Revenge of the Nerds TV Pilot (1991)

Directed by Peter Baldwin
Starring Rob Stone, Lightfield Lewis, Julie McCullough, Robbie Rist
USA


"I'm either allergic to pom poms or pretty girls with perky breasts. I'm just hoping it's the pom poms."

Although it almost always ended in either tears or bitter disappointment, throughout the 70's and 80's, desperate television execs would green-light woefully inadequate sitcom spinoffs of popular Hollywood comedies, usually employing one or two minor characters and just bullshitting through the rest of it. Ok, so MASH worked, and Private Benjamin had a decent run, but what about Fast Times at Ridgemont High...the series (1986)? Or Delta House (1979)? Or Harper Valley PTA (1981)? Those, not so much.

One film series that actually did seem like a sensible pick for small-screen treatment was Revenge of the Nerds. For one thing, the first two movies were already playing on television pretty relentlessly, with only a smidgen of nude scenes to excise and a few bleeps to make them family-friendly. The concept also had potential for long-running storylines as well, since college does, after all, take a good seven or so years to get through. Most importantly, people adored the characters. Who doesn't love an underdog who bests the golden-boy douchebag and gets his girl? It was money in the bank, this idea.

Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

There are many things wrong with the Revenge of the Nerds TV pilot. In fact, the only thing right about it is that it went unaired. Big mistake number one was to recast every character with new actors who bore no resemblance to the Robert Carradines and Anthony Edwards-es we knew and loved. The second biggest mistake was to go broad. The original 1984 film had its share of sight gags, but was, at its heart, a character-driven comedy, one that fairly bubbled over with do-the-right-thing sentiment. Revenge of the Nerds had a fuckin' message, Jack, about overcoming the vanilla-flavored alpha-jerks of this world by standing your ground and, you know, being yourself. The TV pilot aimed for an impossibility - a G-rated Animal House - and ended up with a warmed-over rehash of the original film with lesser actors and cheapjack production values.

After an admittedly bouncy synth-pop theme song ("Get ready for the nerd attack!"), the show opens on the first day of classes at Adams University. We are introduced to the 'new' Louis (Rob Stone) and Gilbert (Lightfield Lewis), the two asthmatic, horn-rimmed, supergenius protagonists from the films, as they unpack in their new dorm room.
"Wow," says Louis, "My poster on the history of mold. It's beginning to look like home already."
"It's gonna be a great year," says Gilbert. "And this time, no one's going to call us nerds."
A thick-necked jock walks by their door and yells at them.
"Nerds!" He barks. He is joined by another musclehead.
They both chime in. "Nerds!"
Cue the laugh track.
Moments later, the fatheads from the football team barge in, carrying the rest of our motley crew under their arms. There's Harold Wormser (Grant Gelt), the twelve-year old law-student wunderkid, and fan-favorite Booger, now essayed by former child star Robbie Rist, who re-imagines the snot-eating gross-out as an over-confident, pony-tailed slacker tool in a Hawaiian shirt. Ogre (one-time American Gladiator Jeff Benson) drops the dorks. A furious Booger calls him "Steroid breath". Harold makes a smarmy comment about the metaphysical implications of wearing another man's underwear on your head. He says this because he's got underwear on his head.

Seems the Alpha-Beta fraternity house burned down, so the frat assholes want the nerds' dorm. They make this point clear by throwing all of Gilbert's stuff - and then Gilbert himself - out the window. The fellas storm off to the cafeteria, where they run into a gang of evil cheerleaders, led by tasty, fresh-faced blonde Julie McCullough, who had just made a splash as Kirk Cameron's girlfriend on Growing Pains. Julie and her boner-popping pals convince our nerdy heroes to pledge Alpha Beta, since they're already living in their house, and all. Cue the humiliating hazing, including a bizarre scene where they stand in the shower in their underwear while Ogre cracks eggs on their heads, and that old comedic standby, tar and feathers.
"I think our dignity is being offended," says Booger. That can be said for all of us at this point, Mr. Rist.

Realizing they've been had, the plucky young geeks vow revenge. Well, it is in the title.

As may seem obvious by now, the TV pilot apes the first film's plot. The boys blunder their way into being sponsored by all-black fraternity Lambda Lambda Lambda. They find a cheap house to move into (there'd been a few unfortunate axe murders in the parlor), get threatened - for no reason - by the Alpha Betas, and square off with them the following day. Facing down the entire football team, the nerds pull out mechanical gizmos and shock the jocks into submission. It ends with a weapon of mass destruction joke (a decade ahead of it's time!) and Robbie Rist rolling around under a pile of cheerleaders. That sounds more fun than it is.

The series was never picked up, so this episode is all that remains of Nerd-TV. Director Peter Baldwin could cook stuff like this up in his sleep already - he'd done episodes of everything from The Brady Bunch to Full House by this point. He stepped right over this corpse and carried on, directing dozens of series until he retired in 2002. Writer Eric Cohen attempted to revamp the nerd-com with Dweebs, a short-lived 1995 series starring Corey Feldman. Lightfield Lewis appeared in 2006's Hookers, Inc. alongside Kato Kaelin. So things are going well with him. Julie McCullough appeared in Playboy a few times, had sex with Scott Baio, and is still waiting for her big break.

The Revenge of the Nerds series did not die with this stillborn television show. It was revamped for two overbearing TV movies: 1992's Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation, and 1994's Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love. Both films sensibly brought back many of the original actors. A raunchy, R-rated remake was planned by Fox in 2006 starring Napolean Dynamite's own Efren "Pedro" Ramirez and some of the jiggle-bunnies from teen drama Laguna Beach, but production shut down after the studio heads balked at the dailies. It is reasonable to assume, however, that we will experience Nerd-vana again sometime soon. And that Robbie Rist will not be involved.

Availability: the Revenge of the Nerds TV pilot is available as an extra on the Panty Raid edition of the original Revenge of the Nerds DVD and on the Atomic Wedgie Collection. (Fox).
Buy Revenge of the Nerds: The Atomic Wedgie Collection at Amazon.


Clip: The First six inglorious minutes of the pilot. Theme song included!

-Ken McIntyre

The Party Animal (1984)

Directed by David Beaird
Starring Matthew Causey, Tim Carhart
Rated R
Canada
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Even amongst the lowly flotsam of z-grade T&A flicks, The Party Animal is a genre nadir, a witless non-starter that almost defies you to keep watching. Other films may torment you with terrible acting, absurd plot devices, paper-thin production values or lop-sided boobs, but The Party Animal commits sleaze cinema's greatest sin: it is terminally, mercilessly lame.

The Party Animal in question is one Pando Sinatra (Matthew Causey), who arrives at college literally on the back of a turnip truck. The narrator says he's 26, but his hairline suggests another 10 years, at least. The film is presented as a documentary of Pando's college quest which was, as it was with all of us, to get laid. Here's the thing: besides the receding hairline and a wardrobe ripped from Mork from Ork's closet, there really is no reason why Pando wouldn't find some willing coed to relieve him of his virginity. He's not a bad looking guy, sort of a dopey Sam Rockwell type. So from the beginning, our premise is deeply flawed. But let's roll with it, since we're already here.

Pando's one and only friend is a droll cocksman named (ahem) Studly, essayed by constantly-working character actor Tim Carhart. You'd think, given his name, Studly would have better things to do than mentor a social leper like Pando, but since nobody in this un-named school appears to actually attend classes, he has to fill his time between blowjobs with something. And so he offers advice, Pando fucks it all up, and they try again. Eventually, Pando sells his soul to the devil for pussy, but he ends up blowing that deal somehow, as well. And so we must slog through absurd set-pieces, including a Pando-as-pimp bit, where he's dressed up in a purple satin mac-daddy suit and gets walloped (off screen) by a bunch of angry black dudes in dashikis, a scuzzball house party, where Pando ingests a Johnny Thunders-esque amount of drugs to prove his mettle, a confusing visit to a sex shop, where he buys a dildo the size of a rocket, and a slumber party, where our feckless zero gussies up in a housedress and a hairnet and cheats at strip poker. At least that scene provides us with a much-needed dose of nudity. Female nudity, that is.

In what appears to have been an alarming trend in Canadian teensploitation films of the 80's, there's an extended bit of homoeroticism to wade through. In this case, Pando drops by an all-male revue to watch a bunch of oiled-up muscle-boys gyrate and thrust to a brassy lite-funk groove. They never even mention why. He just does. And we have to watch for five minutes straight. Imagine paying for a ticket and being subjected to glistening man-groin projected ten feet high?

Anyway, if you think a guy dressed up like the Red Baron, chasing a woman around the room with a paper-mache rocket between his legs is funny, than you'll want to stick around, because it just gets zanier. Pando gets tossed out of school, but then he invents a sex potion, goes to see ska-punk funsters The Untouchables, and then bangs a dozen sorority girls. Satan condemns him to have sex with fat girls sometime after that. BBW fans will interpret this twist ending differently than the rest of us, although we will all breathe a sigh of relief that it's over.

The Party Animal sputters out after a not-so-brief 78 minutes. It is fondly remembered by almost no one. David Beaird redeemed himself two years later, when he wrote and directed My Chauffeur, one of the warmest and most well-loved films of the teen-sex genre. Matthew Causey, sensibly, got back on his turnip truck and drove the fuck home.

Scene: Pando Vs. Drugs.

Availability: The Party Animal is available on DVD from MGM. Doesn't mean you have to watch it.
Buy The Party Animal on Amazon.

PS: Who's this chick? I desperately wanted to marry her in 1985.

-Ken McIntyre

Pinball Summer (1980)

AKA Pickup Summer
Directed by George Mihalka
Starring Michael Zelniker, Carl Marotte, Karen Stephen, Helen Udy
Rated R
Canada
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"I've got a date tonight."
"With what, a hamburger?"

Just imagine it, if you would. Imagine a world where you are young and skinny, a world where you own an awesome customized van and date a bosomy, baby-faced giggle-girl with an equally hot younger sister, where your arch-rival is a growly-but-harmless biker goon and your favorite hangout is a drive-in hamburger joint staffed by stacked redheads in tiny shorts. Imagine a summer where your only real and tangible goal is winning the pinball competition and then, naturally, banging the Pinball Queen.

How great would that world be? Such is the never-was fantasy-land of Pinball Summer, perhaps the greatest Canadian pinballsploitation flick ever made. The plot? Well, I've already explained it: Greg (Michael Zelniker) and Steve (Carl Marotte) are two uncomfortably close best buds (seriously, they touch each other constantly; there's one scene early on where they are so close to one another during a conversation that you half-expect them to start French-kissing) who date two gangly, hot-pants sporting sisters (Karen Stephen and Helen Udy) and spend all their time either playing pinball or tormenting a stuffy rich kid named Rod (Matthew Stevens). Into this conflict-free world roars Bert (Tom Kovacs, looking like either a shaved werewolf or James Franco after a car accident), leader of a four-man motorcycle gang who operate out of a cardboard hideout and spend most of their time cheating on pinball or mercilessly teasing a fat stooge named Whimpy (Joey McNamara), a clearly disturbed young man who repairs and maintains the pinball machines at the arcade.

While all the main characters are cartoony, they are, at least, grounded in some sort of reality. Whimpy, on the other hand, is pure comic strip confection, an off-putting oddball stuffed into goony, too-tight clothes, topped off by a sailor's cap (with oversized Farrah Fawcett and King Crimson buttons...Farrah I can see the retarded kid liking, but King Crimson?), a bowl haircut, and eyeliner. He is pure id, alternately grabby and groveling, a pathetic lump of need that exists only for ridicule. Whimpy is hopelessly in lust with Bert's girl Sally (Joy Boushel), a stacked, freckle-faced beauty who speaks in a helium-sucking baby-voice and walks with all the va-voom of a wasted-on-pills Jayne Mansfield. I mean, you can certainly see his point.

Pete's Arcade is sponsoring a pinball competition. Bert and Greg are the top contenders to win the trophy, but Bert, being the villainous type, wants to hedge his bets. Using Whimpy's affection for Sally as leverage, he convinces him to fix the machine so that it tilts while Greg is playing. And so it does. But will this treachery stand, or will justice prevail?

Hey man, anything goes in a pinball summer.

Despite being Canadian, Pinball Summer is one of the most quintessentially American films in the teensploitation genre, one of the very few that authentically captures what American teenagers were really into in the late 70's: pinball, disco, drive-ins, customized vans, and hassling nerds. The 50's greaser throwbacks are a bit of an anomaly, but that one you can probably blame on the Fonz, who was still rabidly popular when Pinball Summer hit the screens.

Otherwise, it's a unique and deeply nostalgic wish-fulfillment fantasy that hits every major note along the way and provides ample fodder for both one-handed heroes and cult-comedy fans alike. Although there is not an abundance of bared-skin, the few instances of boob-flash we get are well-worth the effort. Joy Boushel not only plays pinball topless, she runs around during a backyard party gone-amuck with her gloriously freckled, melon-sized sandbags furiously flapping in the warm summer breeze.

It is honestly one of the greatest sights I've ever seen. Helen Udy, the busty sister, also flashes her painfully ripe rib cushions for a brief but wonderful moment at one point, as well.

But Pinball Summer is not really about tits at all, it's about ass. Virtually every girl (and, disturbingly, most of the guys) in this film wear the shortest-shorts allowable by law, and the camera constantly lingers around the closest denim-clad booty it can find. It is almost fetishistic in it's unabashed love and concern for teenage ass, so if this is at all an interest of yours, you will adore Pinball Summer. And, as mentioned, that goes for whatever side of the hetero-fence you're on, as Zelniker and Marotte flash just as much cheek as their girlfriends do.

Pinball Summer did not light up the box office in it's initial run - Hollywood apparently overestimated the public's love for pinball - but it has remained a cult favorite ever since. In 2007, Quentin Tarantino revived it at the New Beverley Cinema in Los Angeles during his month-long Grindhouse film festival, exposing a whole new generation to Canadian homo-eroticism and freckled tits. As far as it's cast and crew goes, director Mihalka followed this gem up with audacious slasher flick My Bloody Valentine (1981), and two decades' worth of low-budget flicks and cable TV shows. Zelniker, Marotte, and Udy are all still busy working, mostly on Canadian television. Joy Boushel, clearly the standout in this film, had a good ten-year run, appearing in genre favorites Terror Train (also 1980), Humongous (1982), and The Fly (1986), but bowed out of the acting racket in 1990. She is missed, as is her heartbreaking rack.

Availability: Pinball Summer is available in it's less provocative title, Pickup Summer, on DVD from Platinum Disc.
Buy Pick-up Summer at Amazon.

-Ken McIntyre

Hot Dog the Movie (1984)

Directed by Peter Markle
Starring David Naughton, Shannon Tweed, Tracy Smith, Patrick Houser
Rated R
USA
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"What-a the fuck eesa Chinese downhill?"

Considered by many to be a classic of the genre, Hot Dog the Movie is an oddity, a film that tries to mash together a romance, a cornball sex comedy, and a straight-ahead sports movie without ever committing fully to any of them. It's also got an overbearing soundtrack and completely unlikable characters. But on the plus side, the nudity is wall-to-wall, so it sorta balances itself out.

The story is trite and negligible. Harkin Banks (Patrick Houser) is a young skier who's arrived at whatever mountain it is to compete in an international downhill competition. There's a Nazi-esque German guy and a wacked-out Japanese guy, and all the American skiers have names like Banana Pants, Dogger, and Slasher, which makes you hate skiers just a little more than you already did. Somewhere along the way, Harkin meets Sunny (Tracy Smith), a snarly young ski-groupie who initially hates Harkin, until he gets her into his cabin and gets all Glen Campbell on her, plucking his acoustic guitar and warbling his way through a really awful ballad. You wouldn't think it would, but it totally works, and the next thing you know, they're having a 'romantic' sex scene with fuzzy lighting and tinkly synthesizers. At least they get fully nude for the occasion.

The next day, the ironically named Sunny is as disagreeable as ever.
"What, we spend one night together, and now you think you own me?" She says.
Harkin's not sweating it too much though, because also on the mountain is awesomely-named millionaire ski bunny Silvia Fonda (Shannon Tweed), who really wants to bone the new kid.

But first, they all ski down a mountain to a really bad bar-band version of Prince's When You Were Mine. David Naughton's in there somewhere, too. He's the big cheese on the mountain. There's more skiing, some racial stereotyping, and of course, Shannon Tweed strips down to her silicone and seduces the young skier. Later on Sunny finds out, and she and Harkin have it out. He tries to hand her a hat as she bolts out the door.
"Hey, don't forget this."
"Why don't you give it to your girlfriend," she barks. "Miss Plastic Tits."
Haha, exactly, Sunny.

There's a climactic ski-off. It's called the "Chinese Downhill." Its sorta racist, but we apparently didn't know better back then.

Hot Dog boasts some impressive ski footage, enough nudity to keep sleaze fans awake, better than average acting, and more than a few visible boom mic shots. It also arrived at exactly the right time. Feather-light T&A was the order of the day, and goofy ski movies were hot in 1984. The terminally lame Snowballing did equally brisk business that year. Hot Dog the Movie was at least partly responsible for Better off Dead (1985), Hamburger the Motion Picture (1986), Ski Patrol (1990), and Ski School (1991). It may also have aided and abetted in the development of 'extreme skiing'. Bones were most certainly broken because of it. Director Markle obviously enjoyed the experience, because his next film, Youngblood (1986), was also about a winter sport - hockey. He later became a prolific television director, and is still going strong. Shannon Tweed went on to make one bazillion softcore flicks and have several children with professional asshole Gene Simmons. David Naughton had already peaked by the time he appeared here; he still toils away in low-budget films, but will probably always be remembered for American Werewolf in London (1981), the Dr. Pepper commercials, and that disco song he did. Tracy Smith made one other genre (ahem) 'classic' (Bachelor Party, also 1984), appeared in a few Perry Mason TV movies, and then wandered off somewhere. She has not been seen since, at least not by us.

I'm pretty sure no one is all that interested in Patrick Houser's whereabouts, but he has been known to hang out with David Lynch on occasion.

Availability: Hot Dog the Movie is available on DVD from MGM. It's also available for rental from Netflix, and it's still playing on late-night cable TV every five minutes. In fact, it's probably harder to avoid this movie than it is to find it.
Buy Hot Dog...The Movie at Amazon.
-Ken McIntyre

Six Swedes on a Pump (1980)

AKA
Six Swedes on a Campus
High Test Girls
Swedish Erotic Sexations
Swedish Gas Pump Girls
Swedish Sex Service
Secxhs Schwedinnen von der Tansktelle
Rated X
Germany
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I should say right off that I am hopelessly confused about what I've just seen. The English title on the opening credits reads Six Swedes on a Campus. Although there are most definitely six Swedes involved, there is no campus. They actually run a gas station. They're not really Swedish, either, but that's a minor quibble. There's another film in this series called Six Swedes on a Pump, which makes more sense. There is a pump here. So I'm defying the title on my copy. It doesn't matter, though. Six Swedes on a Pump/Campus is like bowling. You don't need to know anything about the sport to bowl, all you need to do is stick your fingers in the holes, and you're bowling. Same thing here. It would probably help if you knew anything about Swedish girls or German films or campuses or pumps, but if you don't, you'll still get it.

This title, as well as the other titles in the series, all star the incomparable Brigitte Lahaie, a baby-faced French actress who started her career in pornography, and was still making XXX films when she shot this softcore romp. She later crossed over into mainstream acting, but is most well-known for wall-to-wall jiggle-fests like this one. She plays Greta here, one of the six Swedish girls running a filling station in a tiny German burg. It is clear from the beginning, however, that this is no ordinary service station.

Six Swedes on a Pump 0pens with a woman absent-mindedly masturbating while she watches a weather report about a tropical report in Cuba. So that's a good sign.
A few minutes later, some guy shows up for some gas. She slips her panties back on and runs out to fill his tank.
"You really know how to handle that pump," he says.
"Well," she says, "I've had a lot of practice."
She asks the dude if we wants to come inside for refreshments. He agrees and, once they get inside, she strips all her clothes off.
"Don't you want to?" She asks. He does. And so they do. The newscasters on the TV report on the action and fondle each other while the couple bang away on the couch. It's pretty fuckin' crazy.

There is no plot to this film, but there is a slight storyline. The grumpy mayor wants the Swedish girls ousted, because he thinks they're affecting the "moral fabric" of his town. To tackle this thorny issue, he calls for an endless series of meetings with his councilmen. The gag is that there's always one councilman missing from the meeting - a different one every time. Guess where they all are? That's right, all the councilmen are banging the mayor's scrumptious wife (Jane Baker) while he's bloviating about the goddamn Swedish girls.

Meanwhile, when they're not fucking the mayor's wife, all the men in town are at the filling station, having extremely casual sex with the Swedish six. And in the very few instances when there are no men around, the women are still carrying on like Scandinavian Caligulas. At one point, they all sit around watching a black and white porn movie. In it, Santa Claus gives a woman a giant wooden fucking machine. She likes it, and it gives them the idea to rig a stationary bicycle with...well, you get the point. They certainly got the point. The television continues to sexually interact with them, as well. It is almost as if the Swedish girls are trapped in some genital-bothering Purgatory. Even when they go out for some exercise, it takes a turn for the erotic. Halfway through an innocent jog through the forest, they suddenly feel the need to disrobe and run naked. Naked and in slow motion. This goes on for something like seven minutes straight.

Halfway through, you start to ponder. How necessary is it, really, to show six Swedish girls running naked, in slow motion, through the forest?

Well, I've watched this scene three times already, so, pretty fuckin' necessary, it seems.

The ceiling of the mayor's mansion is cracked. This is because his employees are having athletic sex with his wife in their upstairs bedroom. He has other theories, of course, but regardless of how the cracks got there, he thinks it's too dangerous for the town's marching band to practice in his mansion, and proposes that they move their rehearsal space to the Swedish filling station. They do. And so, as decreed by the Euro sex comedy handbook, tuba gags and a flustered conductor soon follow.

The original running time for Six Swedes on a Pump is 85 minutes; the US theatrical version is 75 minutes. The copy I have is 64 minutes. Somewhere out there is a print that actually makes some sort of sense, but this one clearly isn't it. Still, even in this chopped and diced form, Six Swedes piles on enough nudity and crazed softcore humping to keep any T&A fan happy. A jumbled mess for sure, but a well-made one. The crystal clear camerawork, eyeball-abusing angles, odd bursts of surrealism, and comic-book edits suggest a Euro Russ Meyer, minus the double-d obsession. Swiss-born director Erwin Deitrich was already a battle-hardened exploitation film vet at this point, having produced everything from Nazisploitation (She Devils of the SS, 1973) to women in prison potboilers (Barbed Wire Dolls, 1975) and even a faux-Ilsa movie ( Ilsa, the Wicked Warden, 1977). Most of his directorial efforts, however, were softcore quickies like this one. All those Swedish girls must have worn him out, however, since this was the last film he directed.

There is practically no end to the amount of goofball sex comedies produced in Europe during the genre's golden age in the 70's and 80's, and since most were chopped, dubbed, remixed, retitled, and distributed all over the world with very little thought or care beyond a quick cash-grab, figuring out what, exactly, you are watching can be a lesson in futility. Still, these films always deliver what they promise - breathtaking scenery, buffoons in beards falling down flights of stairs, and an eyeful of some of the most gorgeous creatures imaginable, flaunting their feminine charms without an ounce of shame. And on that criteria, Six Swedes on a Pump/Campus/Tuba is an absolute winner.

And, did I mention Brigitte Lahaie is naked in it at least half the time?

Availability: Region 2 DVDs of the Six Swedes series are available, but most lack English subtitles. Non-Europeans will have better luck trolling around the internet until you stumble on a dubbed copy. Try some sleazy Turkish or Indian porn forums. You can find all kinds of crazy stuff on those.

-Ken McIntyre

Link: Brigitte Lahaie's blog (in French, naturally)

King Frat (1979)

Directed by Ken Wiederhorn
Starring John DiSanti, Robert Small, Ray Mann
Rated R
USA
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"You mind if I smoke?"
"Of course not. Do you mind if I fart?"

Everything about this film - from the title, to the poster, to the opening shot of a sign that reads 'Welcome to Yellowstream University' - strongly suggests that it is moronic, possibly even sub-moronic, a cinematic lobotomy that you may never recover from. Even in a genre awash with gleeful dumbness, King Frat promises to positively astound you with it's shameless anti-intellectualism. And on that promise, it delivers. The first mooning, for example, occurs one minute and fifty-one seconds into the film. The second? Two minutes and thirty-two seconds. Clearly, we are taking a ride on the short bus.

Third mooning: three minutes, fifty-seven seconds. And this time, a guy in a yellow track suit - the president of the school, no less - has a heart attack and dies when he sees the wall of man-ass. This homicidal, pants-free joyride introduces us to our protagonists, a frat house full of over-aged creeps who live only to guzzle beer and offend the locals. The charmless horde in this gluttonous Animal House rip-off are all stock characters bled dry of any real personality. JJ "Gross Out" Gumbrowski (John DiSanti) is the low budget Belushi, a nauseating maniac who spends most of his time eating and/or expelling waste. Splash (Ray Mann), is the token black character. His job? Washing the floors at the rival golden-boy frat house. Kevin (Robert Small, who had to be 35 when he made this) is the horn-rim glasses-wearing smartass. Jock (Mike Grabow) is exactly that. He wears a football helmet in every scene and communicates in grunts. There are a few others, but you get the idea.

It is not often that a gag-reflex warning needs to be issued for a teen comedy, but you really should know what you're getting into here. Gross-Out doubles as the fraternity cook. There's a stomach-churning scene in the first half-hour where he makes a spaghetti dinner for the fellas. One of the guys pops in and says, "It is ready yet?" Gross-Out fishes a meatball out of the pot, takes a bite, and then spits it back into the sauce. "It's ready," he says. And then he realizes that he's missing his gum, so he jams his fist back into the sauce to look for it.

Yeah, you should probably keep an empty bucket next to the couch when you watch this.

Somewhere amidst the blow-up fuck doll gags and the power-puking demonstrations, the plot kicks in. There's a farting contest coming up. The Pi-Kappas think their man Gross-Out can win it. And so he enters it. Nearly twenty excruciating minutes of King Frat's running time is taken up by this contest. Ultimately, Gross-out loses when he, ahem, "draws mud". Later that night, they throw a 'loser's party' to celebrate. Everyone wears costumes, a white funk band called Natural Magic plays, Gross-out has sex while eating pizza and taking a shit, and the Pi-Kappas steal the rival frat house's statue. The statue, no surprise, is a little boy with a large penis.

What little focus King Frat had is largely abandoned by the second half, as the film devolves into a series of pointless skits. At one point, a guy in a gorilla suit peeps in a sorority house window, which at least provides us with a glimpse of female nudity. There's a whorehouse scene, a wacky ambulance ride, and a rival frat house punch-up. None of it is funny or clever. It all limps to a courtroom finale that aims for uproarious but lands somewhere near tedious.

King Frat (or King *@#! Frat, as it was also known) was directed by Ken Weiderhorn, who showed promise with his directorial debut, the still-shuddery underwater Nazi-zombie-creepfest Shock Waves (1977). Looking back, it appears that one might have been a fluke. King Frat was his follow-up, and the headache-making Meatballs II - the one with the space alien camper - soon followed. Fortunately for Weiderhorn, King Frat was released hot on the heels of Animal House and rode its wave of beer-buzzed good will to healthy box office receipts, particularly in drive-ins, where patrons received rolls of King Frat toilet paper (!) with their tickets. It was released on VHS a few years later, and has remained a curious cult favorite ever since. It's hard to see why, since the film is a cheap, loud, and ugly lame-fest, with no sex appeal, zero originality, and no real sense of humor beyond grade school scat gags. But I dropped out of college, so what do I know? Perhaps farting is much funnier when you're in a fraternity. At any rate, there's a good chance you will come away from this one much dimmer than when you arrived, so make sure you've got the brain cells to spare before viewing.

Availability: King Frat is available on DVD.
Buy King Frat at Amazon.
-Ken McIntyre

Malibu High (1979)

Directed by Irvin Berwick
Starring Jill Lansing, Tammy Taylor, Garth Howard
Rated R
USA
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"So, how do you want it?"
"The French way, if you don't mind."
"Sure, why not? Beats the Greek way."

It seems impossible that this film was made in 1979. It looks more like some grubby, bottom-shelf obscurity fished out of a dumpster in the late 60's. It's like a cautionary classroom scare film mixed with puerile softcore scuzz. It is awesome and the exact opposite of awesome all at once, a jaw-dropping tour de force from the wild-hearted visionary behind the world's first graphic decapitation-by-demon (Monster of Piedras Blancas, 1959) and the infamous, puke-on-your-shoes 70's exploitation howler Hitch Hike to Hell (1977). Irvin Berwick, that magnificent bastard, knew sleaze. And this, make no mistake, is pure, uncut, super-sleaze.

Kim (Jill Lansing) is an obnoxious teenage brat, the kind of angry, desperate high school zero that curses at her own mother while smoking (and eating) at the breakfast table. Her boyfriend dumped her because he thinks she's too stupid to hang out with. She's flunking out of school, and her teachers hate her so much that they don't even care. After a long day of hissing and spitting like a pit viper at everyone in earshot, Kim comes home and lays into mom some more. Things escalate quickly:

"Don't joke about daddy!" She yells. "No wonder he couldn't stay here. You could've looked decent once in awhile, instead of worrying about dirt, and dust, and greasy build-ups! Maybe you wouldn't have driven daddy away. And maybe he wouldn't have killed himself because he couldn't get it up anymore!"

Mom is, of course, mortified. And so am I, a little.

Kim goes to a groovy dance club with her blonde pal Lucy (Katie Johnson), but all she does is chain-smoke and glower at any dude who tries to dance with her. She drags Lucy out of there and demands they go back to Lucy's house so they can bust into her dad's liquor cabinet and get loaded on his top-shelf hooch. But just then, that greasy lowlife Tony (Alex Mann) pulls up in his white van. After once again failing to convince Kim to join his stable of teenage whores, Tony lures her into his pussy wagon to make a weed deal. Seems very fishy, but at this point you hate Kim so much you sorta half-hope Tony chops her into little bits and feeds her to some strays.

Doesn't happen. At least not yet. Kim ends up back at Lucy's, sucking on a bong and ranting about how she's got a plan to pass her classes, get money, and get revenge on her ex-boyfriend Kevin. And then she passes out and dreams about discovering her dad's hanging corpse. She wakes up with a start and glares at Lucy.
"Just you watch," she growls. "Tomorrow's gonna be a whole new scene."

Before we even get to said scene, before Kim devolves into an even less agreeable monster, let us commend Jill Lansing for this legendary performance. Under Kim's hard eyes and spittle, you can almost see the pretty young actress underneath. Although she is cursed with a Dorothy Hamill-ish flip hairdo here, Lansing is still a knockout, a steel-jawed Brooke Shields with sparkly eyes and teacup tits. It's a shame that this is her sole cinematic performance, because she could've easily been a drive-in cult icon. As it is, her brooding, war-on-everybody turn as Kim is second only to Robbie Lee's Lace in the seminal girl-gang flick Switchblade Sisters (1975) for pure, teeth-gritting venom.

Kim shows up at school the next day dressed like a low-budget street-walker and wastes no time in making a deal with one of her teachers. This is how she spends the rest of the day:

She pops Kevin's new girlfriend Annette (adorable, pocket-sized Tammy Taylor) in the face, bloodying her nose.
She meets her teacher, Mr. Donaldson, at "High Point", and fucks him in the dirt.
She meets up with Uncle Tony and makes a 60/40 deal with him. He slaps her in the face and then samples his new merchandise on a filthy mattress in the back of his van.

By the next day, she's servicing so many dudes inside Tony's van that there's a line around the block. And then she drives to school in a brand new white convertible. Ever since she plunged into the exciting world of teenager hooker-dom, everything's going Kim's way. It's not long before Lance (Garth Howard), a more handsome and refined pimp, gobbles her up for his stable, prompting Kim to give ol' Uncle Tony a call.
"Hey, Tony? Get fucked."

Things start to go awry soon after, as they often do. One of Kim's tricks freaks her out with handcuffs and whips, so she stabs him to death with an ice pick. She comes back to Lance's swank pad with a furrowed brow, but he assures her there's always a "fink" to take the rap for unfortunate situations like this. And then he gives her some cocaine. And then he gives her a gun, and tells her to kill Tony.
"Look baby, you're gonna dig this action," Lance tells her. "You've got the constitution for it."


And she does. Assassination becomes Kim's favorite pastime. She particularly relishes murdering the school principal. Lured to Kim's house to expose her teacher-fucking ways to her mother, the old bastard drops dead of a heart attack when Kim strips down to her bloomers and shows him her floppies. She stands over his trembling body triumphantly, while library cues from some old mad scientist serial plays on the soundtrack. I half-expected her to piss on his skull.


Ah, but all murder sprees must come to an end, and after one particularly messy - and personal - hit, Kim finds herself running out of time. Will she escape the clutches of law? Will she ever get back with that fuckin' idiot Kevin? Will Lance ever shave his back? And will Annette strip out of that bikini?
Mostly no, but maybe yes.

While it's true that Malibu High is not exactly what it seems - the title and theatrical poster both suggest a cheeky 70's teen sexploitation romp, not a bloody psychodrama about a rampaging rage-whore - it still scores high on both the T&A and comedy angle. The empty-eyed non-acting of the secondary players is a howl, as are the bare-bones sets and the slapdash score, a seemingly random mish-mash of library cues, including the ever-popular Peoples Court theme, and an oft-repeated, swooshing synth stab also used as PBS's promo music throughout the 70's. As to the celebrity skin, Lansing is tits-out in half a dozen scenes, and there's a brief but quite satisfying flash of tiny Tammy Taylor's angel cakes, right before relentless stud Kevin lays her down on a bearskin rug (!) and makes sweet 70's love to her. So, no complaints there. Cheap, dirty, and relentlessly sleazy, Malibu High is a classic slice of overwrought drive-in trash that delivers the Bad Fun in heaping fistfuls.

Availability: Malibu High is currently available on DVD from BCI/Eclipse, on their highly recommended Drive-in Cult Classics set. For pennies, practically.
Buy Malibu High at Amazon.
-Ken McIntyre