piece of propaganda porn, starting with Linda Blair, fresh off of her Academy Award-nominated performance as a child possessed by Satan in "The Exorcist." The buzz around the young actress, and the shocking, graphic material she portrayed in William Friedkin's acclaimed horror film made film execs see dollar signs. They saw Blair's career heading toward into "relevant" television – essentially fictive stories "ripped from the headlines" and filled with controversial material "never before seen on TV," bald-faced exploitation that ends with an uplifting message. Blair's first made–for-television movie after "The Exorcist" was about an abused juvenile delinquent who is sent into a reformatory/women's prison. Then came "Sarah T."

The film begins with a beer commercial – attractive, young people playing sports, enjoying life and drinking cans of something that looks like Budweiser. Then it moves into a series of black and white stills, shadowed over by a voice-of-God announcer listing a series of unsubstantiated statistics about the rates of teenage alcoholism – a documentary-like beginning intended to establish some credibility.

Sarah (Blair) is a desperately shy wallflower who longs to be in her school's glee club but can barely manage the courage to audition. She lives in the wake of her beautiful older sister (Laurette Spang) and comes from a broken home where her father (Larry Hagman), mother (Verna Bloom) and stepfather (William Daniels) are all cultured drinkers.

After an attractive boy, Ken (Mark Hamill), takes her to a party and lets her have a drink, Sarah transforms. The magic hooch suddenly makes her charming, popular at school and a far-out singer. When she was sober, Ken had no interest in Sarah, but after a night of drunken debauchery, he asks her to join him at his ranch. (You'd become a booze-freak too if it led to hopping on horseback with Luke Skywalker.)

A couple of new interviews on this Blu-ray, including one with Linda Blair and another one with the director Richard Donner and the producer David Levinson, reveal how seriously the filmmakers took their subject. Donner even attests to the real experience he had seeing a 10 year-old alcoholic at an AA meeting. This scene shows up in the film, and it's one of the moments that encourages Sarah to seek help.

No doubt that AA meeting was based in reality, but the child in the scene is so precocious and his dialogue is so unrealistic the moment is far from profound. "Sarah T." however is lush with authentic with period costumes, d�cor, hairstyles and idioms, all magnified by the lurid subject matter. The performance by some of our favorite TV actors, particularly Daniels and Hagman, are a joy to watch. (Hagman, in fact, has some moments that are so authentic they very nearly rise above the script. This was one of his first substantial dramatic roles – after "I Dream of Genie" and before "Dallas.") The whole experience is quite satisfying, a bit of vintage kitsch for connoisseurs of camp.

"Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic"
Blu-ray $29.95
shoutfactory.com/