Directed and co-written — with T. Gertler — by Joseph Adler, who also made Sex and the College Girl and Scream Baby Scream, Convention Girls is a movie that I can’t find. The Alamo Drafthouse refers to it as a “Florida-shot indie obscurity — a super rare 35mm print of a movie never released on DVD or video!”

They went on to describe this movie as a “Nashville-inspired multi-character drama set in a Miami Beach hotel during a weekend-long toy manufacturers convention. The smart screenplay by Trudy Gertler uses the handful of prostitutes working the convention as a structural device to tie together the various subplots and character arcs. Originally titled Conventions, this offbeat regional indie pic — more slice-of-life than sexploitation — was acquired by producer/distributor M.A. Ripps, the huckster responsible for the notorious ’60s shocker Poor White Trash, who retitled it Convention Girls and gave it a full-blown exploitation makeover. After playing the drive-in circuit for half a dozen years, the film pretty much vanished, rarely (if ever) showing on TV and never receiving a home video release.”

This seems like a sex movie, but from all accounts, it’s actually the story of a toymaker trying to keep from being a sellout. There’s also a sex worker falling into a depression and self-directed death in a bathtub, affairs, horrible male-to-female behavior and the dirty side of the toy industry.

Actors include Nancy Lawson (God’s Bloody Acre), Anne Seward in her debut, Roberta White, Carol Linden, Robert Gallo, Naomi Fink (also in Adler’s Sammy Somebody), Clarence Thomas (not that one) and William Kerwin. I think legally, you couldn’t make a low budget movie in Florida without him.

Does anyone know how I can see this?