read what the experts are saying ...
 

"Pound of Flesh is destined to be a classic late night movie; 
campy college satire, bikini clad women; a murder mystery; 
too, controversial thesis (prostitution on a college campus), 
and a charismatic centerpiece Malcolm McDowell 
as the pimping professor. 

Bring on the keg!"
 
 

Dr. Paul  R. Abramson, Professor of Psychology, UCLA
 
 

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"I love 'Pound of Flesh' ... you've got a great tiger by the tail here.  Noah 
 (McDowell) and Patrick (Macfadyen) are tremendous fascinating  characters 
-- a pair of muddy giants duking it out in a carnal  stewpot. Beautiful 
Americana. Your dialogue sings and your gritty sense of procedural feels very 
knowledgeable and well lived in."

FX Feeney, Film Critic,
LA Weekly, The Village Voice
 

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“POUND OF FLESH:  Alrighty, it's about time a pic stepped up to replace 
"Wild Things" on the guilty pleasure list. 

Based on a true story, Malcolm McDowell stars as a professor  that 
pimps out his students, ahem, a little short on cash.  No matter what the Bangles have been up to lately, their mom has kept working and she helms this wild pic  showing who has got the youthful genes in that family.  Everything is going along well until one of 
the babes on ‘scholarship' winds up dead beginning an eddy  that starts circling the drain with the mayor, the head of the college and all the rest of the uptight, upright citizens of 
the realm taking one that ain't for the Gipper. 

Yeah, you guessed it, this doesn't end well for anyone but the viewer. 
With Ron Meyer admitting Universal doesn't make anything but crap anymore, a grand pic like this just has no place in the mainstream cinema anymore. Their loss. This is simply a great contemporary take on noir that is a must see guilty pleasure. Hot stuff.”

MIDWEST RECORDS
 

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In Tamar Simon Hoffs' new film, POUND OF FLESH, there stands Malcolm McDowell on the beach at the beginning and end of the film and he’s the next best thing to Prospero, coming forth with all his regal pronunciations as a  Professor of Shakespeare who pimps out young women to the one per cent who now rule the US, intoning these lines:  “Sex. The world’s oldest profession and the only one where women are paid more than men. Which explains why men were so quick to make it illegal.” 

As the fall semester begins and the new crop of young women show up, Professor Melville (McDowell) lines up Cameron Morris (Timothy Bottoms,) and his wealthy clients, with his most attractive female students.  The film is jam packed with this Stan’s Donuts type of energy. It is highly erotic, given to a few Phil Spector moments of violence, and sprinkled over like a chocolate cake donut with comic and deliciously rich language. Without the aid of Goldman, Sachs, POUND OF FLESH is beautifully edited, filmed and scored, with a shooting schedule of seventeen days and a day of re-shoots added a year later for the final cut, including Timothy Bottoms’opening  nude scene.  Casting and script are first class. 

Let’s deal with casting first. The two cops in the sleepy college town that could be any small college in any  small town, are played by Elizabeth Rodriguez and Angus MacFadyen. The casting of the younger female boss and mildly nutty overweight male outcast cop, with a drinking problem, gives us the right amount of humor attached to the sex and violence needed to make this story come alive. Are the cops investigating a murder or an accident? Stand up Phil Spector for a real life performance. Very LA. So is this film, really. Guns and sex go together in all great American movies. 

All you need is money and power front and center. Cast as the corrupt university booster is the always excellent Timothy Bottoms ... He gives his all, including the nude scene, and he plays beautifully against McDowell’s pandering professor and the bevy of beauties trying out their sexiness on older men for money. The cast of lovelies is headed by Taryn Southern as Dyonesia Cosa, the new girl on campus, a transfer seeking financial aid.  The already pro Rachel, played ably by Whitney Abel, has mastered her craft as call girl so well, she hands her procurer his share of the winnings along with her term paper. Where have I seen that before? Rachel is also the girl guide for shy beauty, Lilly McDowell (Evelyn.) The brief early appearance of Ashley Wren Collins (Marina) as the girl who dies from the cocktail of sex, power and wealth in the beginning of the film, comes straight out of TAXI DRIVER. 

Hoffs’ makes the point that American universities and their “gangster academics,” who sell everything from body parts to yearly revisions of their own texts, now control some of America’s finest floating brothels.  On the edges of this film float Elliott Spitzer and Tiger Woods. And, Hoffs has numerous examples of legal cases involving college prostitution that have gone to law courts in the last decade to prove her point.

Ben Pleasants, Film Critic
 

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“... actually based on true events, has some top actors in it, and even won an award at the Sacramento Film Festival. One could take it as a timely protest against the outrageous tuition at many colleges that saddles students forever with a lifetime loan. McDowell plays a unique type of anti-hero.  He is an older and very popular college professor of English literature who provides scholarships for the gorgeous girls attending his classes who can’t afford the huge tuition. He does this by running an escort service whose clients include the chairman of the school board and the chief of police. He makes no profit for himself nor has relations with the girls, but lets the girls use the money they make to pay their tuition. He also has a devoted wife and child who makes cookies for the professor, and on that act the policewoman discounts him as suspect.
 
However, he is naive about the dangerous situations some of the girls get into, and the film opens with one girl who gets killed – accidentally, but still something that eventually gets trailed back to the professor. Involved is a moralistic police detective with his own problems, who becomes a sort of Javert for his own reasons, after the professor’s Valjean. The film’s title comes from The Merchant of Venice, which the professor is teaching in his class that is depicted. Next to the closing titles some of the girls speak about their sexual lives and working for their “scholarships” — scripted of course but somewhat interesting. McDowell must have had great fun making this film.”

John Sunier, Audiophile Audition
 

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“Tamar Hoffs does for the scraping together of college tuition what 
Roger Corman did for quick smart genre knock-offs -- Pound of Flesh exposes 
the practice of certain faculty grading on a curve for male students while grading 
on strictly anatomic curves for female students.”

Lisa Nesselson, France 24,TV
 

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“A masterful and compelling story of college students employed as sex workers. 
Even as this movie is smart and thought-provoking, it is also great and entertaining story-telling. To be watched and savored.”

Dr. Elyn Saks, Professor of Law, University of Southern California
 

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"Pound of Flesh has it all -- searing conflict over love, sex, money and sin, 
worthy of Eugene O'Neill."

Professor Peter Loewenberg, UCLA
 

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“This devious and sex-filled thriller from Tamar Simon Hoffs reminds us of 
‘Heathers’ and ‘Wild Things.’”

Superheidi, Fangirltastic
 

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"Pound of Flesh is a gripping, suspenseful drama. Though fictional, it is 
as timely and  disturbing as the news reports from several American college 
campuses which inspired its story. Malcolm McDowell and the supporting 
cast are outstanding." 

David Peretz, M.D. 
Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, faculty
Columbia University College of 
Physicians and Surgeons.
 

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"It was a  treat -- to engage with a film that lifts up such timely, 
important and  provocative questions. Clearly we could have talked together much 
longer ... I imagine many fruitful conversations ..."

Margaret Klenck,
Master of Divinity, Licensed Psychoanalyst,
Jungian Analyst
 

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"Tamar Simon Hoffs’ Pound Of Flesh (2010) has Malcolm McDowell as a very popular professor at a college with more gals than guys and though he is married and loves his wife, is involved in “helping” them in what turns out to be a scandalous way to get scholarships. That is a secret until a strange murder takes place and then things become more and more interesting. The cast is good and the makers have picked some very attractive women to fill the roles."

Nicholas Sheffo, FluVueDrive-in
 

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"Malcolm McDowell is a hell of a fine actor and he gets to shine in this film. Angus Macfadyen also gives an intense performance as well.  The subject matter is deep in the world of prostitution and cover-ups. If you unaware of the story this is based on true events. Noah Melville (Malcolm McDowell), a college professor, is a favorite amongst his students but also runs a prostitution ring to promote scholarships. When one of these 
meetings goes array the situation ends in murder and the cops start suspecting Noah. Detective Patrick Kelly (Angus Macfadyen) becomes obsessed with getting to the bottom of this mystery."

Mike Gencarelli, Media Mikes