Cindy Pickett

[DCV]

Cindy Pickett in Night Games (1980) DVDRip
With Joanna Cassidy



Quality: DVDRip | Size: 407.02MB | Duration: 00:27:54 | Resolution: 720x540
Bitrate: 2030kbps | Format: mp4 | Language: English

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[Fabrizio]

The image is already in the thread.. hoping in a better version

French Playboy, December 1980

[Findcandor]

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I came upon the IMDb page of the lady being celebrated, and was struck. Although past her prime in the identifying portrait (close-up view), it's a given that this was a woman so hot in her younger days, any eggs (including the two you're packing) near her could get fried. The eyes were mesmerizing; I didn't want to repeat her IMDb photo, so the similar second image above has been selected (although lacking the same impact).

I was delighted to discover Cindy Pickett has been assigned her own VEF thread, and then I was naturally on the look-out for whether the actress had ever allowed for her womanly prizes to be on generous display. In the first page's Post #7 from 2014, Member "Joszka" had put up an article with a promising image, five years later to be revisited by Member "Nerval" (as noted below). Looked like paydirt, although she wasn't entirely nude in this particular view (but what a sexy view).

Originally Posted by Joszka

......
In "Star Ciné Vidéo" n°1, July 1983; last image from Member "Nerval" in 2019's Post #16.

The subject was Night Games (1980), her very first screen appearance. (Save for a single episode of Guiding Light in 1977 — she would return to this soap opera in 1980, and appear in a total of twenty-two episodes. In 1970, the then-twenty-three-year-old is said to have toured with the Golddiggers, a song and dance troupe closely associated with Dean Martin — that is, Cindy was no stranger to show biz, but maybe she had trouble getting a break for a whole decade). The film has been covered profusely here (with vidcaps from what looks to be a crummy VHS, same as what I found for photos coming up), and the reason for the extra attention had to do with this being a Roger Vadim production.


With director Roger Vadim in London for
the premiere of NIGHT GAMES, January 3,
1980. She looks sensational.

As such, our lady had to make the "nudity concession" for what seems to be the only time. (Cindy is said to have dated Vadim, and if this romance took place before the production, that may explain how she suddenly landed such a substantial role.)


"BARDOT... DENEUVE... FONDA...
Roger Vadim... now... has
discovered a new star, Cindy Pickett."

The only good quality print I found came from the "rarefilm.net" site (which requires a subscription for the download, and I was too cheap to take advantage), and here's their fine description for the film: "A Californian housewife is terrified of having sex because of a past assault. When this phobia threatens to destroy her marriage, she takes refuge in a series of erotic fantasies about a masked man. But is it really all just a fantasy?" I have (unprofessionally) translated the text from Joszka's French article:

In a superb villa lives a couple who apparently has everything to be happy. Apparently only, because the young woman continues to relive a terrible drama, a rape of which she was the victim at the age of thirteen. Thus, the couple's life is stretching and each new attempt at conciliation is in vain. One day, tired, the husband leaves. So she finds herself alone, abandonment. Born in her huge house, alone with her dreams.



Little by little, the woman will lose the meaning of realities, sink further into universe of fantasies where everything is only sweetness and love. But who is this mysterious unknown who every night comes to join her and transport her beyond her desires? Who is this masked man that she is now impatiently awaiting?

Roger Vadim marks one of his most beautiful films here. We had ended up believing that his career had stopped net, that Vadim was a name that now belonged to the past. And here we are coming Night Games, shot in Canada, undoubtedly the most mature work of its author. We knew that Vadim was a cantor of the woman, one of those rare men who understood all these details which are the very essence of the other sex. With this film, he transcends his previous visions, he gradually slides us into the intimacy of this woman, explains it to us without didactism, allows us to approach her like no privileged voyeur will never see him. Identification plays entirely, even becomes an osmosis between the spectator (whatever his gender or his age) and this woman, THE woman.



From the start we learn what others know about her, what they believe to be her secret rape. But already, we are privileged because we visualize the images of the memory of this rape. Already, we understand that she cannot experience normal sexuality. And everything in the villa seems to contribute to extinguishing this sexuality: the luxurious decoration, the vast pieces, the raw and white light of the sun and the chandeliers. In such a space, the woman's body is crushed, suffocated, open to all; he takes the tint of the accusing gaze of the others, the pale pounding of frigidity.


Cindy's lying at left in the first, and the one departing the pool is Joanna Cassidy,
such an absolutely yummy female. Look at that derriere of hers in the second photo.

Then, little by little, the others will disappear and we will be alone with this woman. We then understand that the others are wrong, that we have so far undergone their opinion. This woman is not frigid. It only sucks in something else. She wants sweetness, humor, tenderness. It is undoubtedly the healthiest of all. In the absence of living it, she dreams of her sexuality and even gives him a face with these masks and these feathered costumes that she creates her workshop. And comes the unknown, the one who is afraid first, that we hear but that we do not see, who lurks; Then the man, the one who puts on the masks and costumes of the fantasy and offers the woman her most beautiful gift, the fulfillment of her intimate desires.

........... ...........
She may have been shy for the rest of her screen career, but gotta give Cindy credit for showing all here, including bush.

The dream then joins reality. The previous decor is transformed: it takes warm colors, closes the intimacy of the impossible couple. The mystery of the night falls asleep a happy woman. We are this woman and share with her the pleasure of discovering physical love. We are also this stranger who comes to help him enhance himself. And constantly, we are sent from one to the other, as we also go from one genre to another. Night Games, it is first and foremost an erotic film, but beware, voyeurs refrain! Here, you do not see, you are and you live love.

Night Games is also a film that flirts with several genres and we recognize the various concerns of Vadim. It must be said that if the film makes us penetrate further the mysteries of women, the fantasies we are witnessing never ceases to be those of Roger Vadim-l'Esthete. At the bend of images, we thus find for example a fetishism of high heels and vaporous dis-advertising (not to mention the suggestive dresses of all horsehair). Then, it is the surprising sequence where our heroine in a setting and with a 1900 look dances an erotic tango with her best friend who has become the lesbian of a fantasy; A scene that is reminiscent of the Loulou de Pabst, but with all the humor and the frivolity of postcards from the beginning of the century, so tenderly perverse.


At the 10th Annual Soap Opera Digest Awards
on February 4, 1994 in Beverly Hills; I guess
she was paying homage to her GUIDING LIGHT
beginnings. Cindy was 47 here, reminding us of
how Freddie Prinze came up with his catch phrase,
"Lookin' Gooood." (Photo by Ron Galella.)

Vadim does not deny his appeal to the cinema of anxiety either and gives us a scene that will give chills to more than one. I will not say too much, but imagine this awakened woman in the middle of the night in her villa. She is alone. She hears the grid open and then a noise in the pool. And she gets up, willy-nilly, looking for the source of this uninterrupted succession of mysterious noises. Brrr .. I'm still cold in the back. On this subject, it would be time to point out the admirable musical score of John Barry, who immerses himself here of terror, but also knows how to bring this sweet and throbbing melody of the waking dream and succeeding in communicating the notes of pleasure.


(Photo by Douglas Kirkland.)

Without this music, Night Games would surely not be as perfect. Without this music and without ... her. She is Cyndy Pickett. My view is blurring, my ears buzz, my tongue falls ... So I said, Cindy Pickett (Mmmmh!) The new discovery of Vadim (but then there, BB is nothing next to it). You understood me: it is perfect. Pussycat eyes, a thinly embarrassed and tender smile, a slim and gray body, a small chest of a woman-child ... I stop there! You now understand why his character is so endearing. Cindy Pickett is the actress born. You have to see it light a cigarette and turn it off immediately to measure the full measure of its talent. The least of her gestures is thought, means something, remains natural, and gives off one of these doses of sensuality ... Cindy Pickett, on time when you will read these lines, you can see it on your cinema screens in an American film by Bobby Roth: Circle of Power (an excellent film besides that I highly recommend. The training courses for executives in the USA, in all their reality. A cruel and violent work that makes you think — Download). Even if she is alongside Yvette Mimieux, we can't see her, Cindy (you allow me to call her Cindy?).

To return to Night (erotic?) Games, the film is still unprecedented in France. Only one solution: the cassette distributed by René Chateau, excellent duplication as usual, bearable dubbing, and now I leave you. We play Hysterical at the cinema near my home. With the Hudson Brothers, I know, but also in a supporting role, who do you know? Cindy, I arrive!
Claude Scasso.


You may see Monsieur Scasso was bowled over by Cindy in the second-to-last paragraph. (Naturally, opinions differ, as with the know-it-alls from the IMDb's comments page, as with one writing, "She's just not beautiful. With her very short hairstyle, she's very manly looking." Oh, come on.) The film with the Hudson Brothers is Hysterical, a 1982 comedy that has been unfairly forgotten.


HYSTERICAL, With Bill Hudson as leading man.


Cindy was fortunate in that after the film was released (and I'm not sure if Night Games did well at the box office, so we can't say it was this film that put her on the map; on the other hand, she was screen-idle for three years beforehand), her career exploded. She found work everywhere. Mind you, she was thirty-two or thirty-three when Night Games was filmed, so she was not going to be a Bardot-like sex kitten for long. She did get some "babe" roles at the outset, as with an appearance on Magnum P.I. in 1984:


In the second, with Tom Selleck as Magnum.

As well as with the 1984-1985 TV show Call to Glory, where she appeared in twenty-three episodes. She played the wife of Craig T. Nelson, head of an Air Force flight group during the early Vietnam War years. Our lady looks tailor-made as a lovely '60s wife. (1960s women can be so sexy.)

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CALL TO GLORY. Last from the episode 'Call It Courage' (photo #1 by George Long and #3 by Chic Donchin).


It wasn't long before she started to get cast in the "mom" roles, however, as with her notable bit part in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), playing one-half of the well-meaning but naive parents; she and husband were prominent in the title sequence where Ferris pretends to be sick in bed. (Thanks to the movie, the pair got married in real life, a union that lasted until 1992.)


FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. Last: Cindy reunited with "Ferris" husband Lyman Ward (who looks like he hasn't aged well) at the NostalgiaCon '80s
Pop Culture Convention at Anaheim, California, on Sept 28, 2019. (Photo by Harmony Gerber.)

.........
In another "mom" role, from CROOKED HEARTS (1991), about a family
torn apart given the husband's infidelity. She's posing with daughter
Juliette Lewis, eighteen at film's release but perhaps not during filming;
here's the full and uncropped view. Second: ST. ELSEWHERE may have
allowed for Ms. Pickett, playing a doctor, to become best known. She
appeared in fifty episodes from 1986-89. Here seen in the second to last
episode of the series, "The Abby Singer Show," with actor David Morse
(photo: Robert Isenberg).


Let's wind up with Cindy Pickett as she appeared in Son in Law (1993), the Pauly Shore comedy I came to be familiar with when I prepared my post for the beautiful actress who played the daughter (C. Gugino). As I see I had worded it, the daughter "was a country bumpkin who was starting college, and winds up with wild and crazy Pauly; he then meets her conservative parents."


At film's beginning, very prim and proper.

Pauly naturally proves instrumental in loosening up the matriarch, bringing out her inner slut; in a dance hall scene where Cindy's character shyly reveals her new self, the daughter calls Cindy a "hottie," and the daughter sure got that right.





Pauly Shore begs to give the mom a makeover.


....
She's a new woman, and her uptight husband (played by Lane Smith, as seen below) surprisingly approves.






Hoo-hah... this is going to be one good night.



Morning after, feeling frisky. Viagra was not yet invented, but with her in bed, the husband didn't need it.



First, with daughter, played by Gugino. In the second, with actress Tiffani-Amber
Thiessen, who has been brought up a million times on VEF, and who has a healthy
thread. My ignorant self has never heard of her.













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[Fabrizio]

Playboy December 1979