The movie starred James Dean look-alike Christopher Jones as lothario frat boy Paxton Quigley, who uses such pick-up lines as "you have nice hair . . . it fits the mood of your butt."

When his girlfriends (Yvette Mimieux, Judy Pace and Maggie Thrett) learn of each other they punish him by locking him inside the attic of the now endangered Edward Kidder Graham House (a sorority house named Ford Hall in the film) and forcing him to be their sex-slave.

If this sounds pretty sordid it's really very tamely handled by today's standards, with artsy soft-focus and quick cuts that obscure just about all the explicit action.

In this production from the long defunct American Pictures International, a company that specialized in "teensploitation" flicks, the UNC campus doubles as two different colleges -- the fictitious Willard College for Men and Fulton, a women's college. The Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity House on Franklin Street is used for a party scene, and a scene takes place at the popular now long gone juke joint named The Shack.

But it's the Edward Kidder Graham House that is the real star of the locales.

The house, all but abandoned and in bad shape, has been on the market for some time and is in danger of being demolished. The Preservation Society hopes screening this almost forgotten, but could-be-cult-film, will increase awareness of the house and its importance to local history.

Watching "Three In The Attic" you'd never think this low budget counterculture cash-in could have any connection to "Citizen Kane," widely regarded as the greatest motion picture of all time. But indeed it does.

Director Richard Wilson was Orson Welles' righthand man as associate producer of many of his films and even appeared as an extra in "Kane." (He was one of the shadowed newsmen in the smoky screening room at the beginning.)

"Three In The Attic" was Wilson's first foray into youth-oriented cinema after years of making non-descript Westerns and gangster films. Though it was a minor success, and even spawned a sequel of sorts ("Three In The Cellar"), Wilson never again directed and died of pancreatic cancer in 1991.

In the years after "Attic" with a few film credits here and there, teen idol Christopher Jones also turned his back on show business, even rejecting a comeback role offer from Quentin Tarantino in "Pulp Fiction."

And the fates of the "Three"?

Yvette Mimieux toiled for years on television (made for TV movies, "Love Boat" appearances) before retiring in 1992. Judy Pace, whom Variety called "the most beautiful woman in Hollywood," made her last appearance in Spike Lee's Showtime-aired "Sucker Free City. Maggie Thrett disappeared completely after a few small roles in the early '70s. Apart from "Attic," her best known work would be in the "Star Trek" episode "Mudd's Women."

With its promise of a "a groovy look at today's female," psychedelic lighting, jingle-jangly pop songs by Chad & Jeremy and hip lines -- "Non-swimmers should never leap bare-assed into the sea of love. My dear, the sea of love is full of squid!" -- "Three In The Attic" may be deliriously dated. But it retains a very amusing naive charm.