Duke and Boots, two young thugs, hold up a California gas-station owner. Duke, viral and savage, taunts the slower and psychologically-confused Boots because he has never made a sexual conquest. Duke offers to seduce a woman for Boots and the pair force a passing motorist to pursue a sports car driven by Ann Carlyle, the lustful wife of a insurance-company executive who has some desires of her own not being met by her husband. An early forbearer of the “New Hollywood” movement, Private Property concerns a young woman who becomes victim to a pair of drifters, Boots and Duke (played by cult favorites Warren Oates and Corey Allen, respectively). While the film’s frank presentation of sexual desire resulted in denial of MPAA approval and a limited release in the US, it was a hit in Europe. Private Property is a scruffy underdog of a movie and deserving of a reappraisal.
