AKA Screwballs II
Directed by Rafal Zielinski
Starring Bryan Genesse, Lance Van Der Kolk, Cynthia Beliveau Rated R Canada
"You like getting your perverted little hands wet?"
"I guess I'm gonna have to answer yes to that one, sir."
I suppose, given the cultural barometer of the times, that it made sense, this comical name-giving that Loose Screws presents us with. After all, the mid 80's was a time when idiotic names were willfully accepted, when it was perfectly ok to call yourself Nikki Sixx, Blackie Lawless, or Jizzy Pearl. But I feel you should be forewarned, as these are truly moronic waters we will be navigating today. Here, then, is a smattering of character names in Loose Screws: Hugh G Rection, Marvin Eatmore (he's the fat one, haha!) Nikki Nystroke, Tracey Gratehead, Hilda Von Blow, Mona Lott. If you can hang with that sort of company, then let us proceed.
Although he has mostly abandoned the genre at this point, director Rafal Zielinski - an MIT graduate, incidentally - helmed an impressive amount of teen sex comedies between 1983 and 1989: Screwballs (1983), Loose Screws, Recruits (1986), Valet Girls (1987), Heavy Metal Summer (1988), Screwball Hotel (1988), Ginger Ale Afternoon (1989). His style has a distinctive 70's grindhouse feel, a willful grubbiness that mashes weird looking characters, cheap sex gags, shabby production values and often surreal dialogue into a slimy grab-bag of bad fun. A Zielinski film leaves you off-kilter, unsure as to what just happened or what happens next. They're like the cinematic equivalent of sucker punch.
Case in point: the first breast-baring in Loose Screws occurs a mere 26 seconds into the film, which may be some sort of record. The opening credits roll out a montage of fun-loving hijinks courtesy of our four main mischief makers: Blonde alpha-jerk Steve Hardman (Lance Van Der Kolk, whose real name sounds equally phony-baloney), zany cocksman Brad Lovett (Bryan Genesse), mad tinkerer Hugh G Rection (Alan Deveau, Screwballs), and fat-ass Marvin Eatmore (Jason Warren). It's the last day of school at Beaver High (ahem) and they spend it mostly harassing women. Life seems pretty sweet until their Bill Murray-esque principal informs the four young troublemakers that they'll be spending the next three months in summer school. "A college for morons," he tells them.
Off they go. For condemned men, they seem pretty happy about it, zipping down the road in a convertible laughing and carrying on. I guess they really are morons.
The boys arrive at summer school - Coxwell Academy, natch - and start pulling pranks immediately. The first bus full of students pulls in, so the fellas pretend to be doctors and perform breast exams on the girls, until the fat one - who's been hiding in a closet - has an intimate encounter with a skeleton, which sends the girls screaming naked through the halls. It's up to Principal Arsenault (Mike McDonald, Oddballs) to straighten these fuckers out. Meanwhile, in saunters the sexy new French teacher, Mona Lott (Cynthia Belliveau, Goofballs), lighting fires under both Arsenault and the boys. There, in a nutshell, is our plot: who gets to bang Mona, the stuffy principal, or one of the smart-ass kids?
You can sorta understand their preoccupation with the woman, since everything she says is soaked in porn innuendo. This is what tells the kids in French class:
"A well-lubricated throat is essential. Remember, for good French, you must take a very long...deep...breath."
Etc. That kinda thing can drive a man nuts.
Lott's dirty mouth notwithstanding, there are plenty of other fleshly distractions at Coxwell, so the guys decide to start a get-laid competition. Mona Lott is the big prize, netting a cool hundred points, but there's a myriad of ways to rack up the numbers as the summer wears on. For example, the female students all live in a giant dormitory room where they cavort in tiny underwear, smoke weed constantly, and fiddle with vibrators. Brad decides to infiltrate this nest of vagina by dressing in mall-brat drag and pretending he's a new student, Bradine. He moves into the girls' dorm and starts hunting for half-blind bi-curious co-eds to seduce, eventually ending up taking a bath with a near-sighted cutie who mistakes his penis for a rubber duck. It's pretty creepy.
Eatmore takes an aerobics class. Rection stuffs his pants with Kleenex. Hardman takes French lessons with Mona, but garbles her commands and jumps into the shower with her, causing her to chase him, naked, out of the house.
So that all goes on. And then there's a late-night beach party, for really no reason at all.
Later on, Hardman meets a top-heavy redhead named Claudia (Stephanie Sulik) and gives her tennis lessons. And by lessons, I mean he fucks her in the dirt. Turns out she's the principal's wife, so that gets sticky. Rection invents some formula that makes swimsuits melt. Obviously, he tries this out during the girls' swim class. Lovett glues on a Fu Manchu mustache, adopts a Chinese restaurant waiter accent, and gives Mona Lott a massage. She freaks. Then the fat kid tries his hand at Lott-seduction by crawling around in the air vents above the girls' locker room and spying on her as she undresses. Does he come crashing down from the ceiling in a rain of dust and plaster? Yes.
Afterwards, the guys go to a bar and watch a wet t-shirt contest, followed by a 'best ass' contest, followed by a whipped cream bikini contest. That takes up a good chunk of time. Then, of course, they get expelled, which brings us to the expected revenge-driven climax. Hint: it involves Marijuana and hidden camera footage. Don't they all?
I know, this all sounds more like a series of Benny Hill-esque skits than the plot of an actual film. It also plays a lot like a slasher movie, with Lott as the perpetual victim, getting stalked by not one but four very bungling would-be lady killers. Funny? Not really. Amusing? Tits everywhere, so sure. In fact, Loose Screws is extremely generous in it's toplessness, practically wall-to-wall in it's heaving pulchritude, and so blunt-force simple-minded that it practically defies criticism. Only a drooling subhuman could call Loose Screws a 'classic', but I will give it this: it is relentless in it's quest to provoke laughs and boners. And while it fails miserably in one, it scores quite highly in the other.
And yes, at the end, you finally get to see Lott's Frenchy floppers. And even though they're bathed in an eye-wrenching red glow, they still look pretty spectacular.
After Screws: Everybody's fine. They're Canadians, they're probably eating bacon.
Directed by Damian Lee Starring Dean Cameron, Stuart Fratkin, Charlie Spradling Rated R Canada Buy poster
"You may be able to disqualify us, but you cannot stop us from doing the Lambada."
First off, I just want to say that the title does not work for me. That's probably entirely circumstantial; I live in Boston, a frigid, always-wintry, life-sapping place, and if the teen sex comedy is about escape - and it is - than I certainly do not want to escape to some friggin' snow covered mountain. So there's that. You, however, may already live someplace sensible and warm, so perhaps a wild weekend in the mountains with snowbunnies and dirty rotten slopes-schemers sound fun and exotic. It is for you, then, that I suffer the indignity of watching a movie about snow while shivering in a dirty, slush-choked, mid-winter wasteland.
Ski School arrived at the very tail-end of the classic teen sex comedy era. By 1992, when grunge and indie-cinema and sad-eyed adolescent grousing became the norm, goofy teen romps went the way of glam metal and monster trucks. I mean, can you imagine Ski School competing with Reservoir Dogs or Romper Stomper? It was suddenly a much different planet, one spackled with ennui and ultra-violence, and so the teen sex comedy went underground for nearly a decade, until American Pie brought boobs n' food fights roaring back into the public's consciousness. Ski School was a last gasp, a blatant refusal to accept the inevitable. Ski School did not skip school to see Malcolm X. Ski School skipped school to ski down a fuckin' mountain, Jack. Naked. As such, even if you happen to hate skiing and schools and snow, and I do, you still have to hand it to Mr. Lee and his crew of nubiles and loudmouths - they fought the good fight. They kept it stupid when stupid had already lost the culture war.
There is a pair of softball-sized tits on display 50 seconds into Ski School's opening credit sequence which also, incidentally, features a piping synth score straight out of 1984. Both would suggest we are in for a good, moronic time. Ski School never quite maintains the mountain-scraping heights of it's opening moments, but it does try.
The plot is set-up within two minutes: the rich asshole ski-squad (Section 1, naturally), led by a preppy skunk named Reid (Mark Thomas Miller), are pitched against the slightly less-rich slacker ski squad, dubbed Section 8, led by one dude with bushy eyebrows (Dean Cameron, Summer School, Fast Times the Series) and another dude with an earring (Stuart Fratkin, Valet Girls). There's gonna be some sort of monumental ski race at some point. It's sort of like Summer Camp (1979), only with more hot tubs.
Great. Any subplots? Sure. Earring kid has the hots for Reid's melon-chested girlfriend Paulette (Charlie Spradling). That'll cause sparks!
So, the King of the Mountain shows up and tells Section 8 he plans on tossing them out of ski school because of their capering and buffoonery. They have an emergency meeting to figure out what to do. They decide on an apocalyptic party. The next day, during the races, the pricks in Section 1 sabotage our party-hearty heroes, further damaging their chances of winning the annual ski-off and saving the mountain for beer-swilling, virgin-killing ne'er do wells everywhere. Section 8 gets expelled from Ski School (is that possible?), but they decide to crash the climactic ski race anyway. They ski down the mountain on cases of beer. Everybody cheers. The King of the Mountain says they can join the race if they "Calm down their antics". They agree, but do not calm down their antics at all. Instead, they launch a series of Wile E Coyote-esque gags to bedevil the snooty dudes and woo their women.
Do they pull it off? Yes, of course they do.
In summation: The charismatic leads carry an otherwise muddy and unfocused film that confuses loudness, bright colors, and gangly flailing for adolescent hijinks. Surprisingly, given the nonsensical script, this well-liked film is remembered most fondly for its supposed quote-ability, i.e. " I could dance with you 'till the cows come home... better still, I could dance with the cows 'till you come home!" or "In order to be the best, you must lose your mind!" or "Welcome to my kingdom, I will bed you all before the night is through!" I don't think any of that shit is funny either, but trust me, dudes who were in high school in the early 1990's love this dumb fucking movie to death. If you are one of those lucky few, feel free to indulge. Everybody else...well, at least it's better than Snowballin'.
Oh, and the scene with Spradling in her underwear was pretty majestic.
Availability:Ski School is available on DVD. And if you really want to go nuts, there's a sequel, too.
Directed by John C Broderick Starring Lyndsay Bloom, Richard Kennedy, Doodles Weaver Rated R USA Buy this bitchin' poster!
"Where'd all these fucking cows come from?"
Even in this internet-gorged world where cinematic truffles no longer really exist, Six Pack Annie remains an obscurity, a barely-released, often-whispered-about-but-rarely-seen mid 70's cornpone wonder, a bottom-feeding glob of not so titillating hillbilly junk tossed at southern drive-ins and then abandoned. Even garbage-movie obsessives like yours cruelly have been forced to just sit there and ponder what delights it holds for years on end, unable to actually see the thing. I had the wonderfully lowbrow poster on my wall for years before I actually had a copy of the film (courtesy my venerable partner Paul, who snatched it from a rare cable TV airing), and even now, half a decade after my first screening and 33-ish years after it's initial theatrical run, Six Pack Annie shows little signs of actually seeing a home-video release of any kind.
I can see why, really. It's an aggressively anti-intellectual film, dumb as a recently-clobbered tom turkey, filled with awful shitkicker C&W and barely-written backwoods characters that even Hershel Gordon Lewis would be embarrassed to have in his moonshine maniacs films. But then again, it's got Lyndsay Bloom in hotpants, so how bad can it be, really?
Really bad, brother. Starting with Tim Hayfield's banjo pickin' theme song. "Step right up and join the crowd," sings Hayfield, as Annie pops the top on a can of Coors and takes off in her beat-up truck, "You'll lose your pride when Annie starts shakin'/don't be surprised if it's hot enough to fry your bacon."
What?
Clip: Opening theme
Annie (Lyndsay Bloom) and Marylou (Janna Ballen) race to work at Aunt Tess's diner, but they are cut off at the pass by Bustis (Larry Mahan), a local good ol' boy obsessed with hard drinkin', fast livin' Annie. "I'll race you to the diner," Bustis says. "Dollar says I beat the pants off ya." "Haha," Annie chortles. " Who says I'm wearing any pants?" They race as more banjo music plays. Annie cheats by cutting through a field full of cows, knocking down fences as she goes, which rattles sheriff Waters (Joe Higgins, RIP, who played the fat, dumb redneck lawman in dozens of films), who tries to give chase, but is out of gas. So is the film, quite clearly, and we're only five minutes in.
At the diner, two old coots (Doodles Weaver, RIP, and Ronald Elliot), play checkers and tell cringe-worthy jokes. The film cuts to them half a dozen times over its not-so-brief 88 minutes so they may deliver side-splitters like this: "Hank, I bought my wife a car yesterday." "Chevrolet?" "About twice a week."
After pushing his car down the dirt road for a few miles, Sheriff Waters finally gets to the diner. He stomps inside, and immediately slips on a banana peel. A banana peel?!
Anyway, the plot. Marylou and Annie are apparently sisters, and they work at the diner for their Aunt Tess (Danna Hansen). Tess owes the bank $5000 in mortgage for the diner, and if she doesn't make the payments in five days, she'll lose it. They live in a town called Titwillow, by the way. So, Annie tells Tess not to worry, she'll get the money. Then she goes skinnydipping in the dark with Bruce Boxleitner. You'd think this would at least provide us with some decent naked Annie footage, but their midnight swim is so dark it's impossible to see anything. So that's frustrating.
Sheriff Waters shows up and demands they get out of the water. "What's the matter, boy, catfish got your tootsie roll?" He says to Boxleitner. Then he takes them to jail. For whatever reason, the chubby lawman has a fridge full of Dr. Pepper back at the police station, which he keeps chained up. It is not the first time Dr. Pepper will be prominently displayed in the film. Some of the publicity stills even featured bottles of the stuff.
Clearly, the admen behind the then-fledgling soft drink were trying to make in-roads in the deep south, and thought heavy product placement in a low-rent hicksploitation flick would do the trick.
Next day, back at the diner, Annie and Marylou brainstorm about how to come up with the five grand to save the diner. The diner, by the way, is such a dreary, bare-bones place that it looks like it should have dirt floors. Hardly seems worth saving. "Who's the richest man in town?" Annie asks. "Hmm," Marylou ponders. "This town's too poor, it ain't got no rich man. Probably the richest person in town is Flora, and she lives in Miami, and she ain't even a man." Flora is their uppity older sister, who has moved to the big city and occasionally sends postcards, bragging about her high-falutin' new lifestyle. "Well, we'll go to Miami and talk to Flora," decides Annie. "I'm sure she'll give us the money, her being rich n' all. Wow, that'll solve all our problems. Now we can go to the dance!" Then she and Marylou drink Dr. Pepper.
And so, to the dance, although it is not a dance at all, just a particularly drunken evening at the diner. Annie sits down at the piano (I don't know how to spell it the hillbilly way...pianah?) and plunks out an old-timey rhythm while Marylou sings a song that goes "I'm so glad the peanut man made me his wife/because now I'm full of nuts for the rest of my life". While this happens, the camera cuts to non-reaction shots from confused elderly people. It is at this point when my wife said, "That's it!" and left the room. I do not blame her. It's the sort of thing that will definitely make you question whether you're wasting your life watching grubby ancient junk like this. The answer, of course, is no - what else are you going to do, climb a mountain? - but the question will nag you, nonetheless.
On the way to Miami, the girls pass a white van with a license plate that reads "9 Inches". "Must be that damn Long John," notes Annie.
A little further down the road, they pick up a couple of swishy hitchhikers in cut-off shorts. Assuming, against overwhelming physical evidence, that they'll make suitable sexual partners, they let the two jump into the truckbed. Not surprisingly, the two men immediately start making out with each other. Freaked, Annie slams on the brakes and screams that their truck is on fire, causing the hitchers to scatter. "They musta had some Yankee blood in 'em, because I cain't imagine any southern boys carrying on that way," says Annie. You can just imagine a drive-in full of southern boys honking their horns over that one, right?
The girls get to Miami and Marylou tells Annie to pull over. She does, and they ponder a sign in front of a construction site. The sign says "Erection Site". "I don't know about Miami," Marylou muses, "But back home, the boys don't need a special place. They can have an erection anywhere." Another car-honking moment, surely.
The girls visit Flora (the ever-bubbly Lousia Moritz, naked under a see-through dressing gown) who, contrary to her boastful letters to home, is not living a lavish lifestyle. She's actually a poor-but-busy prostitute. "I'm sort of between sugar daddies," she confesses. Since she doesn't have the money to lend the girls, she suggests they whore themselves out for it. Seems drastic to me, but whatever. She sends them to Fredericks of Hollywood to buy sexier, less bumpkin-ish clothes.
Annie picks out a bright red minidress and tries on some white knee-high boots to go with. While she's trying them on, the old woman sitting next to her pets the sleepy cat on her lap. "Nice pussy," she coos. "Nice pussy." "You're telling me, lady!" Says the shoe salesman, sneaking a peek up Annie's dress.
Annie's first appointment as a newly-minted Miami whore is with a Frenchman who dresses up like Napolean. This freaks Annie out so badly that she bails. Annie doesn't dig foreigners in weird costumes, man.
In a scene that's embarrassing for everyone involved, including me, Flora attempts to entertain a nervous trick but is interrupted by an angry Annie. She stuffs her John in a trunk and mentions to him that she farts when she's nervous. Annie storms in, complaining about the Frenchie, while Flora, desperately trying to keep the flailing idiot in the box, squeaks out gas for five minutes.
Annie and Marylou head back out for more whoring adventures, but stop at a local bar first for a quick six pack. Marylou gets friendly with the bartender, Carmello (crazed Latin character actor Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, RIP), who gives her a job as a waitress. She has to a wear a rat costume. Meanwhile, Annie chats up a drunken Texan (Richard Kennedy), who slurps booze out of a coconut and rattles off a bunch of jokes that sound like they were ripped right out of a 1967 issue of Playboy.
"My marriage has gotten a lot better since we got twin beds," Tex tells Annie. "Twin beds? How's that help?" "Well, hers is in Dallas, and mine's in Miami Beach." Some of these drunken asshole's jokes I don't even get, like when he pulls a bullet out of his pocket and says, "You know what that is, darlin'? It's a genuine Russian birth control pill." What?
So anyway, the Texan gives Annie a necklace, and it turns out to be worth $7000. So she gives it to the bank. The end. Well, almost the end. Just when you think it's over, just when you think the endless stream of goofy sight-gags have finally and mercifully dried up, tiny-man Billy Barty, dressed up like a fry cook, shows up to have a banana cream pie fight with the sheriff.
Despite a cast full of veteran character actors seriously going for it, Six Pack Annie is a trying watch, so unfunny it's almost depressing, and frustratingly demure in the T&A department. Director Broderick clearly enjoyed toiling in lowbrow cinema - he also directed the altogether racier moonshine-runner flick Bad Georgia Road (1977), and produced both Jocks (1987) and Howling IV (1991) - but Six Pack Annie plays more like an old episode of Hee Haw than a boob-centric, southern-fried drive-in flick. Admittedly, Lyndsay Bloom's breathless beauty is hard to resist, and had she not starred in the mind-frying T&A classic H.O.T.S. just a couple years later, than Six Pack Annie would probably be the best place to ogle her ample physical charms at their vine-ripe peak. But H.O.T.S. very thankfully does exist, which means you can happily skip this lame glob of hillbilly pandering.
Oh, and here's your Bloom-boobs:
Now you really don't have to bother.
Availability: Not available. And that's probably ok.
Directed by Don Weiss Starring Annette Funicello, Tommy Kirk, Elsa Lanchester, Jesse White, Don Rickles Rated G USA Buy this bitchin' poster!
"What are we looking for?" "Anything suspicious." "The only thing suspicious is us."
Pajama Party is the fourth in what would be a seven-film series in the early-to-mid 1960's, loosely known as the "Beach Party" movies, for obvious reasons (i.e. they often begin or end with a party at the beach). Produced by b-movie legends American International Pictures, who brought us, among many others, the Corman Poe pictures, most of Pam Grier's movies, half a dozen late 60's biker flicks, Dr. Phibes, Six Pack Annie, Unholy Rollers, Sisters, and Squirm, the Beach Party series kicked off with (naturally) Beach Party (1963) and ended, quite abruptly, with the very screwy (and Beach-less...and Annette-less, as well) 1966 haunted house romp, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. The Beach Party films were helmed by various directors and the plots didn't necessarily coincide with one another, but for the most part, they centered around Annette Funicello's heaving bosoms and Frankie Avalon's bitchin' haircut. There were dance numbers and goofy bad guys and crazy cameos from Boris Karloff and Don Rickles and Buddy Hackett and every other slumming matinee star that wanted to reconnect with 'the kids', but most of all, there were girls. Stunning, world-quaking girls in tiny bathing suits, shaking their firm young thangs with wild abandon.
Not surprisingly, the Beach Party films were huge hits.
Of course, they weren't the only places to see pretty girls at the movies in the early 60's. There was a growing nudie-cutie movement afoot, propelled by saucy auteurs like Russ Meyer and Doris Wishman. But it wasn't exactly easy to see Mondo Topless or Nude on the Moon in 1964, especially if you were a teenager. The Beach Party movies offered nearly as many boner-popping moments, only they were slathered in so much good-natured, wholesome, all-American fun that mom and dad had zero problems dropping the kids off for an afternoon of sun, sand, and Susan Hart's relentlessly jiggly girl-parts.
By the early 1970's when the game-changingThe Cheerleadershit the screens, dance numbers had somehow devolved into all-nude under-aged gang-gropes in the boy's locker room, and Annette Funicello's top-heavy good-girl fell sway to druggy, barely-legal maneaters like Stephanie Fondue and Rainbeaux Smith. That's what Charles Manson, Vietnam, and Altamont will do to a nation's psyche. But The Cheerleaders and Pajama Party both had the same primary goal, to provide fleshly eye-candy for over-amped teenage boys, and both went above and beyond the call of duty to do it. They just approached the concept in different ways. And although the Beach Party movies are tame enough for children to watch them, every gag, prank, and cheap come-on that would litter the teensploitation genre for the next 30 years originated in these seven films. All the tits-out buffoonery that would clog up drive-ins and top-loading VCRs in the 70's and 80's, everything from Porky's to it's inevitable hardcore-porn parody Piggy's, it all started here. Annette Funicello is the original Linnea Quigley. Wait, those proportions are way off. Umm, Annette Funicello is the original Sybil Danning, at the very least.
And so, to the beach.
Scriptwriting in the teensploitation business is a lot like punk rock. Two chords will do; three is positively extravagant. So it is with movies about horny pizza delivery boys or video game champions with glandular problems. Why bother with subplots when there are shower scenes to film? The Beach Party films, stuffed, as they were, with Disney contract players and beloved matinee stars, were not about to drop tops or bare asses, so to keep the kids and their eye-rolling moms happy, they had to rely on story. Tons of story. Reams of plot.
Pajama Party's main storyline, as far as I can tell, is Susan Hart's ass, and all the stuff that happens when she wiggles it (the caps on Dr. Pepper bottles fly off, plants wilt, marshmallows burst into flame, candles melt, etc). Her name in the film is Jilda, by the way. How could it not be? Personally, that seems like plenty story to me, and if they wanted to go with an all-Jilda booty-shake theme, I would have certainly paid my nickel (or whatever a movie ticket cost in 1964), but the overachievers behind Pajama Party supply us with no less than three major subplots to mull over while we wait around for another beach-side frug scene.
First and foremost, there's the Mars Attacks angle. The King of Mars (Frankie Avalon), sends down a numbskull named GoGo (Tommy Kirk) to kick off the Martian invasion. They sent a dumb guy first to do recon, apparently, because no one would be likely to take him seriously. He's got 24 hours to set up the teleporter, and once he does, angry red hell will be released. Minus the reanimation angle, it's not all that different than Plan 9 from Outer Space. Maybe it's Plan 8.
Don Rickles is some sort of Martian sergeant, and he thinks the whole plan is ridiculous. "What's the big idea?" He asks the all-knowing fearless leader. "What are we gonna do with a crazy planet?"
Indeed.
GoGo lands in the backyard of Aunt Wendy (the Bride of Frankenstein herself, Elsa Lanchester), and tries to convince her that he's a hostile visitor from another world, using various half-assed interstellar gadgets to prove it. Wendy just thinks he's a bad magician, and possibly a retarded nephew of hers. So that's going on.
Then there's Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and his co-ed biker gang, the Rat Pack. They decide to go to war with the volleyball team, because they've been messing up the beach with their footprints. I could've probably written that so it'd sound funnier, but facts are facts.
I suppose the sub-set of that sub-plot is Connie's (Annette Funicello) sexual frustration. She's currently dating Big Lunk (Jody McCrea), the captain of the volleyball team, and he refuses to show her any affection, physical or otherwise. Did she not notice how tight that fucker wears his shorts? He's clearly on the other team, Connie.
Finally, there's the awesomely named J Sinister Hulk (Jesse White, known to most Americans as the original Maytag Repairman). Hulk is a cigar-chomping, face-slapping conman, who rents a lavish home next door to Aunt Wendy and plots an intricate plan to swindle all the dough she's supposedly hoarding in her mattress. To achieve this goal, he's assembled a crack team of goons and bunglers, including silent-era funnyman Buster Keaton, who plays a wisecracking Injun, Chief Rotten Eagle (ok, so maybe that bit hasn't aged too well), a basketball-breasted Swedish beauty named Helga (Bobbi Shaw), and a potato-nosed stooge named Fleegle (Ben Lessy). With that sort of muscle, how could anything possibly go wrong?
Amazingly, as Pajama Party rolls on, all these loony subplots start to overlap, but not before we take a break for an (awesome) beach-side musical number byDonna Loren, radiant (yes, I said radiant) in her demure red one-piece as she belts out one of Annette's chestnuts, Among the Young. Again, this gives us ample (and I do mean ample) opportunity to watch Jilda wiggle. Song over, back to our story.
Aunt Wendy really is somebody's aunt - Big Lunk's. She's well aware that he'd rather play with the boys and their balls than with Connie, and you can see how that would bother your average fuddy-duddy in 1964, so she concocts a plan to make Lunk jealous: get GoGo to take Connie out on a date. Tromping down to the beach with the disoriented GoGo in tow, Wendy announces her plans to Connie.
"Try to look seductive," Wendy says, prompting Connie to thrust her already heaving bosom in Go-Go's direction. This would strike most men blind, but our screwy alien just starts babbling about chasing naked women and Indian dudes with tomahawks around the backyard. All that shit did just happen, but it sounds nuts coming from a kid wearing bright blue, skin-tight swimming trunks that go over his belly button.
"Psst," Connie whispers to Wendy, "I think this guy is a kook." "He's not a kook," Wendy tells her, "He's a Martian. You know, from Mars." "I think both you birds belong in a clock." Says Connie.
Then there's a musical number in the dress shop where the girls do their crazy 60's dances to the chagrin of the proper dress-maker. One of the shimmying-shes' is none other than future 'Hey Mickey' new-wave cheerleader Toni Basil, poured into a purple-metallic bikini, doing one of the most aggressive dances this side of a New Guinea cannibal tribe. It's pretty wild. Oh, and then Jilda shakes her ass some more, and a volcano explodes. Suggestive!
Not to get too bogged down in all this nonsense, but Buster Keaton and the big-titted Swede are dispatched to kidnap Big Lunk at the same time Von Zipper and the gang decide to stomp him. GoGo, however, is wearing Lunk's signature red baseball cap, resulting in a case of mistaken identity that causes a city-wide riot, complete with howlingly bad rear-projection car-chase scenes, sped-up motorcycle hijinks, guys crossing the street holding ladders and plate glass, all that nutty stuff.
Later on Helga is dispatched to seduce Big Lunk. It works (seriously, it'd work on you, too), but Aunt Wendy knew he was too stupid to keep a secret, so she never told him where the money was hidden. Also, for whatever reason, Connie falls in love with GoGo, even though he's a space alien sent to destroy the planet. But then you never choose who you love, do you?
Right, so what about the goddamn pajama party, already? Hulk decides to throw one, I don't even understand why, he just does. He sends Fleegle out to find some "clean-cut American youth" to attend, and being an idiot, he invites Von Zipper and the Rat Pack, which will surely cause problems later. No matter, the party is on. There is boozing and pranks, vociferous dancing and lots of sandwiches.
And just when you think the party can't get any better, out pops Annette Funicello in a lacy white number to sing the skronking Pajama Party theme song. "Don't you know, it's the latest craze," she sings, "Having a party in your PJs!" It's a pretty great song. When it's over, some dudes throw her in the pool. Does she freak out and ruin the evening? She does not. She laughs. Anything goes at a pajama party, dude.
I swear to god I am totally in love with this Annette Funicello. She is clearly the coolest girl in the world. Joan Jett notwithstanding.
So then Von Zipper and his crew, dressed like the Polyphonic Spree in red robes, show up to bust up the place. The party descends into chaos. There's a disturbing, David Cronenberg-esque gag where Jilda has four legs.
Hulk seizes the opportunity to sneak into Wendy's house and search for the missing loot, but accidentally turns on the Martian teleporter. Yikes. So, how will it all end? Will the Martians show up with their death machines to rape and pillage? Maybe. But probably not. I mean, the fucking movie is called Pajama Party.
In Summation: Surely, there are those among us who feel the teenage kicks offered here are too antiquated for their modernized, digital-age sensibilities, that their boners would be better popped by skin-baring almost-porn starlets than by madly frugging Disney actresses in polka-dot bikinis. But if you're taking that sorta stance, why not just grab a copy of Forced Entry and some Crisco and a gun and a bottle of Ether and get it over with already? Girl watchers with discriminating tastes, on the other hand, are heartily encouraged to dig into the Beach Party movies and soak up the sun, fun, and killer curves. I'm not saying that Pajama Party will change your life - I don't know you, man, and the odds are, you're already too far gone - but it certainly has it's powers. New hope for the wretched, that kinda thing.
After the Party: Well, considering the movie is, as of this writing, 45 years old, a good portion of the cast are now dead. Not Don Rickles, though. I saw him in Atlantic City last year, and he was as funny as ever. He said I looked like a German U Boat captain. I dunno what that means, but the bottom line is, Rickles is still the balls. Annette and Frankie kept the beach parties rolling for another few years and then went their separate ways. They made a glorious comeback in 1987 with Back to the Beach, but Annette was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis soon after, and she hasn't acted since. Currently, she's doing charity work and has her own perfume business. Frankie I'm pretty sure I saw at the Saint Whoever festival down the street a few months ago. I live in a Portuguese neighborhood, they have big parties, I think he was singing on the street. It was either him or Frankie Valli. Either way, he's doing alright.
Tommy Kirk got sacked by Disney not long after his appearance here, amidst rumors that he was gay. I knew something was up with those shorts. After that, Tommy battled the bottle for awhile. I don't know whether or not that had anything to do with his choice of movie roles over the years, but he's done some pretty incredible z-movie work, appearing in everything from Al Adamson's patchwork disaster Blood of Ghastly Horror (1972) to Fred Olen Ray's Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995). Obviously, Tommy sounds like an awesome dude to hang out with.
Director Weiss (RIP) did a ton of television, included the ill-fated Animal House-inspired sitcom Delta House(1979). He died of natural causes in his 80's in New Mexico. I should be so lucky. Toni Basil wrote the cheerleader song. She teaches dancing now. She's on VH-1 every five minutes going "Pop...and lock!" Donna Loren made a bunch of great records and was the Dr Pepper girl for awhile. And what of the sultry, volcano-erupting Susan Hart? Well, Jilda stuck around for the whole Beach Party run and then left the acting business. She was a country western singer for a while, and then she joined the ice capades. Current location is unknown, but wherever she is, I am sure she still makes soda bottles pop whenever she wiggles.
I suppose, given the cultural barometer of the times, that it made sense, this comical name-giving that Loose Screws presents us with. After all, the mid 80's was a time when idiotic names were willfully accepted, when it was perfectly ok to call yourself Nikki Sixx, Blackie Lawless, or Jizzy Pearl. But I feel you should be forewarned, as these are truly moronic waters we will be navigating today. Here, then, is a smattering of character names in Loose Screws: Hugh G Rection, Marvin Eatmore (he's the fat one, haha!) Nikki Nystroke, Tracey Gratehead, Hilda Von Blow, Mona Lott. If you can hang with that sort of company, then let us proceed.
Case in point: the first breast-baring in Loose Screws occurs a mere 26 seconds into the film, which may be some sort of record. The opening credits roll out a montage of fun-loving hijinks courtesy of our four main mischief makers: Blonde alpha-jerk Steve Hardman (Lance Van Der Kolk, whose real name sounds equally phony-baloney), zany cocksman Brad Lovett (Bryan Genesse), mad tinkerer Hugh G Rection (Alan Deveau, Screwballs), and fat-ass Marvin Eatmore (Jason Warren). It's the last day of school at Beaver High (ahem) and they spend it mostly harassing women. Life seems pretty sweet until their Bill Murray-esque principal informs the four young troublemakers that they'll be spending the next three months in summer school. "A college for morons," he tells them.
Off they go. For condemned men, they seem pretty happy about it, zipping down the road in a convertible laughing and carrying on. I guess they really are morons.
The boys arrive at summer school - Coxwell Academy, natch - and start pulling pranks immediately. The first bus full of students pulls in, so the fellas pretend to be doctors and perform breast exams on the girls, until the fat one - who's been hiding in a closet - has an intimate encounter with a skeleton, which sends the girls screaming naked through the halls. It's up to Principal Arsenault (Mike McDonald, Oddballs) to straighten these fuckers out. Meanwhile, in saunters the sexy new French teacher, Mona Lott (Cynthia Belliveau, Goofballs), lighting fires under both Arsenault and the boys. There, in a nutshell, is our plot: who gets to bang Mona, the stuffy principal, or one of the smart-ass kids?
You can sorta understand their preoccupation with the woman, since everything she says is soaked in porn innuendo. This is what tells the kids in French class:
Lott's dirty mouth notwithstanding, there are plenty of other fleshly distractions at Coxwell, so the guys decide to start a get-laid competition. Mona Lott is the big prize, netting a cool hundred points, but there's a myriad of ways to rack up the numbers as the summer wears on. For example, the female students all live in a giant dormitory room where they cavort in tiny underwear, smoke weed constantly, and fiddle with vibrators. Brad decides to infiltrate this nest of vagina by dressing in mall-brat drag and pretending he's a new student, Bradine. He moves into the girls' dorm and starts hunting for half-blind bi-curious co-eds to seduce, eventually ending up taking a bath with a near-sighted cutie who mistakes his penis for a rubber duck. It's pretty creepy.
Eatmore takes an aerobics class. Rection stuffs his pants with Kleenex. Hardman takes French lessons with Mona, but garbles her commands and jumps into the shower with her, causing her to chase him, naked, out of the house.
Later on, Hardman meets a top-heavy redhead named Claudia (Stephanie Sulik) and gives her tennis lessons. And by lessons, I mean he fucks her in the dirt. Turns out she's the principal's wife, so that gets sticky. Rection invents some formula that makes swimsuits melt. Obviously, he tries this out during the girls' swim class. Lovett glues on a Fu Manchu mustache, adopts a Chinese restaurant waiter accent, and gives Mona Lott a massage. She freaks. Then the fat kid tries his hand at Lott-seduction by crawling around in the air vents above the girls' locker room and spying on her as she undresses. Does he come crashing down from the ceiling in a rain of dust and plaster? Yes.
Afterwards, the guys go to a bar and watch a wet t-shirt contest, followed by a 'best ass' contest, followed by a whipped cream bikini contest. That takes up a good chunk of time. Then, of course, they get expelled, which brings us to the expected revenge-driven climax. Hint: it involves Marijuana and hidden camera footage. Don't they all?
And yes, at the end, you finally get to see Lott's Frenchy floppers. And even though they're bathed in an eye-wrenching red glow, they still look pretty spectacular.
in 1964, especially if you were a teenager. The Beach Party movies offered nearly as many boner-popping moments, only they were slathered in so much good-natured, wholesome, all-American fun that mom and dad had zero problems dropping the kids off for an afternoon of sun, sand, and 
hit the screens, dance numbers had somehow devolved into all-nude under-aged gang-gropes in the boy's locker room, and 
