Blog With A Cause Revisited: What Happened To The THREE IN THE ATTIC House?

One thing I’ve been bad about since I started this blog back in 2004 is following through on some series ideas. I start off with a post that I announce will be the beginning of a new series, then maybe do a second post then I let the series fall through the cracks.

Well, inspired by a thread on Facebook, I decided to revisit a subject from ages ago. Back in the late 2000s, I lived in the historic district of Chapel Hill, N.C. (my home town), and got involved in a small movement to save a house from demolition. The house, the Edward Kidder Graham House on the edge of the UNC campus, that served as the set of an obscure movie from the ‘60s: Richard Wilson’s bizarre 1968 comedy THREE IN THE ATTIC.

The movie concerns Christopher Jones as an unfaithful boyfriend whose three girlfriends (Yvette Mimieux, Judy Pace, and Maggie Threttlock) him in their sorority attic to punish him with more sex than he can take. I wrote about it in The Chapel Hill Newspaper, and on this here blog (read Part 1 & 2). In the summer of 2008, Ernest Dollar (executive director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill) asked me to host an outdoor screening of THREE IN THE ATTIC at the Horace Williams House (where I was the Caretaker).

Trouble was that the film was out of print and hard to find on video. I located a bootleg DVD of the teensploitation flick, and we showed that on a big bed sheet in the backyard. The audience appeared to really enjoy it as they laughed a lot throughout.

I introduced the movie by saying, “Durham has BULL DURHAM, what do we have? PATCH ADAMS (filmed in Chapel Hill in the late ‘90s)? No, we have THREE IN THE ATTIC!”

But what I never followed up on is what happened to the Edward Kidder Graham house. I moved to Raleigh in 2009, so I lost track of whether it attracted a buyer. I learned later that it was sold to Molly Froelich in 2010, and she started on the grand task of restoring the house. In 2013, it was sold to Martin and AraLu Lindsey, who finished the restoration. I have no idea if the flurry of activity around the house that the Preservation Society stirred up had anything to do with it, but I’m glad we did what we could to raise awareness of this cool historic home/movie location.

In the years since, THREE IN THE ATTIC has been re-issued on DVD along with its soundtrack (pictured at the top of this post). Although the DVD has gone out of print, the movie is available on Amazon Prime. In 2019, Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD, which is set in 1969 as it deals loosely with the Manson murders, has several references to the film. Firstly, a THREE IN THE ATTIC TV spot shows on Brad Pitt’s television at his squalor-filled trailer.

Among other advertisements for the film we see this glitzy Pantages Theater marquee:

Finally an excerpt of Chad & Jeremy’s “Paxton Quigley’s Had the Course” from THREE IN THE ATTIC plays at one point and is featured on the soundtrack of ONCE UPON A TIME. Seems that this many shout-outs would greatly suggest that Tarantino is a fan of the largely forgotten film.

Such a fan that Tarantino offered Paxton Quigley himself, Christopher Jones, a part in PULP FICTION, but Jones turned it down apparently because he didn’t want to have to order Maynard to wake up the gimp. Since 1970, the James Dean look-a-like Jones’ career largely went quiet with his last film being Larry Bishop’s MAD DOG TIME (1996). He passed in 2014.

So the odd little legacy of THREE IN THE ATTIC keeps on keepin’ on. It’s no classic, or even really a cult classic, but it is a funny curio that captures Chapel Hill in the late ‘60s. I’m glad the house was saved and renovated whether the film had anything to do with it or not. And, of course, I sure hope they paid special attention to the attic.

More later…

Meet Me At The Wrecking Ball - A Blog With A Cause

This post is going to be a bit different from my usual array of riveting reviews and looney lists because this time I have a cause. I rarely write about things local, except for mentions of the theatre I work at part time (The Varsity), but it has come to my attention that a historic house not far from where I live in Chapel Hill, NC is in danger of being demolished very soon. How this pertains to Film Babble is that this house was used as a film location almost 40 years ago. The house is the Edward Kidder Graham House (named for a former UNC President who died in 1918) located on Battle Lane at the edge of the UNC campus and the movie it was used in was THREE IN THE ATTIC (Dir. Richard Wilson, 1968).

Haven't heard of it? That's okay, I hadn't either - It isn't available from Netflix having never had a proper DVD release (I found online that some outfit called Must Have Films is selling DVD copies of it but they don't look quite legit) and VHS copies are fairly hard to find. After some phoning around I found a shoddy old videocassette copy at a local video store (a building surely to be demolished soon as well) and viewed it anxious to see some Lyndon B. Johnson era shots of my hometown. Through the awful picture full of drop-outs (horizontal white streaks) and the incomprehensible muffled sound I was able to make out the Edward Kidder Graham House as well as many shots of the UNC campus, surrounding neighborhoods and the Alpha Tau Omega House on Franklin Street which was used prominently in a party sequence.

The movie itself is honestly a pretty schlocky 60's sexploitation picture. Made by American International Films, a company that specialized in low budget fringe films that would appeal to teenagers, it is by today's AMERICAN PIE standards a fairly lame affair - though one not without its kitschy dated charms. James Dean look-a-like (and somebody who studied Dean's every move) Christopher Jones finds himself locked in a sorority house attic (The Edward Kidder Graham House stands in for Ford Hall as UNC doubles as the equally ficticious Willard College For Men and Fulton - A Women's College) after 3 college girls ( Yvette Mimieux, Judy Pace, and Maggie Thrett) find out he's been triple timing them. 

As Paxton Quigley, Jones' voice-over narration promises a look at the "groovy subculture of today's female" and he says "you've heard of the sexual revolution...well, I'm probably one of its first casualties" but this is pretty grandiose talk coming from someone decked out in what looks like the JC Penny Jim Morrison line - fluffy white shirt, love beads and yes, leather pants. No such social sexual commentary or satire is really presented - just dialogue like this between Quigley and girlfriend #1's (Mimieux) father, played by Richard Derr, who bursts in on them living in sin:

Mr. Clinton: "What kind of a man are you?"

Paxton Quigley: "Well, I think I know...I know where it's at."

Mr. Clinton: "What?"

Paxton Quigley: "I know my way around."

Mr. Clinton: "Are you one of those potheads?"

Yep, that's about the level of insight in THREE IN THE ATTIC. There was potential as Roger Ebert notes in his 1968 review that it could've been a "near GRADUATE" but the film makers motives were just as cheap as its budget. Essentially a series of love montages hanging on a bare narrative thread this movie still has some lure as a curio - fans of college cult films * will delight in its pre-ANIMAL HOUSE sensibility, cinéastes will enjoy the notion of what direction James Dean's career might've gone in (or at least looked like) had he lived through to that turbulent time, but for this blog's purposes Chapel Hill residents will celebrate THREE IN THE ATTIC as a snapshot of the town in the late 60's and a portrait of a house worth preserving and restoring.

* It is most certainly a cult movie - Joe Bob's Ultimate B-Movie Guide gives it 4 stars and says of it - "one of the weirdest flicks of the sixties" - Joe Bob Briggs, 2000

Postnote #1: There was actually a sequel entitled UP IN THE CELLAR (1970) also known as THREE IN THE CELLAR which also had Judy Pace in it. It was a little of a bigger deal with Larry Hagman and Joan Collins but since it was filmed in New Mexico I didn't seek it out.

Postnote #2: For more information and pictures of the Edward Kidder Graham House and other historic houses in Chapel Hill please visit :

The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Flickr: Photos from chapelhill.preservation

Also this interview with Preservation Society of Chapel Hill Executive Director Ernest Dollar is worth a read:

Independent Weekly: News: Q&A: Ernest Dollar

More later...