Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a 1977 American crime drama film, based on Judith Rossner's best-selling 1975 novel of the same title, which was inspired by the 1973 murder of New York City schoolteacher Roseann Quinn.

The film was a commercial success, earning $22.5 million,[a] and received generally favorable reviews, with much of the praise directed towards Keaton's performance.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar introduced Richard Gere, LeVar Burton, and Tom Berenger, all as men whom the protagonist Theresa encounters.

Theresa Dunn, a young schoolteacher in an unnamed American city, experiences her sexual awakening while searching for excitement outside her ordered life.

While in college, she lives with her repressive Polish-Irish Catholic parents and suffers from severe body image issues following a childhood surgery for scoliosis that left a large scar on her back.

Meanwhile, Theresa's beautiful "perfect" older sister, Katherine, has left her husband and embarked on a wild lifestyle involving multiple affairs, a secret abortion, recreational drug use, and a short-lived marriage to a Jewish man.

After imagining what could happen if Tony were to turn her in to the police as revenge, Theresa gathers up all of the drugs in her apartment and flushes them down the toilet.

Variety listed the film at number one at the US box office for the week based on their sample of 20-22 cities, however, Star Wars grossed more for the weekend.

The site's consensus states: "Diane Keaton gives an absolutely fearless performance in a sexual thriller whose ending will leave audiences trembling.

"[14] Variety stated: "Writer-director Brooks manifests his ability to catch accurately both the tone and subtlety of characters in the most repellant environments - in this case the desperate search for personal identity in the dreary and self-defeating world of compulsive sex and dope.

"[16] A retrospective review from AllMovie stated: "With the casting of Diane Keaton as Theresa, Looking for Mr. Goodbar became a then-rarity in Hollywood movies, depicting an everyday woman with an erotic life, rather than a vamp or a whore," rating the film 31⁄2-stars-out-of-5.

[11] Vincent Canby of The New York Times stated that Keaton was "virtually the only reason" to see the film, calling her "too good to waste on the sort of material the movie provides, which is artificial without in anyway qualifying as a miracle fabric.

He also noted that "the main character is made considerably prettier, thus reducing the principal sources of her insecurity", as compared to her portrayal in the novel as somewhat of a "Plain Jane".

[19] Pauline Kael noted, "Richard Brooks [...] has laid a windy jeremiad about our permissive society on top of fractured film syntax.

[31][32] However, on October 31, 2024, independent label Vinegar Syndrome, under license from Paramount, announced a new release of the film on 4K and standard Blu-ray as part of its annual Black Friday pre-order weekend event, marking its official debut on both formats.

[37] In the video, Madonna plays a woman who, like Theresa, engages in self-destructive behavior by drinking heavily and sleeping around with random men before she is ultimately murdered by a man she had selected for a one-night stand.