Directed by Bernie Hirschenson Starring Gini Eastwood, Jill Senter, Alan Long Rated R USA
"This is going to be a bad trip."
A swampy mind-fryer, Pick-Up is half regional horror-show, half druggy performance art. The film is ostensibly a post-hippy meditation on the 'Pazuzu' myth - i.e. the Babylonian demon that possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist - but it never actually gets around to the occult antics it promises in its opening scenes. Instead, it prefers to simply roll around naked with its two gorgeous stoner chicks for most of its brief running time. And that's a plan that's hard to argue with.
The story, such as it is, involves shaggy-headed groovy dude Chuck (Alan Long), an aimless rambler who is delivering a 'mobile home' from one end of Florida to the other. Said home, by the way, is clearly a tour bus. However, the sign on the front of the vehicle says "Mobile Home", so perhaps we should just roll with it.
By the way, fun fact: the bus was previously used by Richard Nixon on the campaign trail in 1972.
Chuck stops to pee somewhere near Naples, and ends up picking up two doe-eyed hippy girls, happy go lucky Carol (Jill Senter) and grim, occult-obsessed Maureen (Gini Eastwood). They smoke weed, listen to Bach, flash a group of rowdy locals, and generally have an awesome mid 70's time of it, but things take a turn for the sinister when a flash storm hits, causing them to take a muddy detour that leaves them stranded in the swamplands.
From there, things get decidedly freaky. Maureen hallucinates the Goddess of Apollo, who hands her a sword to kill the demon Pazuzu. Later on, everyone has flashbacks to their childhood - Carol (Senter in pigtails) makes out with a 14 year old kid in the woods, Maureen (Eastwood, also in pigtails) gets molested by a priest, and Chuck (another actor entirely) fiddles with a ham radio. That particular flashback was comparatively underwhelming.
Carol and Chuck quickly develop a sexual relationship, which is no surprise, since Chuck prefers skin-tight white pants that clearly show the outline of the cucumber he's smuggling in there.
While the two young lovers fuck in the bushes, weird shit happens to Maureen. A foppish politician visits her on the bus, she finds an altar in the woods to masturbate on, and she's menaced by Pazuzu himself, in the guise of a sinister clown.
She shrugs every one of these odd occurrences off as soon as they're over, so we're never really sure whether they really happened, or whether she's just tripping balls. It is also unclear as to how many hours or days have passed since this loony joyride started, but it had to be awhile, since Chuck's boss sends out an airplane to find them. Will it get there in time to snatch up these lost souls before the swamplands eat them alive?
Hard to say. I've watched Pick-Up three times already, and I still don't know what happened. I am likewise unsure whether this film is a masterpiece of moody,existential exploitation, or just a woozy, slowly churning cauldron of naked hippy-chick soup sprinkled with 70's occult trappings and liberally dosed with metaphysical weirdness and free love.
Maybe it's both. That, ultimately, is up to the viewer. One thing is certain, however. There's nothing else quite like Pick-Up.
Well, except for drugs. Drugs are almost exactly like Pick-Up.
AKA Lauderdale Directed by Bill Milling Starring Janine Lindemulder, Darrel Guilbeau, Michelle Kemp, Ron Jeremy Rated R USA
"Bambi, you're so beautiful. I can understand why some men kill for love." "Wilson, you're so weird. I can understand why some animals eat their young."
One of the teen sex comedy's long-lost gems, this frivolous little film was written and directed by an ex porn producer, Bill Milling (Ecstasy in Blue, Blonde Velvet, both 1976), and starred a future porn star, Janine Lindermulder, during her brief B-movie stage. Considered by some to be a satire of the genre, and to others a hopeless and helpless victim of the genre's excesses, Spring Fever USAis both brilliant and brainless, a zippy, lighter-than-air romp that fairly throbs with cartoonish exuberance and takes care to fill every single frame with at least one bouncy blonde, more if they can fit. Littered with porn regulars (Ron Jeremy) and local weirdos (Beano), it's a witty bit of sexploitation that takes full advantage of Florida's natural boner-popping powers.
The story involves a spindly young man with a terrible haircut named Larry Wilson (Darrel Guilbeau), an unlikely Lothario and best friend to a loud, fat maniac named Animal (Screwball Hotel's own Jeff Greenman). We first meet these two goons on the beach, where they moon over bikini-clad hardbodies, which causes Animal to shove wet sand into his mouth.
"They're everywhere," he barks."Mindless hordes of bitchin' bimbos from beyond infinity bent on possessing my mind, with their hot little hands emitting cosmic rays into my mind!" Like I said, he's a maniac.
Later on at school, they run into a breathless teenage beauty named Heather (Janine Lindemulder). Although she towers over Larry and would clearly never give this kid a second glance in any sort of world besides the one that apparently existed in this fantastical late 80's Floridian Neverland, Larry's aggressive pick-up lines appear to charm her enough to keep Heather talking. And then, from out of nowhere, two Mutt and Jeff goofballs in Hawaiian shirts attempt to abduct her, but they are summarily thwarted by Larry and Animal, who sucker punch them and bolt, dragging Heather with them. Animal hitches a ride on a Sccoby Doo-esque mystery van, and Larry takes off with Heather, who happens to have a gleaming white Excalibur waiting for her behind a clump of palm trees. By the way, although they look pretty fancy, you can buy one of those things for like $30,000.
Heather is appreciative of Larry's rescue efforts, and offers to take him out to dinner. "You're a very unique and special guy," she says, apparently unaware that both words mean the same thing. Skipping dinner completely, the two go straight to Heather's hotel room. She slips into a bubble bath and tells Larry to order Dom Perignon, the only alcohol that she drinks. It gets her very, very loose, apparently.
Larry calls for room service, but they're out of the stuff. Heather sends him to a liquor store across the street, where he runs into the shop's crazyfro'd owner (the singularly named Beano, seriously going for it), who looks and sounds like some unholy cross between a gone-to-seed Gene Simmons and a mid-bender Sam Kinison.
Liquor store guy extorts several hundred dollars from our shlubby pal as they barter for the last bottle of Dom Perignon, but then Ron Jeremy, with pantyhose on his head, robs them both at gunpoint, fucking it up for everybody. Miraculously, Larry pulls off a swift chopsocky move, knocking Jeremy out. Crazyfro rewards him with the bottle. "Thanks kid," he says. "Now I'm gonna take this grenade, shove it up his ass, and blow him up."
Various foul-ups happen to Larry along the way back to the hotel. A homeless guy (David Donham, My Chauffer, American Drive In) spooks him, causing him to smash the bottle. Luckily, the wino's been holding a bottle of the "Frog shit" for days, looking for a corkscrew. Larry buys it from him, but then a biker yanks it out of his hand and vrooms off into the night. Etc.
He finally makes it back to the room to find that Heather had a bottle all along, and is now sufficiently lubricated. They roll around on the bed for a bit, but before Larry can consummate this arduous amorous adventure, the two loud-shirted knuckleheads from earlier this afternoon barge in, abducting their prey and conking Larry on the head.
He wakes up in a luxury apartment, where yet another blow-dried blonde (Lara Belmonte) aerobicizes suggestively. She finally notices him and explains that she's Rachel, 'good friend' of Heather's, who went to see her at the hotel last night, but found the room ransacked and her friend missing. Rachel tells Larry that she had her 'chauffer' drive them both home. "It's ok, Heather got away," Larry says. "At least I think she did. I had a bunch of champagne last night, and then I got hit in the head, so my brain is kinda fuzzy." "Well," Rachel says, running her fingers through his hair, "If you could tell me anything at all about what happened, I'd be very grateful." "It's starting to come back to me," Larry says, glancing down at his crotch. "Maybe a relaxing hot tub with firm up that memory," Rachel purrs. "Oh, I think it's firming up already," says Larry. Seriously, how is this skinny fucker pulling all this off?
Turns out that Rachel is working for vaguely evil Mr. Geeko (Randy Stevens), who really wants Heather back, for whatever reason. Larry is less help than she'd like, so she has the two idiots, now identified as brothers Dick and Duke Dork (Robert Moss and Mark Levine, respectively), give Larry some 'drowning lessons' in the hot tub. Luckily, he's saved by yet another bottle-blonde in a flashy car.
I should point out here that it is quite difficult to keep all these women straight, because they all look pretty much the same. This isn't really the film's fault, though. Most women looked like these girls in 1989. Perms, peroxide, tanning booths and aerobics classes were all very, very big in the late 80's. Anyway, this one is Jane (the very Linnea-esque Michelle Kemp), who works for Heather's dad. Seems she's the daughter of one of the world's richest men, and on her 18th birthday - just one week away! - she'll inherit one million shares of his company. I didn't really understand the whole convoluted story, but Mr. Geeko gets the company if she doesn't show up at some corporate meeting in seven days. So that's why Geeko wants her lost and dad wants her found. Jesus, it took 45 minutes to get to the actual plot. And so, off zooms Jane and Larry to find Heather before the Dorks do.
Of course, the Dorks snatch Heather almost immediately. She was pretty easy to find, considering that foolish car she was tooling around in. Meanwhile, Larry and Jane rent an RV and tour various surf shops (Heather mentioned she wanted to find "The Big Kahuna"), and then stop at a lingerie shop where two more wind-blown almost-blondes (Sherrie Rose and Kimberly O'Brien) model sleazy under-things for them for ten minutes. And then, because it's 1989 (also because it's part of the plot somehow; frankly, this whole scene distracted me), Jane pours into a teddy and garters, too.
Oh, right. It's so she can seduce the Dorks. The plan works, and they rescue Heather, but she cares nothing for her father's company or that Geeko fuckface, she just wants to party, dude. Ron Jeremy shows up on a motorcycle, and they take off to Lauderdale.
Finally, fuckin' Fort Lauderdale. Cue the Beasties rip-off rap-rock tune (blame 'Jeff Mills and Asrock' for that one) and a spring-break montage featuring a seemingly endless array of bared breasts, plus a dude with a mullet and a mustache disco dancing, and a one-armed black dwarf.
Larry and Jane find Heather oil-wrestling at a nightclub while a Night Ranger-ish band called Fury, with a lead singer who looks like Carrot Top, blares away on stage. I'll give it to the girls: they seriously wail on each other.
Heather escapes Larry's clutches (pretty easy to do, she was probably quite slippery, given the Wesson oil) and ends up at another club, this time singing with yet another ear-battering band, The Rebel Pebbles. The song, some sort of new wave/surf hybrid, goes, in part, "Nights filled with passion, night-time assassin/Fantasies unleashed, you're finally with me". One dude plays the keytar. It's a pretty awful song.
Then there's a belly-flop competition, followed quickly by a wet t-shirt contest. Look closely, and you might also spot a youngAmy Lynn Baxter during an extended bikini car wash scene. By this point in the film, it becomes pretty obvious that director Milling is determined to suck every bit of pulp out of the already-occurring Lauderdale spring break for his movie. If you were there in 1988, then I suggest you hunt this down, as it will serve as a fine home movie of your experience.
Spring Fever USA roars to a climax with a boat chase, guns, the ol' switcheroo, and a typically improbable happy ending where everybody ends up with bright futures and compatible sexual partners, even fat loudnouths and future sex stars. Such endings are usually pretty tough to swallow, but after 90 minutes of bikini car washes and belly flop kings, you start to believe that just about anything is possible, as long as it's happening under a blazing Florida sun.
Director Bill Milling has had one of the most amazing exploitation film careers imaginable, having done everything from acting to directing to special effects on films like Squirm (1976), Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1980) Savage Dawn (1985) and Caged Fury (1989). These days, he owns a successful film studio in New York City, but probably misses topless shoots in Florida every once in awhile. Janine Lindermulder of course became a semi-mainstream porn star with two full-sleeves of tattoos. Non masturbators would probably recognize her best as the porno-nurse on the cover of that one Blink 182 album. Darrel Guilbeau has carved out a lucrative career doing voice-over work for anime. Michelle Kemp never acted again, nor did Beano. Ron Jeremy is as fat as ever. Many thousands of college kids still go to Fort Lauderdale every spring break to drink themselves into comas and judge girls on their ability to wet down their t-shirts.
Availability: Spring Fever USA is semi-available on DVDand slightly more available on VHSunder its original title, Lauderdale. I encourage you to seek out one or the other and dream big 80's dreams.
Directed by James Ingrassia Starring Richard Steele, Andrea Thompson, Jeremy Whalen Rated R USA Shop for this poster!
The first five minutes of Hot Splash manages to ape the average teen sex comedy so accurately that it takes a couple scenes before you realize there's anything wrong. Our hero, Matt (Richard Steele), is a surfer dude living in Miami. He sleeps with a blow-up fuck doll. His friends are all loudmouth, bleached-blonde, beach-bum assholes. His first stop of the day is to a surf shop, where he gets to feel up a chick in the dressing room. Ok, so the film-stock looks like it came from K Mart, but so far, it all seems normal enough. We are next introduced to half-shirt wearing blonde Jennifer (Andrea Thompson), an aspiring singer with a rat-fink boyfriend. She's in a recording studio, laying down some backing tracks on a ballad the sounds like a new wave band with Downs Syndrome covering Sister Christian. That's the first inkling that something's awry. Inkling number two pops up when, a minute or two later, a synchronized aerobics routine breaks out at the beach.
Right. We are obviously dealing with a few first-time, last-time, and non-actors here. Nobody can deliver a realistic line. It's like folk art, this movie. And the script so very rarely delivers any jokes that you forget it's supposed to be a comedy. It almost seems like anti-comedy, like something Neil Hamburger would direct, just to make you suffer. But let us hold our opinions for the moment and travel a little further down this twisted path.
Jennifer gets her big break one night when she gets to sing with Lenny Macaluso's band at a cheeseball dance club called Jubilations. Lenny's a real guy (lord knows, you can't fake a guy who's willing to walk around with a two-tone white-fro), a successful songwriter who composed songs for bands like Rare Earth and movies like Thrashin'. Whatever talents he has are not evident in the bass-rumbling, headache-making live rendition of Gimme Some Lovin' you hear here. That's the consistently alarming thing about this film: why not just a dub a studio track in, like every single other movie ever made? Why use the actual live track, when it so obviously sounds like a train crashing into another train? Twenty minutes into the film, and I am convinced that director Ingrassia shot this entire film in one pill-fueled twenty-four hour frenzy. It's got that one-take, no overdubs, we'll-fix-it-in-editing vibe, like Harry Novak with Alzheimer's. I imagine most people would find this aggro-amateurism excruciating, but I actually found it sort of exciting, like absolutely anything could happen next.
Jennifer's friend says, "When are you gonna find a guy that will treat you right?" "Don't you understand?" Jennifer replies. "That's what I like about Jimbo." The camera cuts to Jimbo pouring a Budweiser on his head. And then it cuts to some girl with a bad perm and an even worse dress doing some sort of herky-jerky dance. And then Jennifer gets back up to help Lenny mangle Spirit's 'I Got a Line on You'. Halfway through, some kid on the dance floor gets grabby with her, so Jimbo pops him in the face, and they brawl. There is no humor whatsoever to any of this. Neither is there any dramatic tension. It's just two beer-powered assholes wailing on each other, like some grainy backyard wrestling clip from Youtube. They get tossed out, and Jennifer starts slapping Jimbo and calling him a cheating asshole. And then he pulls out her tit and starts making out with her on the hood of a car.
They take off, she gets completely nude, and they fuck in a hot tub. And suddenly, it hits you: Florida. Florida is a motherfucker on the soul. I was there two years ago - twenty years after this film was shot - and its still exactly like this. Florida is fucking demented. That must be the message of this movie. It may be a very expensive cry for help from the director.
A bizarre subplot emerges involving a low-level Mafia type named TJ (Jeremy Whalen) and the two fat idiots he employs as his stooges. Some old dude with a black panther for a pet tells him to "get the money or else" and the fat guys say, "Can we go to the pizzeria now?" Matt and his buddy Woody (Richard Steinmetz) get a catering job, which happens to be at TJ's house. They blunder their way into his graces when they accidentally save his life, and suddenly, they become his new stooges. Later that night, Jennifer flirts with a liquor store clerk while "the gang" robs the place. Then they enjoy the fruits of their labor at a berserk house party. Again, this is supposed to look like kooky teenage fun, but it mostly looks like a bunch of angry alcoholics on a crime spree.
Does it really matter what happens next? Matt starts dating TJ's niece Kim (Kim is not listed anywhere in the credits, by the way). He and Woody get an assignment to deliver a package but, when they discover said package contains cocaine, they freak out and decide to hide out at the Dollhouse II strip club. Because no one will see them in a packed strip club. It is fairly obvious that this scene came to pass because the director knew some dude who worked there, since the club's neon sign is prominently displayed in a static shot that lasts nearly a minute. It's a cheap way to crowbar some extra tits in the film, at any rate. I mean, they were whipping 'em out anyway, right?
Around this point in the film, they start inserting music cues from what sounds like 1950's science fiction films. Invasion of the Saucermen, shit like that. It makes an already surreal cinematic experience even weirder. There's also a scene in Matt's bedroom where you can clearly see a poster for the 1984 military comedy Tank, starring James Garner. Even James Garner wouldn't have that poster on his wall. Anyway, the fat guys kidnap Jimbo because he's supposed to win a surfing contest that TJ is betting on. I'm not sure how that works, but whatever. So at one point, Woody runs up to Jennifer and says this: "Listen, I found out where they hid him. He's at the Mystery Funhouse. I got the gang together, and we're supposed to meet them over there." All I can say is, Zoinks.
A good half an hour of Hot Splash's running time is just shots of whatever the fuck was going on at Miami Beach at the time. The rest, however, is pure madness, a jumble of bad ideas sutured together with all the finesse of a battlefield surgeon. Ingrassia's kitchen-sink approach is just so mind-fryingly random that it nearly approaches genius in places. I mean, Matt and Kim escape the mobster's clutches in a goddamn hot air balloon. And then Uncle TJ ends up in jail, wearing a housedress.
I could not guess where James Ingrassia is now, but wherever he roams, I feel safe in assuming that he is quite proud of his handiwork here. He should be. Hot Splash is by no means a good film, but it is a spectacularly bad film, and that's almost better. Any half-wit with a decent crew can cobble together a watchable teen-sex flick, but it takes a certain breed of rugged individual to create a vision as singular as this one, where strippers and mafia goons and surfers and local drunks and bikini models and terrible actresses all get together and make one seriously hot mess.
Against all odds, several members of the Hot Splash cast have gone on to successful acting careers. Most prominently, Andrea "Jennifer" Thompson has done two decades' worth of high profile television, most recently on 24 and Heroes. Richard "Woody" Steinmetz has also enjoyed steady work on television, from whacked-out soap Passions to ratings juggernaut CSI. Paul Parducci, who played Sancho, the less-fat stooge, wrote, produced, and directed his own TV series, Nightmare Boss, in 2006. No idea where the rest of "the gang" is, but from their behavior in the film, I'd say their time is probably divided equally betwixt jail, rehab, and the Dollhouse II.
Availability: Although a chopped-to-bits version of Hot Splash (gross name, by the way) played a few times on basic-cable badfilm Valhalla USA Up All Night in the late 80's and early 90's, it doesn't appear that the film ever received a proper US video release. PAL versions exist, however, as Hot Splash did manage to surf it's way into the UK. Intrepid US garbage-heads will have to rely on either their weird cousin, the one who obsessively taped Up All Night for 13 years, or just, you know, search around your hipper torrent sites.
A swampy mind-fryer, Pick-Up is half regional horror-show, half druggy performance art. The film is ostensibly a post-hippy meditation on the 'Pazuzu' myth - i.e. the Babylonian demon that possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist - but it never actually gets around to the occult antics it promises in its opening scenes. Instead, it prefers to simply roll around naked with its two gorgeous stoner chicks for most of its brief running time. And that's a plan that's hard to argue with.
Chuck stops to pee somewhere near Naples, and ends up picking up two doe-eyed hippy girls, happy go lucky Carol (Jill Senter) and grim, occult-obsessed Maureen (Gini Eastwood). They smoke weed, listen to Bach, flash a group of rowdy locals, and generally have an awesome mid 70's time of it, but things take a turn for the sinister when a flash storm hits, causing them to take a muddy detour that leaves them stranded in the swamplands.
From there, things get decidedly freaky. Maureen hallucinates the Goddess of Apollo, who hands her a sword to kill the demon Pazuzu. Later on, everyone has flashbacks to their childhood - Carol (Senter in pigtails) makes out with a 14 year old kid in the woods, Maureen (Eastwood, also in pigtails) gets molested by a priest, and Chuck (another actor entirely) fiddles with a ham radio. That particular flashback was comparatively underwhelming.
Carol and Chuck quickly develop a sexual relationship, which is no surprise, since Chuck prefers skin-tight white pants that clearly show the outline of the cucumber he's smuggling in there.
While the two young lovers fuck in the bushes, weird shit happens to Maureen. A foppish politician visits her on the bus, she finds an altar in the woods to masturbate on, and she's menaced by Pazuzu himself, in the guise of a sinister clown.
She shrugs every one of these odd occurrences off as soon as they're over, so we're never really sure whether they really happened, or whether she's just tripping balls. It is also unclear as to how many hours or days have passed since this loony joyride started, but it had to be awhile, since Chuck's boss sends out an airplane to find them. Will it get there in time to snatch up these lost souls before the swamplands eat them alive?
Hard to say. I've watched Pick-Up three times already, and I still don't know what happened. I am likewise unsure whether this film is a masterpiece of moody,existential exploitation, or just a woozy, slowly churning cauldron of naked hippy-chick soup sprinkled with 70's occult trappings and liberally dosed with metaphysical weirdness and free love.
Maybe it's both. That, ultimately, is up to the viewer. One thing is certain, however. There's nothing else quite like Pick-Up.
Well, except for drugs. Drugs are almost exactly like Pick-Up.
and slightly more available on 
under its original title,
