Private Property (1960)

This sizzling erotic melodrama with psychological overtones introduces Duke (Corey Allen), a handsome, intelligent, but savage and predatory, beatnik, and Boots (Warren Oates), his dim-witted buddy – who Duke taunts about his sexual inexperience. The seedy pair live by petty chiselling.

Ann (Kate Manx), the attractive blonde love-starved wife of insurance agent Roger Carlyle (Robert Wark), catches their interest and they trail her to her expensive home in the Los Angeles hills, holing up in a vacant house next door and watching her swimming naked in her pool.

Posing as a gardener, Duke calls on Ann – who switches from a bathing suit to capri pants to negligees – and woos her, intending to hand her over to Boots.

Ann (who they refer to as “the pink twitch”) eventually falls for Duke, who now desires her for himself, but Boots produces a knife and intervenes.

Boots is unable to take advantage of the situation but threatens Ann if she tells Duke. Meanwhile, Duke – thinking Boots has raped Ann – fights and kills him before turning on Ann.

Roger makes a timely appearance and there is a struggle between the two men. During the scrap, Ann shoots Duke dead.

Kate Manx (the wife of writer/director Leslie Stevens) is tantalising as the nympho Ann, Corey Allen contributes a fascinating study in evil as the cunning and depraved Duke, and Warren Oates is equally effective as Boots.

Private Property was made with a budget of just $60,000 and shot in and around Leslie Stevens’ own home.

Kate Manx died in November 1964 from an overdose of sleeping pills. She was just 34.

Ann Carlyle
Kate Manx
Duke
Corey Allen
Boots
Warren Oates
Ed Hogate
Jerome Cowan
Roger Carlyle
Robert Wark
Robbery Victim
Jules Maitland

Director
Leslie Stevens

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