D. H. Lawrence’s name on the credits sits oddly beside a cast list better known for drive-in features than literary adaptation, and that gap between source and execution is the whole joke of the production.

YOUNG LADY CHATTERLEY (1977) follows Cynthia Chatterley, played by Harlee McBride, who inherits her aunt’s large estate and moves in. Among her late aunt’s belongings she finds a diary describing how the older woman learned about love from the estate’s gardener back in 1901, at age twenty-one. Cynthia reads the diary and decides to repeat the lesson with the current young gardener, played by Peter Ratray. Lawrence Montaigne plays Carl, the chauffeur.

Alan Roberts directed from a script by Steve Michaels, based on Lawrence’s novel in the loosest possible sense. The cinematographer is credited as Bob Brownell, who turns out to be Roberts himself - the IMDb credits for the 1985 sequel, Young Lady Chatterley II, list the cinematographer as “Alan Roberts (as Bob Brownell),” which means Roberts directed, produced, and photographed a D. H. Lawrence adaptation under two names. Don Bagley composed the score.

The film treats its literary pedigree as a wrapper for a drive-in sex comedy. It spawned that sequel, no closer to Lawrence than this one.