Directed by Sam Weil (Lloyd Kaufman) Starring Jim Harris, Jennifer Hetrick, Rick Gitlin, Helen Campitelli Rated R USA Shop for this poster!
You could present a good argument that this is Troma's first "Tromatic" film. Directed by Lloyd Kaufman under an assumed name and written by his brother Charles, it looks very much like an embryonic, stripped-down version of their mid 80's mega-hits (Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, etc). Certainly the smash n' grab, cut n' run camera style is already in place, as is Troma's knack for dredging up every rubber-faced lowlife in the five boroughs and half of Jersey to mug and moon for their cameras. What is lacking is the sheer lunacy of their later work, the gutbucket gore and willful outrage. In fact, Squeeze Play's first half looks more like a test run for the cameras than any sort of finished product, as we wander aimlessly through the quietly kooky lives of a few part-time softball players/full time assholes and their hairdresser girlfriends from Springtown, New Jersey, where the winning softball team gets carte blanche to manhandle the women and generally act like half-retarded apes.
This year (this year being 1976, a year when tight denim flares were apparently very in among softball-playing yobbos), the big ballers in Springtown are (naturally) the Beavers, a gang of grabby, sexist louts led by curly-haired greasball Wes (Jim Harris). The Beavers are thrown the curveball of their collective lives when lightning-armed southern bell Mary Lou (Melissa Bell) decides she wants to join this boy's club. She pitches a near-perfect game (in a sundress and barefoot, no less) but the men treat her so miserably - pulling up her dress and taunting her until she cries - that she storms off the field in defeat.
Of course you realize, this means war. The various Beaver girlfriends form their own team. Pop (the singularly named Zachary, who may not have been too far removed from his character), a local vagrant seen swilling dollar wine at all the games, convinces the girls he can whip them in to shape. Apparently he'd been a ball player of some renown before the sauce got a hold of him. And so, the training montage happens, to the strains of a cloying, piano-driven mid-70's mush-rock track from Don Yowell about "Seeing through the stained-glass window of your mind." The girls call themselves (what else?) The Beaverettes, and schedule a game against their boyfriend-bullies. But first, they have a wet t-shirt contest. Feminism was wild stuff in the disco era, Jack.
The t-shirt contest ends up dramatically affecting most of the lead characters. A huffy Wes breaks up with his girlfriend Samantha (Jennifer Hetrick), after he sees her getting mauled by a fat bastard named Bozo (Michael Moran). Mary Lou is accosted by a Bogart-impersonating gumshoe named Koch (Tony Hoty), sent by her father to insure her virginity stay intact. After a scuffle, she breaks free and elopes with Buddy (Al Corley), who summarily attends to her virginity problem. Disco-suited Fred (Rick Gitlin), being a shy, retiring type, has so far kept his feelings for melon-chested cutie Jamie (Helen Campitelli) to himself, but that fuckin' contest pushed him over the edge, and so he ends up in a car with the now gloriously shirtless beauty. As dawn breaks, he screams to the heavens: "I'm swimming in it, a real woman!" And indeed he was.
But ultimately, all the bed hopping and daddy-thwarting must end so the Beaverettes can attend to the real business of the hour: beating the boys in a rousing game of softball. I know, that doesn't sound like the most exciting proposition to me, either. By the way, I am assuming that the cast got their fill of yogurty goodness during filming because if you look closely, empty cups of Dannon yogurt are littered on tables in every other scene. An odd choice for product placement, but you take what you can get in Tromaville.
Game highlights? I dunno man, take your pick. Is it when one girl catches a flyball with her purse? Is it the scoreboard kid reading porn, eating pizza, and peeing when no one's looking? Is it whenever one of the girls takes off their shirt to distract the boys? Or is it when the guy catches a ball with his ass?
Most people seem to go with the ass gag. There's a string on the ball. It's very Ed Wood. "They're gonna have to call for a clean ball," wisecracks the announcer. "She really cracked that one."
Squeeze Play is played much straighter than you'd expect from a Troma film, so straight it barely passes for comedy half the time. Perhaps it's just because I am not a sports fan, but I thought the half-hour long, inning-by-inning coverage of the climactic game pretty tedious, even with the odd flash of boob. Still, despite it's glacial pace and dearth of laffs, Squeeze Play was Troma's first big success, and most surely got the momentum rolling for all the nuttiness that followed. If you're at all interested in Troma's early, pre-Toxie daze...well, I'd still go with Waitress! (1982) or Stuck on You (1983), I suppose. Listen, it's better than a punch in the face, and at least you get an eyeful of Helen Campitelli's oversized sweater puffs. So whatever. Let's not dwell on it.
Directed by Mel Damski Starring Kelly Preston, Catherine Mary Stewart, Jami Gertz, Doug McKeon Rated R USA Shop for this poster!
"Girls don't have nuts. So they're fascinated by 'em."
Simple story: It's 1960(ish) in Nelsonville, a picture-perfect American suburb where the streets are so clean you can eat off 'em, and the ugliest girl in town is Jami Gertz. Jonathan (Doug McKeon) is your average teenage nebbish type, satisfied with worshipping creamy blonde goddess Marilyn (a 23 year old Kelly Preston, looking impossibly good) from afar. But then bad-boy motorbike kid Gene (Chris Nash) moves in next door. Gene ran into some trouble back in Chicago, where he was tossed out of school for various pranks and infractions, so dad has moved them here, to tiny town USA, to start over. Gene really doesn't want any trouble, so he decides to channel his lady-killer energy into getting Jon hooked up with the girl of his dreams. No easy feat, given the kid's predilection for popping uncomfortable public boners whenever Marilyn's around.
Gene's first bit of advice is to have Jon fly down a hill on his bicycle and slam it into some dude's parked DeSoto. He does, flips over, and lands on the sidewalk with blood pouring out of his mouth. Who is this Gene anyway, the fuckin' antichrist? But just then, Marilyn comes sauntering by, finds our injured hero, and attends to his wounds. He takes advantage of the situation and cops a feel, feigning delirium. Both fellas decide this was a rousing success. And I thought getting laid in the 80's was tough.
Young love is always complicated. Gene digs sparkle-eyed Bunny (Night of the Comet's Catherine Mary Stewart), but she dates Kenny (DW Brown), the town asshole. Jon is nuts for Marilyn, but she's hotsy-totsy for Gene. Gene, who wears popped collars and hair grease, assures Jon that he's gonna work all this out, so he sets up a double-date to the drive-in, where they all watch Rebel Without a Cause. As in every film ever made about this era, Kenny the asshole shows up, douses Jon with soda, and challenges Gene to a game of chicken. "Just like in the movie!" enthuses Marilyn. Nobody dies, but Gene gets his ass kicked by his dad (the Stepfather himself, Terry O'Quinn) and Kenny vows revenge. So, that went well.
That's pretty much their last patch of trouble, though. Shit works out. Jonathan, amazingly, starts dating Kelly fucking Preston, and Gene - the most benign hood since the Fonz - somehow ends up with Bunny. Cue the 'having fun together' montage to Ivory Joe Hunter's Since I Met You Baby (Freddy Fender's version is better, but sadly historically inaccurate). Everybody's happy (besides that cunt Kenny, of course), playing basketball together, riding horses, making out...you know, this town has everything, from a drive-in to stables, and it's got to be the most racially integrated town in America for 1960. Everybody gets along in this Nelsonville, and there doesn't appear to be any poverty or race riots or drugs, and even the boner kid gets to bed a fully-flowered Kelly Preston. Is this what our parents are always going on about? Is this what the early 60's were really like? No wonder they never shut up about it.
Anyway, the sex scene. Blink and you'll miss it, but Kelly shows full bush. Jonathan forgets to bring a rubber, so he says - and tell me you haven't said this/heard this too, at least once: "I'll just put it in a little. That way, nothing can happen." Of course, he does not pull out like he's supposed to. Afterwards, Marilyn mopes. "I'm sorry," Jonathan says. "I didn't mean to ruin your first time." "Honestly, Jonathan," Marilyn says, rolling her eyes, "I never said it was my first time." Hussy.
Buncha stuff happens after that. I should probably let you see it all for yourself. I will reveal this much, though: Jami Gertz takes off her glasses at the end. See that, she was fuckin' hot the whole time.
Initially, I was skeptical about Mischief, and when I say initially, I mean in 1985. 70's teens were into the 50's and 60's stuff because of Happy Days and Grease, but 80's kids were into the now, man. Parachute pants and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. "Fuck 1960", said the 1985 version of me, and soundly rejected Mischief, choosing instead to see Reanimator for the 57th time. Now I'm 40 and I realize that nothing was cool in the 80's, and the 60's - if we are going by Ohio Express, Twiggy, JFK, and Nancy Sinatra - were actually pretty cool, after all. And Mischief, even if it is a very fairytale version of the era - is very cool. Preston is the only celebrity skin on deck, but no matter, because all the performances are solid, the production design is flawless, and the soundtrack is smoking: Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent...and Tab Hunter! Awesome. Director Damski...don't worry about that guy. He's still plenty busy doing TV stuff. Kelly Preston married a Scientologist (gross) but was in From Dusk Til Dawn (cool) and Metalstorm 3D,(awesome) so whatever. Jami Gertz is around. Catherine Mary Stewart really should've been a cult star, given Night of the Comet and this one, but she's pretty much avoided genre work ever since. If you're looking for her, she's probably shooting a Canadian TV movie.
The dudes...I don't really pay attention to dudes.
In summation: I got to see Kelly Preston's vagina today. Thanks, Mel Damski!
Availability:Mischief is available on DVD from Anchor Bay. It's also available for rental from Netflix. Buy Mischief on Amazon. -Ken McIntyre
Directed by Chuck Vincent Starring Jeanne Marie, Alan Fisler, Veronica Hart, Jamie Gillis Rated R USA Shop for this poster!
"Comrade, you must succeed on this mission. Even if it costs you your virginity."
Can you spoof a spoof? 1982's Young Doctors in Love was a gag-stuffed, Airplane-esque satire of hospital-themed soap operas, ala General Hospital. Directed by sitcom legend Garry Marshall, the modestly successful film was a minor blip in the pantheon of spoof films, but appeared to be sufficiently inspirational to hardcore-gone-soft cheese-churner Chuck Vincent. Most of Marshall's plot points are used here - the doctor/nurse with a secret, the illicit supply-room trysts, the bumbling mobsters - but, as you might expect, given Vincent's resume, the emphasis is on sexy hijinks.
When you consider that the Cold War didn't really end until 1989, the premise of this one isn't really that far-fetched: at an otherwise low-rent American hospital, there exists a world-famous collection of frozen semen samples. Said samples were collected from various geniuses (Howard Hughes, Picasso, Thomas Edison...ok, so it is pretty far-fetched). The USSR, lagging behind the US in science and technology, wants to steal the samples, so that they may breed their own army of super-geniuses. A Russian spy is dispatched to work undercover as a nurse to snatch the vials and bring 'em back to the motherland. Meanwhile, having caught wind of the nefarious plot, the FBI place a handsome young spy to pose as a doctor and nab the faux-nurse in the act of jizz-robbery.
Along the way, of course, there's the usual gang of idiots and porn stars to contend with. This one's got more high-profile sex stars in substantial roles than usual. There's Annie Sprinkle as a perpetual boob-job patient being stalked by a creepy German morgue attendant, Jamie Gillis as a booze and drug-hoovering reconstructive surgeon in charge of giving a cigar-chomping mob boss a new face, and Veronica Hart as head nurse Francesca, the only approaching-sane character in this whole motley crew.
All of this is incidental to what this film is really all about: people running down hospital corridors, knocking each other over. That, and screeching. There isn't one segment in this film that doesn't involve one of the nurses yelling about something, usually in a half-assed foreign accent of some kind. Ah, but the jokes! Young Nurses in Love is packed with 'em. Half the jokes don't even make sense, though. Here's an example:
"We're out of syringes." "Did you try the deli?"
There's a lot of moments like that.
Yes, but will boners be popped? Most assuredly, although not as many as you'd think. Nurses in mini-skirted uniforms are always welcome, and there's plenty of them on display here. When undercover Russkie Ellis (Jeanne Marie) first receives her curve-hugging uniform, she complains to Nurse Francesca that she's been given an "Extra-small". "That's right, honey," Francesca tells her, "One size fits all." Aside from the obvious appeal of mid 80's jiggle-bunnies poured into porno-nurse outfits, though, there's actually very little bared skin. Marie strips down for a tame sex scene with Dr. Reilly (Alan Fisler), and Veronica Hart lets loose her tea-cup shaped floppies during a comical sexcapade with a doctor, but there are otherwise very few flashes of nudity.
So, what's the appeal here, if any? Well, the performances are generally pretty good, especially for a haphazard cast full of sex stars and amateurs. Gillis and Hart, in particular, are both very funny in their roles. Gillis saunters around like a greaseball Foster Brooks, and Hart is clearly channeling her inner Lucy. Also good is Beth Broderick as Putnam, yet another Russian spy disguised as a nurse, only this one's got a thick Soviet accent and a mile-long mean streak. There's a scene where she barrels down the hallway, knocking passerby to the floor as she goes, that rivals the Terminator for sheer macho swagger. I don't know why a Russian would be named Putnam, or why all the KGB spies in this film are California blondes, but I don't suppose that matters in Vincent's plastic-fantastic world. The soundtrack is also pretty swell, filled with catchy power-pop songs by a handful of seriously obscure bands like Zen for Primates and Buzzard Luck, and the economical running time - 82 minutes, including five minutes of slowly scrolling end-credits - means it's in and out of your radar before all the yelling and pratfalls start to shred your nerves.
Young Nurses in Love was produced right in the middle of Chuck Vincent's R-rated run. He followed this one up with Wimps a few months later, dragging most of Nurses' cast and crew with him. Jamie Gillis, by the way, appeared in 30 films in 1986. 29 of 'em required his penis. Jamie Gillis had sex with more women in one year than most people do in a lifetime. That fucker deserves a round of applause. Beth Broderick, who appeared in a handful of Vincent's films, including Sex Appeal (1986), Student Affairs (1987), and Slammer Girls (1987), eventually carved out a decent television career, and is probably best known as Aunt Zelda from the Sabrina, the Teenage Witch TV show.
Everybody else either continued to fuck for money or went off and did something more productive. Sometime after the 1980's, the bottom dropped out of the nursing industry, so young sexy blondes generally choose a different line of work, leaving hospital visits mostly boner-free these days. So I'd avoid getting sick, if you can.
Directed by Chuck Vincent Starring Dennis Drake, Steven Holt, Peter Brady Reardon, Cindy Manion Rated R USA Shop for this poster!
"I'm very big on oral." "Well, you do have a big mouth."
I suppose there may be those among us unfamiliar with the term "preppies". It was a popular term-of-derision in the late 70's and early 80's, an accusatory slur aimed at people who attended private, "preparatory" universities. 'Preps' carried themselves with maximum snoot. They talked through their teeth in a halting huff and snorted whenever po' folks were around. The classic preppy look included a sweater wrapped around the shoulders, golf clothing in pastel colors, loafers, possibly a visor. Whether anyone actually wore these clothing combinations anywhere besides goofy movies like this is a mystery to me, as I have never known anyone that would fall into the preppy category. I barely even know any college graduates. In 1980, a satirical prep-guide, "The Preppy Handbook", hit the humor racks at bookstores and somehow became a smash hit. As legend has it, many did not care that the book was meant as a goof, and embraced it's fashions, fads, and upper-crusty notions, eventually resulting in a mini-cultural movement of people who were actually proud to call themselves preppies. Again, who the fuck knows. They say there really were 'valley girls' back then as well, but I don't remember any. All of this shit might have happened in California. Seems like a likely place for it. At any rate, in the 80's, any half-assed cultural movement would end in a bad b-movie - See Breakin'(1984), Thrashin' (1986), and Joysticks (1983) for three perfect examples - and so, 1984's Preppies, the final word on rich assholes in Izod Lacoste shirts.
Preppies was directed by Chuck Vincent, which should tell you a couple things right off the bat. First, lower your expectations. This is not going to be nearly as good as you'd like it to be. Second, squint a little, and you'll find a stray porn star or two in the cast. Famously, Mr. Vincent began his career as a director of adult films, and when he 'graduated' to z-level sexploitation, he tended to fill the productions with his old starlets and studs. That is certainly the case here, with veteran pipe-layer Jerry Butler in a small-but-vital role as elusive soap opera star Dick Foster, and a smattering of 80's goo-girls (Tish Ambrose, Sharon Kane, Annette Heinz) playing exotic dancers. The rest of the cast is made up mostly of first (and for most, only) time actors, which will become painfully obvious pretty quickly.
Our saga opens with three preppies - Chip (Dennis Drake), Bayard (Steven Holt) and Mark (Peter Brady Reardon, who really should've just used his own hilariously preppy-esque name) - getting a lecture from Chip's tennis-obsessed dad. Seems they've got exams coming up, and if Chip passes, he inherits the family's $50 million dollar fortune. If he doesn't, he's out on his ass, and his weird sexual deviant brother Blackwel (Leonard Haas) gets the motherlode.
Blackwel, by the way, is introduced to us in a scene straight out of Caligula, with dominatrixes, dog collars, topless stoned chicks, the works. It's pretty nuts. Blackwel is well aware of this situation, so on the weekend before exams, he dispatches a quartet of local party girls to seduce and distract Chip and the boys. It's not the world's hardest sell, as the prep-molls are strictly cold fish. About the most the fellas get from their girlfriends is when Margot (Hollywood Hot Tubs' own Katt Shea, in a very unconvincing blonde bob wig) strips naked and mashes her boobs against a glass door, allowing Mark to slobber on the other side. So, you know, they are certainly open to new options.
Oh, another thing about Chuck Vincent movies that you should probably know: there's always too many characters. Chuck is not happy unless there's half a dozen thinly written players jammed into the frame. I am surely baiting tedium here, but we must mention the good-time girls, since they are, after all, the film's real protagonists. There's Roxy (Nitchie Barrett), Jo (toothy, statuesque blonde Cindy Manion, instantly recognizable from Toxic Avenger), Tip (Kate Stelletello), and Suzy (Jo-ann Marshall). With the exception of Suzy, who is clearly the voice of reason, there is no nuance or affect that differentiates one of these characters from another; they are simply a bunch of girls who like driving around in a customized van and will, if you offer them $20,000, attempt to seduce some high-faluting jokers, even though they kinda-sorta hate preppies.
The girls attempt to snag their men, first by dressing up as waitresses at a country club and later as hot-to-trot stoner chicks at a disco ("This is erotic!" Jo squeals, as the six of them huddle in a men's room stall, smoking a joint and listening to other guys pee), but neither ruse works. Then they bait Suzy with the promise of a date with her favorite TV star, Dick Foster, if she dresses up like a preppy and infiltrates their inner sanctum. She does, allowing the other girls to decorate the place with streamers and a "Happy Birthday Jeff" sign ("What?" Roxy shrugs. "I got it from Jeff."), strip down to lingerie, and force their reluctant prey to party. But before they can completely destroy the college boys' lives, the prep-girls show up and ruin everything. This goes on for many, many minutes, so let us cut to the chase:
Yes, boners will be popped, particularly during the scene when stuck-up Margot and Trini (Linda Wiesmeier, Joysticks, Private School, and Playboy Playmate, July '82) practice hip-thrusting together.
Will you laugh, somewhere along the way? Depends on whether you think the following is funny:
Mark, staring at Jo's tits. "I really like those." Jo: "Oh, thanks. I got them from my mother. And she got them from my grandmother." Mark: "So, they're family heirlooms!"
That's about as fuckin' funny as it gets. It has a happy ending, like they all do. The acting veers drunkenly between over the top and woefully inadequate, although all the actors are very enthusiastic, and everyone is obviously working quite hard to pull off this ludicrous premise and barely-there script. Cindy Manion, who has crazy eyes, an even loonier smile, and a manic-panic energy about her that nearly bursts right through the screen, is particularly into it here; if this is anybody's movie, it's hers. Unfortunately for the world, this film and Toxic Avenger (also 1984) are her only significant acting roles. The music is terrible (Chuck Vincent also co-wrote many of the songs), the boom mic is clearly visible in a few scenes, and although there's a goodly amount of breast-baring (this was, after all, a "Playboy Production"), there is very little sex. And it's about preppies, which is a pretty fuckin' lame premise, even for the 80's.
Availability: Preppies is available on (murky) DVD from Jef. It's also available for rental from Netflix. Buy Preppies on Amazon. -Ken McIntyre
Directed by Robert Downey Starring Stacey Nelkin, Ralph Macchio, Ron Liebman, Tom Poston Rated R USA Shop for this poster!
"You don't wet the bed, do you?" "No, I generally just piss over the side."
Up the Academy opens with a punk song: the snotty, two-chord, teen-angst anthem 'Kicking up a Fuss' by LA snarl-poppers The Blow Up. That's entirely fitting, because everything about this film is pure safety pin-in-the-cheek, middle-finger-in-the-air punk rock, from its taboo-smashing sense of humor, to the public's outright rejection of it.
Spurned on by National Lampoon's runaway success with Animal House a year earlier, Mad Magazine, then a still-vital source of social satire in the US, sensibly figured they could earn a bundle with a chaos-in-the-classroom epic of their own. Even better, they snagged iconoclastic director Robert Downey Sr. (Putney Swope, 1969; Greaser's Palace, 1972) to direct it, adding an air of street-cred and subversive cool to the project. Furthermore, it's two writers, Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses, were both veterans of the Golden Globe-winning Bob Newhart Show, one of the funniest and most well-written television shows of the era. For all intents and purposes, Up the Academy should have been every bit as good, and every bit as successful, as Animal House.
It wasn't. Somewhere along the way from page to screen, things turned ugly. What was supposed to appear playful actually played out as moronic and ill-tempered. Mad Magazine's prime objective - to provoke the establishment and point out it's flaws - looked a lot more like rage-fueled adolescent flailing in the hands of Robert Downey.
Much raunchier than the magazine ever was, upon its release, Up the Academy was disowned and derided by its sponsors. It was destroyed by critics and ignored by audiences. And yet, its formula was rubber-stamped and reused dozens of times throughout the 80's, diluted and remixed and poured into kindler, gentler molds like The Breakfast Club just a handful of years later. Its reach has continued through the years, as well. Were it not for Up the Academy, with its nothing-is-sacred brand of hell's breath satire, would we have ever had pie fucking movies two decades later, or period-blood gags a decade after that? Perhaps Up the Academy lacks finesse, common sense, or real sense of purpose, but we could say the same about the Sex Pistols.
That's right. I'm saying that Up the Academy is the Sex Pistols of teen sex comedies*. So let us commence with the outrage.
Several teenage waste-cases from various points of the Earth are dispatched by parents and guardians who no longer want them to the Weinberg Military Academy. There's Ralph Macchio as Chooch, the wayward mobster-son; Ike ( Jimmy Walker-esque Wendell Brown), the slick young cocksman, cast out from his preacher father's home for having carnal relations with his own stepmother; Hash (Tommy Citera), the oil shiek's petty thief of a son, plucked from a tent in the desert and swept away on a private jet, Oliver (Hutch Parker), a Michigan mayor's son, courting scandal by getting his girlfriend Candy (Stacey Nelkin) pregnant, and Rodney (Harry Teinowitz) a portly teenage arson with a madman's giggle and self-professed 'emotional problems'.
All five of our rebellious young protagonists end up rooming together. After being terrorized by a blind barber and goosed by creepy, flouncing, Master-Sargeant Sisson (Tom Poston), they are introduced to their nemesis, Major Vaughn Liceman (Ron Leibman), a man so wicked that whenever he walks into a room, a sinister wind wooshes, and Gimme Danger by Iggy and the Stooges plays. A twitchy maniac, Liceman gives them a rambling monologue about Vietnam, threatens to rip their balls off if they misbehave, and then wishes them a pleasant evening. They do not have one. They do, however, have a decent first day in weapons-handling class, since it's conducted by Bond-babe Barbara Bach, who wears a half-opened top and strokes the ammunition shells suggestively.
There is a story here: Oliver's girlfriend Candy, having fully recovered from her mayor-enforced abortion, enrolls at the all-girl military academy across town. Obviously, the boys spend the rest of the film scheming on how to get to the girls. But the plot is incidental to the film's primary intent, to bash you over the head with jokes that are in such bad taste you'll literally choke on 'em. Take, for example, the bit where Hash, the supposedly Arab kid, prays to a stack of a Castrol GTX oil cans, or when Ike, the black kid, fails miserably at sports. "You are a disgrace to niggers everywhere!" screams his coach (Antonio 'Huggy Bear' Fargas), as he eats the dirt in a failed attempt to play soccer. "For this I gave up being white," grouses coach, as he storms off the field.
One night, the boys go over the wall to visit Candy. Hash has a Cadillac convertible stashed down the road, so they jump in and head out for the all-girl school ("Butch Academy", naturally). After a tussle with a couple of redneck gas station attendants ("So that's what they look like without their hoods," notes Ike), they reach their destination. Oliver tosses a stone at a random window while David Johansen's 'Girls' blares on the soundtrack. The glass shatters, and an angry looking frump pokes her head out. "Do you know where I can find Candy?" Oliver asks. "Try the vending machine in the lobby," snorts the girl. "Now beat it, before I come down there and beat the shit out of you." "Yes, sir," he says. Oliver roams around some more. All the girls are either lifting weights or shaving their mustaches. He eventually finds Candy, and they make panicky love.
A word about Candy. Stacy Nelkin's film appearances are relatively sparse, and mostly in low-rent junk like this, but once you've seen her, she tends to linger in the memory. While still a teen, the burgeoning New York actress met Woody Allen and had a romantic fling with him; said fling inspired one of his greatest films, 1979's Manhattan. She tends to have that sort of affect on men. Her face is perfect, like a porcelain doll, her chest is heartbreakingly full, and her personality is playful and warm. An unforgettable presence in mostly forgettable films, she's probably best known for her co-starring role in the Michael Meyers-free Halloween III (1982), punk rock comedy Get Crazy (1983) and, um, Going Ape (1981) a monkey movie starring Tony Danza. Sadly, amidst all that z-movie craziness, she never revealed her bountiful charms, but at least she's in her bra for a couple of glorious minutes here.
Anyway, turns out that Liceman was tipped off by that pudgy ratfink Rodney, and took Polaroids of Oliver and Candy's illicit groping. He threatens to send them to Oliver's father unless Ollie sets him up on a sexual tryst with Candy. Sweet, under-aged, spoken-for Candy. Well, this outrage cannot stand, so Candy and the boys devise a clever plan to right all wrongs and royally fuck this Liceman scuzzball. And the hustle is on.
It should be obvious at this point that there is something very wrong with this Liceman character. I cannot think of a more venomous military officer in any movie save, perhaps, for Day of the Dead's lunatic Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato), and that guy had an excuse - he was the last man with guns during a zombie apocalypse. Liceman, on the other hand, is just bug-fuck crazy. There's a mixer between the girls and boys' academies and Liceman spends it wandering around and making odd propositions to the girls. "You like getting tied up?" He asks one of them. "You know, with ropes?" And to another, the infamous line: "Tickle your ass with a feather?" I mean, what the fuck? Later on, Candy sets a velvet trap, donning a harem-girl outfit and enticing him to put on lingerie and whip her, so that Oliver can snap pictures of the event and cancel out his blackmail attempt. Liceman hovers over her on the bed in a sheer pink gown with a whip in his hand. "You sure you don't want me to punch you a little bit first?" He asks. There is nothing funny about this scene. It's actually pretty depressing.
Ron Leibman famously had his named removed from the credits before the film's release, and although modern standards have softened Liceman's blow over the decades, you can kinda-sorta see his point; his character is never really funny, but he is perverse, weird, and occasionally terrifying. With another actor in the role - Don Knotts or Tim Conway, perhaps - Liceman would have been the sweaty, prat-falling buffoon he's supposed to be, but Leibman plays him so straight that he becomes this bizarre, tragic, pathetic mess of a villain. Its quite a fuckin' sight. As Rodney says of him at one point, "He's not my kind of strange."
Up the Academy hit the theaters in 1980. As expected, Mad Magazine published a parody- "Thrown Up the Academy". Perhaps not so expected was their sudden decision to disown the film. Much like the misunderstood young lads at the academy, it was rejected and tossed aside by it's own creators, left for dead in drive-ins and dollar theaters. When it was later released on VHS and shown on late night cable, all references to Mad magazine, including a creepy intro with a guy in a (Rick Baker-designed) Alfred E Neuman mask, were chopped out. Mad later relented, and the DVD version is intact, but for years, many people had no idea the whole thing was Mad's idea in the first place.
So is it really as awful as everyone's reaction to it? No. It's too off-putting and weird to be funny, but it is compulsively watchable, a derailed train that keeps trundling, crazily, down a steep embankment that it cannot steer away from. Why, for example, does Liceman feed his pet bulldog a condom? Why does Professor Bliss decide to risk her career to smoke a joint and make-out with teenage Ike? Why is a venerable character actor like Tom Poston reduced to wearing tiny shorts and mincing his way through a falsetto performance of the National Anthem? Everything about the film seems compulsive, like a cinematic Tourette's episode, like a desperate court jester with a blade to his gut, no longer sure what's funny, but forced to keep joking or die. At times, it is clearly a black comedy, coal-black and despairing; at others, a frothy gag-fest, the forebear of every dumb summer camp and ski-lodge teen-riot to follow in its wake. Up the Academy clearly does not land where it was meant to - to paraphrase Victor Hugo, whatever it is, it is not as it should be - but I will say this much for it: it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to forget.
Director Downey peaked in the late 60's and early 1970's, when his subversive sense of humor and politics were better tolerated by a more open-minded culture. By the time he made this film, he was already slipping in stature. He did, however, sire a fine actor of a son, and still occasionally makes a nutty film, like 1997's Hugo Pool. By the way, legend has it that Downey Jr. makes a cameo appearance somewhere in the movie, but fucked if I could find him. Up the Academy was Ralph Macchio's debut; lucky for him he weathered the storm and went on to become the Karate Kid, which is what he will continue to be in most people's eyes until long after he is deceased. The rest of the Up the Academy kids quit acting soon after, which is probably just as well. Ron Liebman rebounded from the Liceman incident and went on to steady acting work in film and television, most recently on the Sopranos. Tom Poston stayed awesome every day until he died in 2007.
Barbara Bach married Ringo Starr which pretty much negated the need to keep acting in B-movies. And Stacey Nelkin? Well, she recently co-authored a book on how to keep your marriage together. So that's good of her. She can also be found on the convention circuit whenever there's a Halloween III reunion. Ask her about Up the Academy if you ever run into her. Maybe she'll punch you, or something cool like that.
Availability: Up the Academy is available on a crisp but bare-bones DVD from Warner Home Video. Buy Up the Academy at Amazon.
Link: The Blow Up have mp3's of Kicking Up a Fuss and groovy end-credit theme Beat the Devil available for free download on their website
Clip:Up the Academy trailer
Clip: Stacey Nelkin at 2008 Chiller Convention
*In case you're wondering if I plan on continuing with punk metaphors, H.O.T.S.is the Ramones of teen sex films. The Cheerleaders is the MC5. Etc.
Directed by Nico Mastorakis Starring Ted Lange, Teri Weigel, Wil Egan, Steve Donmyer Rated R USA Shop for this poster!
Despite having enough caffeine coursing through my veins to keep a corpse alert, I kept graying out during this seemingly endless 88 minute screening. Perhaps my brain, sensing imminent damage, kept shutting itself down. The upside is that you'll only have to endure a truncated review, since I was asleep for most of it.
TC (Wil Egan) and Bo (Steve Donmeyer) are a couple of criminal-minded stooges who stake out a sleazy film producer's mansion. When he drives off (he actually says, on the phone, "Hello, babe? It is 'Babe', isn't it?"), they swoop in to steal his TV. On the way out, a gay ninja shows up. He's been hired by the producer as a bodyguard, but having never seen the dude, he just assumes it's TC's house. For whatever reason, this makes them decide to call a casting agent and pretend that they're making a movie. I may have been sleeping during the explanation.
A word, before we proceed, about the character of Bo. He's supposed to be an idiot, so he's wearing one of those beer hats, the ones with the straw, but since he's a childlike idiot, he's got cans of coke in them. Also, his pants are too short. And he wears dirty sneakers.
There's a go-nowhere subplot with an African hypnotist named Mookie (Ji-Tu Cumbuka) who makes him smart again for a goof, but regardless, the actor they chose - Steve Donmyer, a muscle-bound jock-type with feathered hair - is just completely and utterly wrong for the role. If I may speak for all the Eddie Deezens and Stephen Fursts of the world, it is insulting to real nerds, blunderers and goofballs to have some alpha-jerk playing a spazz.
Ok, on to the show. So, the mansion is soon flooded with women seeking parts in whatever movie they think is being made, providing us with ample (ahem) opportunity to peep some nubile girl-flesh. There's a montage of auditions with boobie flashers, overwrought would-be thespians, and a few weirdoes, including a fire-breather, a girl who eats flowers, and a psychotic woman named Chernobyl who has some kind of sex-with-vegetables act. Oh, and the girl from the A- Ha video (Bunty Bailey) is there, too!
Out of all the actresses that show up, the fake producer and fake director choose two as their fake starlets. Bo goes with the sexually aggressive Lydia (Penthouse pet/burgeoning porn star Teri Weigel), while TC opts for Asian beauty Michelle Wong (Julia Nickson-Soul), which is odd, because he was such a racist asshole to her during the audition that she stormed out:
TC: "Is your sister also here, Miss Wong?" Michelle: "What? I don't have a sister." TC: "That's ok. Two Wongs don't make a white." Michelle: "What?" TC: "Take it easy, we're not shooting Chinatown, lady."
Meanwhile, white-suited gangster Dubois (Love Boat bartender Ted Lange) shows up to collect a million-dollar debt from Mr. Lazar, the real owner of the house. But since he's not home, he's quite willing to take it out of TC's hide.
So, that's the set up. I blacked out around there, and when I woke up, everybody was happy and there were fireworks going off. So you figure it out.
Glitch! director Nico Mastorakis is known mostly for low-budget action movies like Death Street USA (1988) and Hired to Kill (1990). He is clearly more comfortable with ninjas and toppling buildings and people getting shot in the face than he is with gags. The film looks fine on a technical level, but the story is barely there and the humor is strained and awkward. Sure, Weigel is a joy to ogle, but there are many, many other superior places to do that. In conclusion: I can really only recommend Glitch! If you are unconscious. The parts I saw while I was awake were deplorable.
PS: Every once in awhile, a porn starlet will get lucky and cross over into the mainstream, like Traci Lords, and, uh...Ginger Lynn, if you count Satan's Storybook as mainstream, and Jenna Jameson, if you count Zombie Strippers. Snotty Sasha Grey appears to be making in-roads as well. But going the other way, from mainstream Hollywood to the sordid world of hardcore porn? Only Teri Weigel had the balls for that.
Her acting career began with 1987's (ahem) camp classic Cheerleader Camp and spent the next few years doing steady b-movie work in everything from this piece of junk to Predator 2 (1990), but in 1991 she strolled right on over to the dark side and she's been there ever since. As of this writing, she's still going strong, appearing in 'mature' titles like American MILF(2007) and Seasoned Players (2008).
I'm not saying this headache-maker of a movie motivated her to choose a less embarrassing vocation like gobbling penises on camera but, you know, it probably helped.
Availability: Masochists and Love Boat completists should be happy to know that Glitch! is available on DVD from Simitar Entertainment. Buy Glitch at Amazon. -Ken McIntyre
You could present a good argument that this is Troma's first "Tromatic" film. Directed by Lloyd Kaufman under an assumed name and written by his brother Charles, it looks very much like an embryonic, stripped-down version of their mid 80's mega-hits (Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, etc). Certainly the smash n' grab, cut n' run camera style is already in place, as is Troma's knack for dredging up every rubber-faced lowlife in the five boroughs and half of Jersey to mug and moon for their cameras. What is lacking is the sheer lunacy of their later work, the gutbucket gore and willful outrage. In fact, Squeeze Play's first half looks more like a test run for the cameras than any sort of finished product, as we wander aimlessly through the quietly kooky lives of a few part-time softball players/full time assholes and their hairdresser girlfriends from Springtown, New Jersey, where the winning softball team gets carte blanche to manhandle the women and generally act like half-retarded apes.
Of course you realize, this means war. The various Beaver girlfriends form their own team. Pop (the singularly named Zachary, who may not have been too far removed from his character), a local vagrant seen swilling dollar wine at all the games, convinces the girls he can whip them in to shape. Apparently he'd been a ball player of some renown before the sauce got a hold of him. And so, the training montage happens, to the strains of a cloying, piano-driven mid-70's mush-rock track from Don Yowell about "Seeing through the stained-glass window of your mind." The girls call themselves (what else?) The Beaverettes, and schedule a game against their boyfriend-bullies. But first, they have a wet t-shirt contest. Feminism was wild stuff in the disco era, Jack.
The t-shirt contest ends up dramatically affecting most of the lead characters. A huffy Wes breaks up with his girlfriend Samantha (Jennifer Hetrick), after he sees her getting mauled by a fat bastard named Bozo (Michael Moran). Mary Lou is accosted by a Bogart-impersonating gumshoe named Koch (Tony Hoty), sent by her father to insure her virginity stay intact. After a scuffle, she breaks free and elopes with Buddy (Al Corley), who summarily attends to her virginity problem. Disco-suited Fred (Rick Gitlin), being a shy, retiring type, has so far kept his feelings for melon-chested cutie Jamie (Helen Campitelli) to himself, but that fuckin' contest pushed him over the edge, and so he ends up in a car with the now gloriously shirtless beauty. As dawn breaks, he screams to the heavens: "I'm swimming in it, a real woman!"
But ultimately, all the bed hopping and daddy-thwarting must end so the Beaverettes can attend to the real business of the hour: beating the boys in a rousing game of softball. I know, that doesn't sound like the most exciting proposition to me, either. By the way, I am assuming that the cast got their fill of yogurty goodness during filming because if you look closely, empty cups of Dannon yogurt are littered on tables in every other scene. An odd choice for product placement, but you take what you can get in Tromaville.
Game highlights? I dunno man, take your pick. Is it when one girl catches a flyball with her purse? Is it the scoreboard kid reading porn, eating pizza, and peeing when no one's looking? Is it whenever one of the girls takes off their shirt to distract the boys? Or is it when the guy catches a ball with his ass?
Most people seem to go with the ass gag. There's a string on the ball. It's very Ed Wood.
Squeeze Play is played much straighter than you'd expect from a Troma film, so straight it barely passes for comedy half the time. Perhaps it's just because I am not a sports fan, but I thought the half-hour long, inning-by-inning coverage of the climactic game pretty tedious, even with the odd flash of boob. Still, despite it's glacial pace and dearth of laffs, Squeeze Play was Troma's first big success, and most surely got the momentum rolling for all the nuttiness that followed. If you're at all interested in Troma's early, pre-Toxie daze...well, I'd still go with Waitress! (1982) or Stuck on You (1983), I suppose. Listen, it's better than a punch in the face, and at least you get an eyeful of Helen Campitelli's oversized sweater puffs. So whatever. Let's not dwell on it.
Availability: Squeeze Play is available on DVD from Troma.
