Pacific Banana (1981)

Directed by John Lamond
Starring Graeme Blundell, Robin Stewart, Luan Peters, Deborah Gray
Rated R
Australia

"Are you two-timing me?"
"Yes, of course I am."

Although they've had very little play in the States over the years, Australia has produced its fair share of Boob Cinema. Most notable was 1973's Alvin Purple, starring muppet-faced Graeme Blundell. A classic male sex fantasy, Purple follows the antics and buffoonery of the titular character, a bungling numbskull blessed with neither looks or personality and yet, he's irresistible to women everywhere. This sort of wish-fulfillment premise occasionally showed up in US films as well, but usually the protagonist had to drink a magic potion or sell his soul to the devil. Not in Australia, mate. Down there, ugly dudes don't need no magical powers to pull the birds. They just fockin' pull 'em.

Alvin Purple spawned a sequel and a television series and laid the groundwork for many a tits-out Aussie romp. Fast forward a decade, and folks still couldn't get enough of Blundell's aw-shucks accidental cocksman, and so, Pacific Banana, an Alvin Purple in reverse sorta riff that borrows heavily from that classic Brit-com conceit: the guy whose dick doesn't work.

Martin (Blundell) is a pilot for Blandings Airlines. That's the good news. The bad news is, he suffers from a very particular form of erectile dysfunction. Every time he starts to get amorous with a woman, he sneezes and blows his load. It's a pretty revolting development. When the boss's wife, Lady Blandings (Audine Leith) attempts to seduce him during a private flight, she's thwarted by his wet noodle, so she has him fired. Since similar circumstances have hobbled many a Blandings pilot, Sir Harry Blandings (Alan Hopsgood) shows Martin a little kindness and gets him a co-pilot gig at Banana Airlines, the absolute bottom-scrapers at the Melbourne airport.

Paul (Robin Stewart, Get Crazy), the captain of Banana Airlines' flagship plane, the Pacific Banana, has the exact opposite problem as Martin: he can't stop banging women. When we meet him, he's in bed with a purring Swedish chick while he talks his way out of it on the phone with his fiancés, sexy stews Mandy (Alyson Best) and Sally (Deborah Gray, who also wrote the amazing theme song).

He's somehow engaged to both of the Banana's stewardesses. Is that illegal in Australia? Could be, they're pretty manly down there.

After getting molested by a big-breasted woman who gives him a ride to the airport, Martin meets Paul and his horny gang and sees what he'll be flying for now on. The Pacific Banana is a battered, bright yellow propeller plane that flies from Australia to various island paradises, including Tahiti. "The Spirit of '35" is painted on the nose, which is not very comforting in 1980. As Martin straps in for his first flight, Paul asks him if he's scared. He shakes his head.
"Well, you ought to be," winks Paul. As the plane starts up, Martin looks out the window to see the mechanic on the tarmac praying.

Mandy and Sally wear yellow dresses with slits that go up to their waists. Before the plane takes off, they struggle to secure all the overhead baggage, offering the perfect view for the wrinkly old men and pervy priests on board to ogle them. Meanwhile, our narrator, Martin's fairy godfather, chuckles maniacally on the soundtrack. I'm not sure why we need a narrator, but the whole set-up is pretty awesomely creepy.

I should mention the subplot here. Sir Harry's teenage daughter Julia (Helen Hemingway, who was pushing 30 at the time) stows herself away on every Banana flight. She's attempting to run away from home. Although her disguises and hiding places are relatively clever (an old biddy, a coffin) she continually gets caught, and Martin hands her over to whatever counts as authority on the various islands they land in. The assumption is that this will all lead up to something later, because she serves no real purpose for 95% of the film's running time.

After Paul nips off to have sex with the stews, and after Martin is through tying up Julia and calming down a hysterical, matronly passenger by massaging her giant breasts (it's the only thing that will get her to stop screamining) the bedraggled crew finally gets to its first destination, Tahiti. While there, Paul tries to cure Martin's problem by taking him to an exotic brothel called the House of Joy, where the ladies offer their customers bizarre scenarios like 'The Missionary' (they have sex in a boiling pot), or "The Tarzan' (I think monkeys are involved). Martin is clearly not built for this sort of sex-play. He opts for the rather pedestrian sex-on-a-waterbed option, but sneezes before they can get to business.

Paul is then obliged to bang the island girl himself. Then he goes back to his bungalow and bangs his two fiancés/employees. Paul's fuck-everything routine gets pretty tiresome after awhile.

The following day, Paul sits in the Banana Airlines offices, plotting his next sexual conquest. In stomps Candy Bubbles (Hammer horror hottie Luan Peters) in a low-cut blue dress that accentuates her ample bosom.
"Oh, Christ," says Paul. You will, too.
"Yes, I know they're big," she acknowledges. "Now, take a good look, so we can get down to business."
Candy wants to use the Pacific Banana as the go-to charter plane for her hedonistic resort, Club Candy. Paul agrees - how could he not? - and soon enough, the Banana is packed to the rafters with young nubiles looking for an exotic week in the tropics.

What with all those women on board, you'd expect something sexy to happen. But just when you least expect it, a banana cream pie fight breaks out on the plane. This goes on at least twice as long as usual, so apparently Australians think food fights are uproarious.

After a lengthy cleanup, everyone ends up at Club Candy. Having overheard Martin's troubles on the plane (the two pilots never seem to notice the loudspeaker is on when they talk about sex), Candy offers to help him. She lets him loose in a pile of naked girl-flesh with a paintbrush and they all get squishy creating body-art.

At first it appears to be working, but then he sneezes, and the fun is over. Determined to crack this nut, Candy sends her girls in wave after wave to Martin's room to get a rise out of him. There's a fraulein in leather, a two-girl combo and even a brunette in the bathtub, but nothing works.

Candy realizes, with some amount of trepidation, that she's going to have to handle this one herself.
"For his sake, I will perform the ritual of the sleeping giant," she announces.
"Oh no," squeaks one of the girls. "If it gets out of control, every man on the island will be driven mad with lust!"
"Believe me, I know how risky it is," she says, somberly. "Pray for us both."

The ritual involves dudes playing conga drums blindfolded while Candy does a strip dance in front of Martin. By the way, Luan Peters' may have the most perfect set of double-Ds since Supervixen herself, Shari Eubank. And that's saying something. Those are some prime 70's tits, and it's no wonder that the whole island goes bananas when she starts shaking them around. The islanders all start fucking in the sand, trees topple over, and a volcano erupts. But does the dance work for Martin? And what does all of this have to do with our plucky teenage stowaway?

Hey man, that's for me to know and you to find out. Although it's all pretty obvious.

Pacific Banana is never quite as funny as you'd like it to be, even though it tries, desperately, to make you laugh, with every grown-worthy sex-com gag in the book. On the other hand, the women are frequently naked and uniformly gorgeous, in that understated, well-built Aussie sort of way, the scenery is incredible, and the atmosphere is so warm and sunny you practically need to slather on sunblock just to watch it. So I'm not complaining.

PS: Makes an obvious companion piece to the loopy Party Plane.

More Bananas?
25 or so years later, and most of the cast and crew are all still alive, kicking, and making movies. It takes a lot to kill Australians.

Clip: Pacific Banana trailer!

Availability: Pacific Banana is available on DVD.

-Ken McIntyre

Screwballs (1983)

Directed by Rafal Zielinksi
Starring Alan Deveau, Linda Speciale, Peter Keleghan
Rated R
Canada

"Don't look now, but I think Paul is masturbating!"
"Well, make him stop."
"I can't. He's using my hand."

I didn't know, going in to this project, that I'd spend this much time with Canadians, never mind Canucks with screwy names like Rafal. Honestly, this Mr. Zielinski is personally responsible for so many teenage hijinks that they ought to name a high school after him. Screwballs, however, may just be his masterpiece. Written by insanely prolific cheese-dealer Jim Wynorski (Chopping Mall, Big Bad Mama II) and produced, on the cheap, for Roger Corman, Screwballs is one the greatest T&A movies ever made, a no-budget Porky's rip-off that throws every teensploitation cliché imaginable into the mix in an artless hodgepodge of boozing, pranks, and bouncing boobs.

It helps to know that Screwballs is supposed to take place in the 60's. Of course, Zielinski had no budget, so besides a couple loaned-for-the-afternoon shots of vintage cars, he relies mostly on Brylcreem and scarves to pull off the illusion. It doesn't really work, and, despite its premise, Screwballs screams 1983 just as loudly as Joysticks does. You'd think this would be a detriment to the film, but it's really not. In fact, it just adds a weird, costume-party-gone-wrong vibe to the already loony proceedings.

The film opens with two girls putting up a sign (for a 69 cent special, of course) in front of a restaurant while a giant hot dog hits them in the ass and a cardboard chef laughs maniacally. Then we see a bunch of kids riding twelve at a time in 50's-era convertibles to Taft & Adams high school. I've never seen kids so fuckin' psyched to be going to class. Zielinski's go-to creep Alan Deveau (Loose Screws, Recruits) runs a blow-up fuck doll up the flagpole before the opening credits even finish rolling, which must be some kind of record.

It takes quite some time before anything even resembling a plot comes into focus. The first half-hour or so of Screwballs is dedicated to your typical teen-sex-com gags, but what makes these groaners remarkable is that Zielinski repeated several of 'em almost verbatim - with some of the same actors, even - in Loose Screws, two years later. These include the wise-ass kid pretending to be a doctor ("Dr. Pepper", naturally) to give girls breast exams, and the sexy, hot-to-trot French teacher turned on by her own tongue-rolling.

Throw in evil, bosomy cheerleaders (with "T&A" emblazoned on their cheer-blouses) tormenting Melvin Jerkoffski, the school's resident fat buffoon/ice cream salesman ("Thanks, Melvin. I would've gone crazy if I didn't get something in my mouth.") and a bunch of stuff you hardly believe you're even seeing - one kid, who wears tape on his glasses, actually slips on a banana peel and lands face-first into a plate of mashed potatoes - and you've got the perfect recipe for a braincell-frying evening.

Eventually, five of the school's biggest, erm, screwballs end up in detention together. There's Howie (Deveau), busted for hiding under a flight of stairs to catch some upskirt action, Jerkoffski (Jason Warren, Loose Screws), caught masturbating (imagine that!) in the freezer, Tim (Jim Coburn), the new transfer student from Idaho, busted for accidentally wandering into the girl's locker room, Brent (Kent Deuters), the popped-collar golden boy, nabbed for forcing a girl to fellate the Eiffel tower in French class, and Rick (Peter Keleghan) who...well, he's Dr. Pepper. Over an afternoon of frog-sorting (as punishment, they have to separate the male and female frogs in biology class), they make a pact: by homecoming, one of them has to see Purity Bush (scrumptious Linda Speciale), T&A High's last virgin, in the nude. Or at least topless. Let the mayhem begin.

Purity is a strange character, a vain and manipulating girl who acts the goggle-eyed innocent in front of authority figures, but who also humps her life-sized teddy bear at night, and mercilessly teases any cock pointed in her direction. She's actually pretty despicable, but with her gravity-defying rack and adorable button-nose, your average high school boy really doesn't have a chance.'

New guy Tim tries first, and takes the direct route, creeping into Purity's bedroom window during the dead of night. Unfortunately he crawls into the wrong bed and ends up making out with Purity's always-horny mom June (Heather Smith, Pink Chaquitas) before dad shows up, wielding a shotgun.

Weirdo Howie attempts wooing her using hypnosis, ropes, and the giant inflatable hot dog from the opening scene, but it backfires on him and the girl's swim team, pretending to be under his mind-control, chase him down and beat him. He does get the last laugh, however: when they chase him all the way to the end of the swimming pool's diving board, he manages to snatch a couple bikini tops on his way down.

By the way, that's one of Screwballs' greatest strengths - Zielinksi lets no potential boner go unpopped. Every single scene has something titillating going on. I mean, what high school would issue skimpy blue bikinis as a standard swimming class uniform? I know Canada's always been more liberal than the US, but that shit is almost Scandinavian. Also, all the supposedly stuffy teachers, from the tightly-wound librarian (Carolyn Tweedle, Oddballs, Loose Screws, Recruits) to the sly-eyed biology teacher Sarah Bellum (Jan Taylor, Meatballs III), are all hot 20-somethings in disguise, like the before-girls in heavy metal videos. And, in Miss Bellum's case, like the after-girls, as well.

Anyway, the fellas go the drive-in (the marquee promises Italian chicks in chains flick The Big Bust Out and "Wild Women of Wango", but the film playing appears to be '74 Pam Grier warrior-girl flick The Arena). Tim, clearly over this Purity bullshit, makes time with the awesomely named Bootsie Goodhead (Linda Shayne, Humanoids from the Deep, Graduation Day), who suggests they play 'Hide the salami'. He agrees, but halfway through, notices Brent in the next car over sipping champagne with Tim's younger sister. Furious, he confronts Brent in his boxers. Meanwhile, poor Bootsie's skirt is caught in the car door, leaving her stuck with her tits splayed across the window. So, that's fun.

Jerkoffski has a cockamamie plan to bury himself in the sand at the beach in the spot where Purity sunbathes everyday. The idea is use a straw in an empty coke can as a sort of periscope to peep her heaving mams as she soaks up the rays. He gets close, but then she flicks away the straw, nearly killing him.

Brent doses the punch with Spanish Fly during a classroom party (to celebrate the school's new airplane repair shop?), but everyone but Purity gulps it down, resulting in a student/teacher sex orgy involving everyone except for Purity and Brent. By the way, although he is never seen actually playing, Brent carries his tennis racket for the entire movie. He never even makes reference to it, he just carries it around. What a screwball.

And then, out of nowhere...strip bowling! The jiggling is pretty incredible in this. Howie gets his dick caught in one of the balls, so the girls lick his face until he cums so hard the ball flies off and he scores a strike. Clearly, a Hall of Fame scene. Even better, it has nothing to do with the plot and doesn't move the story along at all. Zielinski and/or Wynorski just thought it would be awesome to have girls bowl in their bra and panties. And they were so fuckin' right.

Rick is the last member of the Detention Club to take a crack at Purity. He dresses up in drag and pretends to be a substitute sewing class teacher. Of course, he'll have to take the girls' measurements, so they'll need to take their tops off. Like the rest of the idiots, he is thwarted at the last moment. Explosions and wheelchairs are involved.

Later that night, the boys head off a strip club to nurse their bruised egos. Amazingly, Russ Meyer girl Raven De La Croix (Up!) is performing. Even better, Principal Stuckoff (Donnie Bowes, Oddballs) is at the club, as well. He dances with a topless Raven and the boys snap a picture, effectively ending any chance of getting a detention ever again. They continue their reverie over breakfast at the local diner. When Howie tells his waitress, Rhonda Rockett (Terrea Smith, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders) that he didn't order any sausage, she tells him "No problem," plucks it off his plate, and deepthroats it. For no reason. Just because. A fantastic evening by anyone's standards but alas, still no Purity boob sightings.

Will homecoming come and go with nary a peek at those ripe beauties?

Oh no, you get to see 'em. In fact, they're splattered all over the end credits. I'm not going to show them to you - you'll have to hunt Screwballs down yourself - but I will tell you this: they're real, and they're spectacular.

One of the all-time great teen sex coms, up there with immortals like The Cheerleaders, H.O.T.S., and Hardbodies, Screwballs is a non-stop boner fest. It may be the greatest thing a Canadian has ever done. Well, this and that time Thor bent a steel bar in his teeth. Certainly, it's in that arena.

More Screws, More Balls
Rafal repeated himself shamelessly with Loose Screws (1985) and made a fistful of teen romps before ditching the genre for horror (Hangman's Curse, 2005) and gritty indie drama (Age of Kali, 2007). Doesn't matter though, he could've quit the business in 1984 and he'd still be a King of Sex for his amazing work here. We wish him a long and fruitful life/career and anxiously await Screwballs III. As for the cast, they were all in every other Canadian teen-com of the 80's. At this point, I imagine they are watching hockey, drinking beer, and visiting the doctor for free.

As for the gorgeous Speciale, she did very little acting after this. Great news, though: she recently made an appearance as the 'sexy neighbor' (naturally) in an episode of the consistently balls-out TV drug-drama Breaking Bad. Let's hope it's only the first leg on her comeback trail.

Availability: Screwballs is available on VHS, and is fairly screaming for a DVD release.

-Ken McIntyre

Dutch Girls (1985)

Directed by Giles Foster
Starring Colin Firth, Tim Spall, Bill Paterson
Rated R
UK

"Suit yourself, but I think you're being a right twat."
"I don't give a fish's tit what you think."

Masterpiece Theater meets Porky's (sorta) in this drowsy Brit teen-com about a high school field hockey team from jolly old England who travel to Holland for a championship match and, with any luck, bang some hot Dutch chicks. From the beginning, it is quite obvious that director Giles Foster is well above tawdry ass-hunts - his name alone should tell you that much - so Dutch Girls looks like something completely different than what it's supposed to be. The photography is lush, the editing subtle, the acting proper and buttoned-up, with lots of "Tut-tuts" and "Cheerios". I'm sure this all works quite well on an episode of BBC Playhouse, but it's murder in a teen sex comedy.

It is somewhat alarming to see a lot of the well-known Brit actors in Dutch Girls as young men, particularly crooked-nosed villain Tim Spall (Sweeney Todd, The Last Hangman), who portrays Lyndon, the resident obnoxious slob, and Colin Firth (Bridget Jones' Diary) as Neil Truelove, the handsome, pensive one. Firth's acting style in this is very odd - he spends every scene looking at the floor and sighing, as if he's missed his last three doses of Prozac and is slipping into a deep, black depression. Truelove is our protagonist, such as it is. He and his motley assortment of prep-school pals head off to the Netherlands in a train and then a boat, trying their best to raise hell and hackles along the way. All they really do is gargle booze and chain smoke, though.

They finally arrive in Holland, where everybody is sent to various host homes for the week - Lyndon and Neil are stuck rooming together in the home of a prim and proper couple appalled (as you will be) with Lyndon's boorish behavior, i.e. puking, shitting, eating with his mouth open, and wandering around the house in a fur coat and bikini underwear.

Neil, of course, sighs wistfully and stares out the window. The next day during hockey practice, he meets a moon-faced blonde named Romelia (Gusta Gerriston) under a sun-soaked tree. She invites him and his friends to a disco that evening.

The disco has about five people in it. It's got fake wood paneling for walls and all the girls are homely. I'm not sure they planned for it to look so pathetic. I think they just picked a seriously low-rent disco to shoot in. Anyway, Romelia tries to draw Neil out of his shell, but no dice. She takes him home and makes him coffee and takes off her sweater to entice him (not her shirt, mind you, just her sweater), but he still won't bite. So she dumps him back at the house, where he walks in to find Lyndon passed out on the sofa, with a fresh pile of puke steaming away on the rug. This is all supposed to be funny, I think.

The team's coach, a pretentious loudmouth named Mole (Bill Paterson), decides to take the fellas on an educational field trip to the Van Gogh museum, but he takes a wrong turn somewhere and they end up in Amsterdam's red light district. This is the first time we actually get to see scantily clad girls in this dumb movie. Unfortunately it's short-lived, as Mole shoos them all out of there before anyone can bang a prostie.

And that's pretty much it. Romelia makes another disco-date with Neil, but he is sabotaged by oneof his douchebag classmates, so he misses her. They part tearfully at the bus stop the next day, Romelia sniffing, "Goodbye...Truelove..."

Seriously?

Honestly, Dutch Girls looks more like a coffee commercial than a movie. I apologize for wasting your time. I figured since it was about Dutch girls that it would have potential. Dutch girls usually put out, after all.

Dutchier Girls?
Spall and Firth are both rich and famous. Giles Foster probably has a butler named Cadbury at this point. Everybody else is acting in Agatha Christie movies, most likely.

Availability: Dutch Girls is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

Welcome to 18 (1986)

AKA Summer Release
Directed by Terry Car
Starring Courtney Thorne Smith, Mariska Hargitay, Joanne Willette
PG-13
USA

“Horses can smell fear, you know.”
“Oh yeah? Can they smell hate?”

Welcome to 18 opens with a three-girl slumber party featuring two future primetime TV stars (Courtney Thorne-Smith and Mariska Hargitay) and one girl (Joanne Willette), who’s still working on it as we speak. They did not know this in 1986, though. In 1986, they were just happy to be out of school. By the way, there's a bit in this opening scene where they pluck a goldfish out of his aquarium and plop him into a half-empty bottle of wine. Alright, I realize it’s just a gag, but I think it’s a little fucked-up. They can’t swim in wine. Miraculously, this one can, but still, what am I watching here, Make Them Die Slowly?

So anyway, these three BFFs: Lindsey (Thorne-Smith), Joey (Hargitay), and Robin (Willette), are hanging out, chugging wine, and figuring out what to do with the rest of their lives. In what seems to me like the worst idea ever, they decide to head to a dude ranch to work for the summer. Not surprisingly, it’s horrible. The ranch is littered with rich poker-playing douchebags and sleazy cowpokes, the latter of which chase the girls around when they're not shoveling horseshit or spit-shining some fucker’s boots. One notable horseback ride finds Robin being wooed by a stumpy old cowboy who tells her about the last cockfight he attended.
“Jesus,” he shudders, “There was blood and cock guts all over the place.”

Later on, during a rare break from indentured servitude, Robin runs into another teenage blonde, the skittish Talia (Cristen Kauffman, Mischief, Joy of Sex), who compliments Robin on her make-up application abilities. This film is loaded with makeup references, by the way. Perhaps Maybelline were ghost investors. Anyway, Robin sizes Talia up in a scene that throbs with accidental lesbian overtones.

“I could do things to your face,” she says, somewhat menacingly. “You wouldn't even recognize yourself.”
Talia decides she likes this odd, flamboyant girl, and she suggests that if she ever needs a place to stay and a job less manure-oriented than the dude ranch, to look her up.

After the girls’ manager, mean-assed Beulah (Micole Mercurio, who I found powerfully attractive, in a matronly sorta way) docks half their paycheck for expenses, the girls bail and take Talia up on her offer.

Talia lives in a huge lake house with a squirrely drug dealer/pimp named Roscoe (Erich Anderson). The girls, being 18 and innocent, are completely unaware of any dirty dealings, and move right in, hot-tubbing and gulping down top-shelf booze like there's no tomorrow. They get fake IDs and jobs at the casino, but all is clearly not well. Unbeknown to them, Roscoe has cameras installed in the girls’ bathroom so he can tape them showering. He has secretive conversations with shady characters and occasionally gives Talia a smack in the chops.
One morning, Talia suddenly throws them out, but she sets them up with a cheap cabin on the edge of town. While they negotiate the price, the front door falls off. The landlord takes a buck off the price. A 6 foot tall transvestite named Fuscha (Brian Bradley) lives next door, and drops by to give them some leftover pate. You think all of this would be a clear indication that it’s time to go home, but the girls roll with it. They play poker to pass the time in the grubby cabin but, lacking the funds for a proper game, bet with their make-up. Seems gross to me. Do you really want some other chick’s used lipstick?

Talia runs into them at the casino, and invites the girls to a party at Roscoe’s. She’s pretty sketchy about it, though.
“Are you sure you want to go?” She asks. “It’s going to be full of Roscoe’s friends. Older guys with lots of money.”
This is not a deterrent to the girls.

They girls get all spiffed up in gowns that they most certainly did not bring with them to the dude ranch, and head over to the party.

It takes them forever to figure it out, but once they accidentally see the tape of Joey showering, they realize it’s a sex party, and they’re being pimped by Roscoe. The cops show up and toss ‘em in jail for prostitution. Roscoe gives Talia money to bail them out, and then cries when they yell at her. They go back to the cabin and the tranny makes tea for them.
“I don’t understand why Talia would do that to us,” says Robin.
“Sometimes people get confused about who they are,” says the man in a dress.

Couple days later, Talia shows up at the cabin with her face all busted up. Robin fixes it with her magic make-up.

Pissed that Talia flew the coop, Roscoe takes Lindsey’s car as retribution, demanding the $5,000 he forked over for bail money before she can get it back. Their solution is to put a brunette wig on her and send her off to a high-stakes poker game with a bunch of the dude ranch clowns.


She manages to pull it off and they get the car back, but Talia is still being held semi-against her will, so the girls decide to launch a daring rescue mission. They wear cat burgler-esque knit hats and everything. During their break-in, the song on the soundtrack (by Randall Kirsch) goes “Someone’s going to get into this house/someone’s going to get-get-get into this house” like 57 times. It was starting to make me panic, quite frankly.
It ends in a high-speed boat chase with all the trimmings, including one of the most hilariously unconvincing exploding yachts I think I’ve ever seen.

Theoretically, I should hate Welcome to 18. It’s more of a chick-centric drama than a comedy, there’s no nudity to speak of (that’s Hargitay’s body double in the shower scene), and there appears to be some cosmetics fetish at work, given the countless close-ups of lipsticks and compacts. But despite these fairly major detriments, the film does have its strengths. The girls are adorable, the script is surprisingly sharp, and the acting, especially for such a young and inexperienced cast, is across-the-board excellent. It is neither funny nor boner popping, but it’s got pretty girls in halter tops, so I’m not complaining.

Interestingly, Welcome to 18 has garnered a small-but-fierce cult following over the decades, in part because of its blaring AOR soundtrack by a fistful of earnest unknowns like Doll Congress and Second Language. There’s no accounting for taste, man, especially in 1986.

Welcome to 19.
A goodly amount of the cast went on to do high-visibility work.

Thorne-Smith made a fortune on Melrose Place, and is currently amassing another pile of cash with the execrable, forever-running sitcom According to Jim.

Hargitay is one of the main players in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, which, as far as I can tell, is gore-porn for Christians and grandmothers.

Willette still pops up on sitcoms and hospital dramas, as does Anderson. Terry Carr worked mostly as a producer and production manager. He worked on the unforgettable 74’ TV creepfest Bad Ronald, among several other notable titles, but this was his sole directing credit. He died of a heart attack in 2005. I don’t mean to bum you out, but that’s just the way it went.

Availability: Welcome to 18 is available on VHS.

-Ken McIntyre

Lunch Wagon (1981)

AKA Lunch Wagon Girls
Come N' Get It
Directed by Ernest Pintoff
Starring Rosanne Katon, Pamela Jean Bryant, Candy Moore, Dale Bozzio, Louisa Moritz, Chuck McCann
Rated R
USA

"Why don't you two hippy freaks take that pile of shit and drive it off a fuckin' cliff?"

It is rare that a low-budget bimbosploitation flick gets so many things right, but you've got to hand it to Oscar-winning (!) director Pintoff, the dude knew his audience. There is rarely a shot anywhere in Lunch Wagon's 88 minute running time that does not involve girls in hotpants, in their underwear, or changing from one to the other. And in the odd moment when nothing is jiggling onscreen, he distracts us with that other staple of the T&A film, goofballs and buffoons. In this case, perennial 70's prat-faller Chuck McCann is on hand to rob diamonds and mug for the camera for really no other reason than to provide a few yucks between all the hip-wiggling. Pintoff also may have had his pulse on the crazy music the kids were into. This point depends entirely on whether you can handle the plastic-fantastic new wave pop of Missing Persons, since MP front-blonde Dale Bozzio is not only a featured player in the cast, but she performs one of their songs, Mental Hopscotch, no less than three times during Lunch Wagon's running time. All this, plus Louisa Moritz, Eight is Enough dad Dick Van Patten, and a banana cream pie fight. Clearly, we are in for a good time tonight.

Shannon (Playboy Playmate and Motel Hell star Rosanne Katon) and Marcy (Pamela Jean Bryant, Private Lessons) both work at Andy's Garage. They're lube job girls, so you can just imagine the endless possibilities for comedy there. Their pervy boss Andy (George Memmoli, RIP) is one of the fattest men I've ever seen in a film. As Lunch Wagon opens, he docks the girls' pay for being six minutes late, and then spies on them as they change into their uniforms.

He's sort of a dick, this Andy. Their only respite from being hit on by obnoxious customers or getting goosed by the boss is when cheery sandwich-pusher Dick Van Patten shows up to offer a cheap meal and fatherly advice. Fate intervenes when Dick's wealthy aunt dies and leaves him a bunch of dough. Giddy and feeling generous, he hands over the keys to the Lunch Wagon to his young friends and sails off to the sunset.

The girls noisily quit Andy's and strike out on their own as the new Lunch Wagon girls in town. Only problem is, neither of them can cook. Luckily, they know someone who can: Deidre (Candy Moore), a blonde body-builder/health food nut. She takes the job, but only on the condition that they serve gross organic food, like soy burgers.
"Hey man, everybody knows hotdogs are a bad scene," she says.

Clearly, this will be a hard sell, especially to construction workers, so they need a hook to pull this off. Conveniently, they're all sitting on the greatest hooks possible. They buy even shorter shorts, and get to work. Cue the 80's fix-up-the-wagon montage to yet another rendition of Mental Hopscotch.

Oh yeah, I should mention that Dale Bozzio plays a rocker chick (what else?) named Teddy. Her band, Teddy and the Ruff Riders (AKA Missing Persons incognito), are playing a local club during an amateur night contest. Winner gets $200.

Michael Mislove plays Danny Death, the club's emcee. Sometimes he wears a dress. He says stuff like: "Anybody got any cocaine? Baby laxative? Talcum powder?" Whenever there's a lull in the story, we end up back in the club to watch another amateur act, stuff like a chubby, semi-retarded older woman fitfully twirling a baton, or a two-headed acapella act called "Mister and Master Bate".

Also in the mix is McCann's flamboyant gem thief The Turtle and his bungling cohort Ralph (Vic Dunlop, one of the many fat-dudes-with-mustaches that littered drive-in movies in the 70's and 80's). They have nothing to do with anybody else, but they skulk around looking for a score nonetheless.

There's a bad guy, too. Al (Rick Podell) is a low-level schemer with a plan to...actually, I never really understood his plan, although I know it had something to do with the girls' wagon. He owns his own wagon, too. It might have been a territory issue, who knows. The important thing to know is that his girlfriend, Sunshine, is portrayed by Cuban cutie Louisa Moritz, one of the all-time greatest jiggle-girls. Sunshine likes two things: eating and fucking. At one point, after a particularly trying day of evil-doing, Al comes home in the mood for fun.
"Let's celebrate, sugar," he says to Sunshine. "You want food or sex?"
"Both," she says. And then she peels off her sheer nightie. She is an awesome girlfriend.

As I mentioned before, Lunch Wagon gets it right, man. Moritz is almost always in some state of undress. All the girls are, really. In every scene where the three leads are not actually in the wagon, they are usually lounging around in their apartment, and they are almost always in the underwear. Deidre pumps iron or exercises suggestively a lot as well, usually in bikini. It's pretty majestic.

And so, the story. The girls start their first day at a construction site. They wear hotpants and sell health food. With all the jiggling, nobody notices, and business is good. Deidre even has a chin-up bar attached to the wagon, so dudes can watch her work out while they eat. Al's wagon is run by an unpleasant woman named Bertha (Peggy Mannix), who picks a fight with her new rivals. Things quickly escalate and everybody ends up in a banana cream pie fight. Who knows where the pies came from? They just seem to appear out of nowhere in these movies. The pie fight ups the ante in the Lunch Wagon wars, so Al has his flunkies sabotage the girls' truck.

Meanwhile, the Turtle and fatso steal a diamond, but they accidentally drop it in a garbage truck. So that's going on.

It's going to cost the girls $250 to fix the wagon, money they do not have. What to do?
Well, first, they try the amateur night at the club. Marcy and Shannon do a cornball stand-up act. It does not go well. Then Deiidre comes on in a bikini and powerlifts 200 lbs. That, everybody likes.
"If anybody find a pink round thing on the floor," says Danny Death, " it's one of my nuts."
Unfortunately, the woman with the baton wins. And then Deidre punches Dale Bozzio out.

Somehow or another, the girls get the money and fix the wagon. Also, Chuck McCann and his toadie go to the garbage dump to find the diamond. Miraculously, they do. On their way of town, they get paranoid that the cops are following them, so they pull into a construction site. They spot the lunch wagon and try to get some grub but the cops show up and arrest 'em for unpaid traffic tickets, but not before Turtle stashes his diamond. And then creaky 70's comic Rose Marie shows up as Al's mom.

She barges into his house and spies Moritz scarfing down bananas.
"Who are you?" She asks.
"My name is Sunshine."
"You must be very bright," she deadpans.
Rose Marie steals the girls' wagon. The Turtle gets out of jail and goes looking for the wagon. All kinds of crazy hijinks ensue.

In summation: A classic. Unfortunately Ernie Pintoff is dead, otherwise I'd look him up and hug the dude. Boners will most certainly be popped.
Availability: Lunch Wagon is available on VHS.

Clip: Lunch Wagon trailer

-Ken McIntyre