Summer School Teachers (1974)

Summer School Teachers (1974)
Directed by Barbara Peeters
Starring Candice Rialson, Pat Anderson, Rhonda Leigh Hopkins
Rated R
USA 

'The Student Body Always Scores With The Summer School Teachers!"

Barbara Peeters was one of the very few female exploitation directors of the 70’s. Naturally, she worked for Roger Corman. Her biggest triumph was obviously Humanoids from the Deep, but she made a couple other kooky/cool grinders too: femme-fronted biker flick Bury Me an Angel, starring glamazonian she-warrior Dixie Peabody, and Starhops, a pleasantly insane movie about a diner. She also made this, a pseudo-feminist T&A flick that shares a lot of the themes and plotlines of Corman’s nurse flicks. Unfortunately, it also shares their draggy pace and dreary dialogue, too. But there is one very big bonus: it stars long-lost B-beauty Candice Rialson (RIP), the big-eyed scene stealer from Hollywood Boulevard, Pets, and Chatterbox. Candice’s filmography is painfully slim, so you gotta take your Candy where you can get it. Anyway, here’s what happens.

Holy fuck, I hate fiddles. Let’s ignore the goddamn fiddles on the soundtrack and just enjoy watching gorgeous Tina (Rialson) tear ass down the road in a beat-up pick-up with her hairy hillbilly brothers.

They race to the greyhound station and she hops on a bus for California with her two sexy buds Sally (Pat Anderson, Angel of H.E.A.T., Bonnie’s Kids) and Denise (Rhonda Leigh Hopkins, Cover Girl Models). They’re in Iowa, by the way. It definitely doesn’t look like Iowa. It looks like 20 miles down the road from LA, which is where I'm pretty sure it is.

They all get jobs as...you guessed it, summer school teachers at an LA high school. Dick Miller is Sam, the sexist football coach, as you might expect. Tina is the summer gym teacher for the girls, and it’s her job to whip this bunch of wise ass, cutoffs-wearing hussies in shape. She somehow convinces them all to form an all-girl football team. Good work, Tina.

Denise isn't doing so well teaching her chemistry class. The kids are unruly and rude. Of course, it might be because she says stuff like, "I thought you bohemians were big on intellect." Denise, as you probably already guessed, is the uptight one.

Free-spirited Sally is doing a little better. She's the photography teacher. She gives the kids an assignment: "Photograph something you think is obscene." That should go well.

So, Denise meets with Jeremy (Will Carney), the rebel, after class, to find out why he's such a fuckin’ prick. He tries to make out with her, so she smashes him in the face.

Meanwhile Sally, in a bitching halter top, goes shopping and literally runs into a dude she thinks is a celebrity. Dunno which one. Sonny Bono?

He watches her squeeze melons and, ahem, goes bananas. They make a date.

Meanwhile, there's a school board meeting about the girls’ football team. Sam is against it. Tina is adamant that this is going down whether he likes it or not.  The principal or whoever he is says she can add girls’ football to the curriculum next year if the team wins their first game, which is in a few weeks. I believe we now have the thrust of our plot.

Then she goes home and does jumping jacks on the fire escape, which is a best case scenario if you live next door to Candice Rialson. Unless you try and join in and fall off your fuckin' patio like her fat, dopey neighbor did.

Denise goes down to 'Flukies', the happenin’ burger joint in the neighborhood,  dressed up like one of the Jezebels in Switchblade Sisters. This is her attempt to relate to the kids. While she's there, she sees Jeremy get stabbed in a gang fight! She wraps up his bloody arm and drives him to the hospital in his crazy green dune buggy.

Meanwhile Sally is having her date with the mustache dude, who is apparently a famous rock star. He has a harp festooned with lights that he uses to cut vegetables with. He also has two kooky old ladies who live next door and listen to his conversations. Naturally, they confuse his dinner talk with sex talk. You know, "If you like my meat, you'll love my sauce." Stuff like that.

At one point, he accidentally spills his spaghetti sauce all over Sally’s dress, and she storms out of there. The old ladies poke their head out and faint because they think he banged her into a bloody mess.

Jeremy gets patched up and drives Denise home. They almost make out. She digs the bad boys, I guess. Underage ones. But he might be more of a bad boy then she thought, because the next day he gets suspended for stealing the brakes outta some kid’s car, which almost killed him.

Meanwhile, love is in the air for Tina. She goes out hiking with her new boyfriend and they stop for a picnic. They get loaded on champagne and get naked. Good times. And then she gets right back to business whipping her hotpants harlots into a functional sports team.

Denise thinks Jeremy is just a victim of circumstances, and bones him in his garage in a too-dark 'psychedelic' sex scene while a funky flute jam wails away on the soundtrack.

Sally, meanwhile, goes on a date with one of the other teachers, Bob (the awesomely named Grainger Hines). He takes her to a porn theater and then to a strip club. Classy! But then he takes her to a motorcross race and a drum circle, and they race go karts together. And then they go to to the beach, and then he takes her home for a nude photo shoot. What a day!

Back to the plot, such as it us. The school can't afford uniforms for the girls because Sam, that fuckin’ creep, pays his quarterbacks cold cash every time they score a touchdown. Tina finds this out when one of her girls rats out her boyfriend. If only Sam kept some kind of ledger detailing his shifty practices, and if only Tina could get her hands on it! But that’ll never happen.

Then our heroines all sit around in the kitchen in their bikinis and plan a party. So that's good.

Tina formulates a plan to nail Sam. She goes on a "date" with him and gets him drunk. Naturally, it's all a ruse. The football team all get dressed up in Charlie's Angels outfits and break into his office and get the goods on him. Nice work, team!'

So Tina and her buds have the party, which is really a photography exhibit for Sally’s class, you know, the obscenity thing. But for whatever reason, Sally uses it to show naked photos of Bob. He gets so pissed off that he prints his naked photos of Sally in a skin rag. The principal finds out, and suspends them both. He also doesn't believe Tinas story about Sammy, even though she has proof, so he suspends her, too. So they just sit on a bench together and ponder their fates.

Also, it turns out Jeremy really is being framed, and the principal is in on it - who knows what 'it' is - and he orders a hit on Jeremy. The guy that's supposed to kill him, Slick (one-time actor Brian Enright), looks like 70s James Taylor. Imagine getting murdered by James Taylor?! Jeremy certainly can't, because he busts outta there and they have a dune buggy race. Christ, there's way too much going on here. Suffice to say, the creeps get theirs and the all-girl football game goes on as planned with Coach Tina leading them. Also, because this is a mid 70's Roger Corman film, a bunch of nudists show up.

So what happens? Do they win the game? I dunno, but they do win the pre-game fistfight. You might be asleep by then anyway.

All the elements are in place for Summer School Teachers to be a trashy, fun drive-in crowd pleaser. After all, it’s got the effortlessly sunny and undeniably beautiful Candice Rialson, a gang of rowdy teenage chicks, a healthy dose of nudity, and summer antics. I mean, it’s almost impossible to mess a gig like this up. Yet, somehow, it never quite gets itself together. You’re never really engaged in the plot or the characters, and the whole thing just sorta unspools without consequence. It’s no surprise why this one hasn’t become a cult item like other Corman films of the era – Caged Heat, Big Bad Mama, Death Race 2000, etc – it’s just not very groovy. I gotta give it a ding by default, since all the pieces of the puzzle are there, but it’s honestly about as much fun as actual summer school.

- Ken 

Stacey says:
Hmmm... Summer School Teachers should have been a good time, no question. However, it's a mish-mash of interwoven plots that never seem to get together. It's slow and kind of boring. I found myself not paying much attention at times. Like Ken said, all the elements were there... it could have been fun. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. Ding?

Carry On Camping (1969)

Carry On Camping (1969)
Directed by Gerald Thomas
Starring Sid James, Charles Hawtry, Barbara Windsor
Rated R
UK

"We're going on a lovely nature ramble!"  

Carry On Camping was part of a decades-long series of low-budget British comedies. Directed by Gerald Thomas and produced by Peter Rogers, the films generally lampooned traditional British society and/or stuffier elements of cinema, and were liberally laced with double entendres and gratuitous T&A. The series began in 1958 with military spoof Carry on Sargeant and ended in 1978 with the softcore send-up Carry On Emmanuelle. A stock cast of British comic actors appeared in every film, and included – as this one does – Sid James, Peter Butterworth, Joan Sims, and Barbara Windsor, among others. There were 31 Carry On films in the original series, as well a mid 70’s TV series. In 2003, a boxset of the entire collection was quietly released in the US by Anchor Bay. Still, the Carry On films remain largely unseen and/or unheralded by American audiences. On one hand, it’s easy to see why. These movies, after all, are super British. I mean, Spice World, Eastenders, Upstairs-Downstairs British. They are so British they often seem like an SNL spoof of a British sex comedy, and a good portion of any Carry On film is devoted to sly references to various segments of Brit society that will sail right over American heads. So there’s that. On the other hand, their gleefully destructive sense of humor and dollops of tasty crumpet make for pleasantly dim-witted entertainment, a sort of super-sized Benny Hill with a cast of aging pratfallers tumbling through one disastrous set-up after another. Carry on Camping, produced midway through the series’ run, is widely considered one of the best and most accessible Carry On films.

Two couples are at the cinema, checking out a nudist camp movie. There’s crusty old Sid (Sid James) and uptight Joan (Joan Sims), dimwitted oaf Bernie (Bernard Bresslaw) and squeamish Anthea (Dils Laye). Naturally, the fellas love it. The women, on the other hand, are outraged and sickened by the whole thing, and demand they all leave.

Meanwhile, across town, another couple discuss their impending camping trip. Peter Potter (Terry Scott) is the classic henpecked husband. Harriet (Betty Marsden) is  his braying, self-obsessed shrew of a wife. Harriet never listens to him, so to amuse himself, he says whatever comes into his head. “
“How was work?”
“ I took a bunch of opium and spent my paycheck on prostitutes.”
“Oh, that’s nice dear.”
That kind of thing.

It’s Sid and Bernie’s job to plan this year’s camping trip with the girls. Sid comes up with a plan to go the nudist camp without telling the girls where they’re going. Seems like a can’t-miss maneuver. He and Bermie head over the sporting goods store to grab a brochure for “Paradise Resort”. That was the name of the place in the nudie flick. Also at the sporting goods store is one Charlie Muggens (Charles Hawtry), a Don Knotts type who molests a shopgirl (Hammer girl Valerie Leon) in a tent.

He wants to go camping, too. I get the feeling everybody’s going to run into each other later on.

Then we go to an all-girls school where two of the girls whale on each other in an awesome cat-fight! It turns out the girls are all camping too. Everyone's going camping!

The big day arrives. Sid and Bernie head out to pick up the girls. Joan lives with her judgmental mom, who does not approve of Sid at all. I’m not surprised, seeing as there’s at least a 20 year gap in age between Sid and Joan. Anyway, Bernie almost gives up the game, but so far, the girls have no idea what the fellas have planned.

The ride up to the county  mostly yelling and puking and hurt feelings.

So the fellas finally make it to Paradise Camp and get extorted by the owner, Mr. Fiddler (Peter Butterworth). Of course now the girls are hip to what's happening – or at least what they think is happening - and demand to go home, but the men won't hear of it, so they press on. But once they get to the campgrounds, they find out they've made a terrible mistake – it's just a regular camp. No nudity allowed, even. Plus, it starts to pour as soon as they get there!

Meanwhile, Peter and Harriet finally find a decent place to camp after Peter  has a run in with a bull and then gets an ass full of buckshot courtesy an angry farmer. Peter settles in for a well-deserved rest after his trying day, but then Mr Muggins wanders by, and Harriet lets him stay in the tent with them. Old-timey ass-on-fire physical comedy hilarity ensues as they all try to fit into the tiny tent.

Also meanwhile, the school girls are staying at a hotel for the night and getting into all kinds of pranks and antics! Mostly they try to get their matronly headmistress, Miss Haggard (Hattie Jacques) to hook up their obviously gay headmaster Mr. Soaper (Kenneth Williams).

The most mischievous girl in class, Babs (Barbara Windsor), switches some door numbers so that Soaper ends up in bed with Miss Haggard. He’s appalled, but she’s in love.

Back at Paradise camp, Sid and Bernie learn an important lesson: don't put your inflatable raft in your tent. It won't end well. Also, don’t put your aching feet in your girlfriend’s pot of boiling stew.  Just when they've had enough of this awful trip, the busload of schoolgirls show up. So what the hell, might as well stay awhile! Muggins shows up, too. He was hitchhiking and got picked up by  the bus. The Potters soon arrive, as well. Now the whole gang is at Paradise Camp!

And then Soaper leads the girls for some sexy exercises. Babs tops flies right off! Goodtimes.

Afterwards, he plans on taking them on a “Nature ramble”. First, though, shower scene! It plays out sorta like the Porky's scene, only without the boobs and penises. Soaper gets a suggestive load of toothpaste in the eye, though.

Meanwhile, Peter Potter wanders off to get drunk by himself. Another schoolgirl, Jane (Elizabeth Knight) shows up – she pretended she was sick to get out of visiting a boring old  monastery – and gives Peter an offer he can't refuse

Boning the young chippy gives him the shot of self-confidence he needs to toss out Mr. Muggins and then give his wife a little of the ol' slap and tickle.

Sid and Bernie sneak off to the monastery disguised as monks so they can make plans with Babs and Fanny (Sandra Caron).  He looks just like the Cryptkeeper from Tales of the Crypt, it's awesome. Then they sneak back to prepare for the evening's activities.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a crowd of hippies show up for a dance party and a performance by the Flowerbuds! Everybody's having a groovy time, but the campers are annoyed and want the racket to stop, so the fellas devise a sinister plan, and they end up blowing up the band’s equipment. By the way, the Buds are supposed to be playing rock music, but the music on the soundtrack is lounge-pop with an orchestra.

So that's it. The trip's over. Nobody gets laid. Or do they?

Haha, no everybody gets laid!

Despite being a low-budget, low-brow sex comedy, Carry on Camping was the biggest grossing film in England in 1969 and even played in theaters in the US. As mentioned, it is often considered to the best of the Carry On films. Although this really makes me dread running into the worst of the series, I still found CoC to be an entertaining little romp. As you by now expect from any Britcom, everybody’s miserable, uncomfortable and unsatisfied, and all the washed-out, gray and mud-soaked shots of the campgrounds make camping seem even less appealing then it usually does. None of the characters shamelessly lusting after one another are age-appropriate, the ‘psychedelic’ band is the least psychedelic thing I’ve ever seen, and Barbara Windsor’s kooky pile of hair and ill-fitting short-shorts were more odd-looking than alluring. Throw in a barrage of double entrendes so relentless in their execution that even the cast of Three’s Company would balk at the script, and you’ve got a grubby little winner on your hands. Based on Camping, I’d definitely be into delving deeper into the Carry On series. As the British often say – at least in the head of Americans who’ve never been to the UK – Carry on Camping is a jolly good show. Pip pip, and all that.


- Ken McIntyre

Breaking All The Rules (1985)

Breaking all the Rules (1985)
Directed by James Orr
Starring Carl Marotte, Carolyn Dunn, Rachel Hayward
Rated R
Canada

"Just relax. And be heavy."

I would just like to say that even though I very much enjoy films that take place in amusement parks (Carny, The Funhouse, Rollercoaster, etc), I never liked actually going to them. I get terrible motion sickness, so the rides are out, and the goddamn games are clearly rigged. I remember spending hours in the summer of ’81 trying to win a Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell mirror at one of those booths where you shoot water in a clown’s mouth until the balloon pops and the balloon never fucking popped, no matter how much I tried to drown the clown. And most of the time you win something that’s impossible to lug around successfully anyway, like a giant banana or a goldfish. Also, how are you supposed to meet girls there? You don’t look very cool puking or lugging around a banana. But I digress. Breaking All The Rules is a fun, frothy teen romp made in Canada by an innocuous director known mostly, if at all, for writing Three Men and a Baby and Sister Act 2. He’s clearly not into confrontational or controversial filmmaking, and you are not gonna get it here. What you do get is an hour and a half of breezy summer fun and a couple fetching young Canadian lasses to ogle. Which is alright with me.

You should know at the beginning that there's a raffle going down in a few days at the Fun Park. The  winner gets a $50,000 diamond, which I can’t really see happening, even at a funpark in Canada in the mid 80's. Our hero, Jack (Carl Marotte, who was probably 25 at the time, but has the muggy face of an old Jewish comedian from the Vaudeville days), works at the park as a maintenance man, and often spends a good portion of his morning fantasizing about all the chicks he'd bang if he had that diamond. He should have been paying more attention because  on this fateful day, a trio if slimeball thieves – a fat stooge, a butchy chick in stretchpants, and a ringleader who looks just like Wile E Coyote - steal the fuckin' diamond. The alarm goes off, so they sew it into the belly of a stuffed mouse and tack it up at one of the midway games, planning on getting it later. I know, that's an idiot fuckin’ idea, but that's the way we did things in the 80's.

But never mind all of that, because its the last day of the summer, and Jack is determined to make the most of it. Across town, so does Debbie (Carolyn Dunn), a ridiculously hot blonde from the upscale side of town who is having an identity crisis. Later on it will be somewhat important to know she's wearing "I Love U" underwear, which is why we meet her ass first. No complaints here.

Anyway, Jack sees her flashing her panties in the street and is smitten, but at the time he's accidentally crashing some stranger’s car, so who knows if he'll ever see her again?

After the car accident – he accidentally runs over the diamond thief - Jack buys a dicknose mask from his favorite joke shop and then heads over to his buddy David's house to cheer him up.

David (Thor Bishopric) is kind of a drip.

Meanwhile, we meet Angie (Rachel Hayward) and her perky Canadian boobs.

She eventually gets dressed and heads out to meet Debbie, who chopped off her hair and is now sporting the most 80's fake punk look imaginable.

All four end up on the bus and they're all into each other, although really the girls are both into Jack and he has no idea the phony punk chick is the I Love U underwear girl. And anyway, they blow it on the bus because they're all teenage idiots. So what the hell, they go to Fun Park. Its got an “F and U and K in it”, after all.

Cue the amusement park antics montage over the title AOR jam by one Paul Booth. it's pretty awesome/horrible, as Canadian AOR jam soften are.

For some reason this fun park has a burlesque show, so Jack takes David backstage to see some boobs. Then they climb down a drain under a water fountain so they can see up girls' skirts. Good times.

Jack goes to see his boss Charlie (Walter Massey) to get his last check. Charlie’s guzzling booze because somebody stole the fuckin’ diamond and now he might have to go out of business. Clearly, it’s up to Jack to save the day. But first, you know, chicks.

The fellas run into Debbie and Angie again and Jack wows ‘em by winning stuffed mice for both of them. Guess which one Debbie gets? The guys think they’ve got this one in the bag, but Angie has a sudden change of heart and gives them both the kiss-off. So wait, you can’t win a girl’s heart with ugly stuffed animals? Alert all men immediately.

Oh hey, remember the rat-faced jewel thief and his motley crew? They're back. And they want that mouse. But which one is the right one? How did this foolproof plan go awry? Fuck it, they just buy them all and start tearing them open, looking for the diamond. And they can't find it! So they skulk around the park, snatching every stuffed mouse they see and ripping it open.

Meanwhile, things are not going well in the summer romance department. Angie's with Jack, and she hates him. Debbie's with David, and she hates him. It's a summer bummer. Eventually they figure out their incompatibility issues and Jack finally gets to make out with somebody. Debbie's down to bone him right there, behind a tree, but it turns out he doesn't actually know how to have sex. That’s weird. Don’t they have health class in Canada?  To be fair, he’s supposed to be 16. He just looks 37. Plus, his zipper’s broke.  Debbie tries to open it with her teeth. Jack is in way over his head with this kooky chick.

Meanwhile, David and Angie ride the merry go round and lament the fact that they're both  virgins. They're actually having a pretty good time until her old boyfriend Vince, you know, the football king or whatever, shows up and snatches her away. Bummer, dude.

But wait, then she comes back! And so do the goodtimes. Thank Christ. Cue amusement park antics montage number two.

Oh yeah, the diamond. Debbie hits the bad guy in the face with her mouse for threatening Angie and David, and the diamond tumbles to the ground. Jack grabs it and takes off with Debbie, the jewel thieves hot on their trail. As they climb up the fire escape of a building to get away, Jack sees Deb’s underwear and realizes she's the same girl from this morning! Swoon! But then they fall off the fuckin’ building and they both die. The end.

No, they land on a trampoline and haul ass out of there. Why is there a trampoline next to the building? Fun Park, motherfucker!

I dunno what happens, the bad guys get the diamond again somehow, and Jack gets arrested for the crime. It’s up to mousy David and the girls to get the diamond back from the creeps and clear their bud’s name and save Charlie's bacon using every Scooby Doo-esque amusement park gag you can think of.

Do they do it? Maybe. Probably. I'll tell you this much: breakdancing is involved. And balloons and confetti and making out. But that was always happening in 1985, even at funerals or executions.

As hazy and breezy as day at the beach, Breaking All the Rules is aided greatly by the easy charm of its four young leads and the dreamy backdrop of the amusement park with all its bells, whistles, calliopes, and clopping merry-go-round horses. Even with the shoe-horned diamond thieves’ subplot, it rides on a wave of sunny optimism. You know from the first frame that everything’s gonna turn out alright, and everyone’s gonna get laid. This is the sort of summer adventure you always hope to have. It’s not the one you’ll get – I mean, nobody even fuckin’ sweats in this movie – but, you know, don’t stop believin’.

Not liking this move is like not liking boobs or ice cream, it’s just impossible. Ding!

- Ken 

Stacey says:
This movie is a lot like cotton candy... sweet, light and fluffy. A crazy 80's caper, antics, bad haircuts and good times for all (except the diamond thieves). Ding!