One of the seminal films of the 1970s, Alvin Purple depicts Alvin’s struggles with his irresistibility to women—from his school days and time as a waterbed salesman to his short-lived career as a sex therapist. The ‘definitive ocker comedy’, Alvin Purple survived a critical mauling and went on to become the most commercially successful Australian film of the 1970s.

Catharine Lumby takes a fresh look at the film, the social and political era in which it was made and the forces that fuelled its success. She revisits claims that the movie is little more than an exercise in sexploitation and argues that the film is far more complex than its detractors have allowed.