Showgirls (1995)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Starring Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, Kyle Machlachan
NC-17
USA

"I'm erect. Why aren't you erect?"

Created by the zillionaire writing/directing team of Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoeven - who had recently struck box office gold with Basic Instinct - Showgirls was meant to be an epic Hollywood spectacle filled with flesh, flash and heart-rending melodrama. Budgeted at a comfortable 45 million dollars - including 2 million that went right into Eszterhas's pocket for his screenwriting fee - the movie does, indeed, deliver on that promise. But it's so much more, as well. Basically the most expensive sexploitation flick ever made, Showgirls straddles so many genres at once - drama, pitch-black comedy, musical, satire, morality tale, softcore, 70s' style rape and revenge - that it means something different to everyone that gazes into it. It's like a reflecting pool, only with bonus vagina.

The story revolves around one Nomi Malone (Saved by the Bell star Elizabeth Berkley, acting as hard as she possibly can) , a tightly-wound spazz prone to kicking inanimate objects and shoving people. Despite her obvious psychosis, she manages to charm everyone who she collides with, including an Elvis-y truck driver who she hitches with to Vegas and a showgirl-revue seamstress named Molly (Gina Ravera), who lets her move in with her in her tiny trailer on the edge of town.

You may ask yourself why someone with a job that probably pays $70,000 a year is living in a trailer, or why she would take a stray like Nomi in - who, incidentally, puked on her the moment they met - but that's the magic of Showgirls. Much like the city it takes place in, the normal laws of physics, gravity, and common sense mean nothing in Showgirls. It exists in its very own reality, a delightfully screwy world where everybody's naked all the time, where women speak of nothing except food and their own breasts, and where men live only to manipulate and humiliate topless dancers. I know, that sounds like an awful place, but really, it's awesome.

Nomi gets a job at a sleazeball strip club called Cheetahs. Eventually Cristal (Gina Gershon), the star of a topless show at the Riveria called Goddess, and her cad of a boyfriend Zack (Kyle MacLachlan) - the entertainment director of the Riveria - get wind of this dramatic new talent, and recruit her for their show. As Nomi's ambition knows no bounds, she kicks and claws her way from background dancer to star in no time flat, and goes head to head with Cristal in the dance-fight to end all dance-fights.

That, of course, is the short version. There's a ton of crazy bullshit that happens along the way. This is really a seeing-is-believing sort of film, so mere descriptions of the non-stop outrage and excess would not do it justice. I mean, this movie has naked girls and monkeys - in the same scene. It's fuckin' bananas.

In summation: A fizzing, career-killing bomb upon its release, over the years Showgirls has been embraced by snarky critics and irony-buffs as a delightfully campy disaster. In fact, it is difficult to find a review anywhere that doesn't, at some point, called Showgirls an aggressively bad film, even while praising its many charms. I do not agree with this assessment. Showgirls is not a bad film, Showgirls is a towering, swaggering epic of tits and screaming, a life-gulping orgy of psychotic behavior, pneumatic fucking, and weird, heavy metal death-fantasy dance sequences. It is a Hollywood cocaine seizure of the highest order. How could a movie possibly be bad when it does not have any boring parts? Showgirls is all id, all snapping jaws and iced-up nipples, and Berkley and Gershon are tremendous and legendary rivals. It is virtually impossible to figure out where their characters end and they begin, or vice-versa - their whole relationship, in the film and on the set, seems fueled by mutual loathing. Also, there are scenes in this film that you will never, ever get out of your head once you've seen them. Nomi's epileptic pool-fuck will probably flash through your head in your final moments. For all these reasons and so many more - Versace! - Showgirls should be lauded for what it really is - a demented masterpiece.


- Ken McIntyre

The Pig Keeper's Daughter (1972)

Directed by Bethel Buckalew
Starring Terry Gibson, Peggy Church, Gina Paluzzi
Rated R
USA

"I kinda like rough lookin' girls."

Directed by softcore mogul Bethel Buckalew and produced by exploitation giant Harry Novak, The Pig Keeper's Daughter takes a sliver-thin premise - the salesman and the farmer's daughter joke - and stretches it out to feature length with a seemingly endless series of dusty, farm-bound sex romps. Cheap, brainless, gleefully grimy, and littered with buoyant double-D's, The Pig Keeper's Daughter was clearly influenced by Russ Meyer. In fact, if ol' Russ was a moonshine guzzling yokel with holes in his shoes and a two-dollar budget, this is exactly the movie he'd make.

Skinny, carrot-topped podunk Moonbeam (Terry Gibson) wishes her pet pig Lord Hamilton was a little taller, so he could take her to the movies. Until that fateful day, the lonely Pigfarm girl is content to let Hammy nuzzle her denim-clad crotch until local stud Jasper (John Keith, A Scream in the Streets) shows up to bone her in the hay. And that's Moonbeam's life, pretty much.

Jasper doesn't even like Moonbeam all that much. Truth be told, his heart belongs to willowy Pretty Patty (Peggy Church, A Touch of Sweden), but she won't put out. She will, however, happily masturbate on the barn roof while she watches Jasper and Moonbeam rut like...well, like pigs, pretty much.
A happy-go-lucky panty salesman zooms into this sleepy glen to peddle his wares, singing a cheerful ditty as goes. He happens upon a poor soul who's been hogtied to his own ankles by a thieving hitchhiker and forced to walk along the rode bent over in a very compromising position. The salesman pulls over to find out what happened, and the man tells him his sorry tale. "Well," says the salesman, pulling down his zipper, "I guess this is your unlucky day."

Sometime after raping the poor bastard on the side of the road, Mr. Salesman picks up a busty hitchhiker, who turns out to be a prostitute. At first he scoffs at her advances - he did just fuck a guy, after all - but then she takes off her t-shirt, letting her ample milkjugs bob in the breeze, and he cannot resist. They pull off to some nearby woods and have very awkward 70's sex in the grass. Once they're finished, the girl demands $50, twice as much as they agreed on. When the salesman balks, she says, "Hey man, I'm only fifteen. You wouldn't want anyone to know you raped a fifteen year old girl, would you?"

So he pays her. Of course, even a cursory glance would tell you she's closer to 30, but whatever. That guy sorta deserved it.

The salesman ends up at the pig farm. He tries to sell his powders and lotions to Moonbeam's top-heavy mom, Molly (Gina Palluzi), but she keeps slipping out of clothes and convincing him to just give her stuff until they're both naked and he's out of things to sell. And then they fuck, awkwardly, on the sofa. This whole movie is about awkward sex. He's pretty happy with the way things are going until he finally pops, and then he's just bummed that he gave away all his stuff. Molly, however, has a proposition for him, and if he plays his cards right, he may just get all his garbage back.
Meanwhile, Jasper goes to visit Pretty Patty. Well, first he beats up her little brother and rolls him around in the mud. Then he visits her. She tells him to wait until she changes into her new outfit, which turns out to be an eye-bleeding, midriff-baring, blue daisy-festooned monstrosity. Strangely, this works for Jasper. They decide to consummate their love on a haystack. He promises to only put it in a little. Ladies, never believe that line.

So, with Jasper and Patty rutting away, Moonbeam is free to smooch with Lord Hamilton. And that's exactly what she does, until the salesman wanders over to her and lures her into his web of lust with the promise of "store bought stockings". Before you know it, the two of 'em are splashing away together in an outdoor bath tub, and Moonbeam is happily over her porcine sex obsession. The end.

Well, not exactly. Turns out this entire film has been leading up to a gag. Long fuckin' way to go for a laugh, man.

If you are looking for anything resembling a sensible piece of filmmaking, than you should probably stay away from The Pig Keeper's Daughter. But if you really like looking at busty 70's chicks with full bush and no shame, then run-don't-walk to your nearest discount website/physical media dealer and snap this minor masterpiece of southern fried filth up. Senseless and sleazy, it strips softcore of all its erotic pretensions, and just lets it all hang out. Street-level sleaze hounds will love it.

The Pig Keepers Daughter is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Sizzle Beach USA (1974)

AKA Malibu Hot Summer
Directed by Richard Brandet
Starring Terry Congie, Leslie Brander, Roselyn Royce
Rated R
USA

"Let's celebrate. I'll fix you one of my famous raw egg and liver shakes."

Unlike many of the films in this book, I have no history with Sizzle Beach USA. We're not tight bros from way back when. We have not consoled one another during the lean times. All I knew about it before a week or so ago was that it was a Troma Team release, and that it featured a young Kevin Costner. And while Troma does, occasionally, make good on their mostly empty promises of an awesomely sleazy time, this Costner creep never does. I mean, Field of Dreams? Tin Cup? Fuckin' Message in a Bottle? I see that guy, and I'm headed the other way. As such, it's been pretty easy to avoid this one all these years. So, have I been right all along in letting Sizzle Beach USA rot at the bottom of the 70's softcore trash heap, or have I missed out on a sparkling gem of early Tromatic super-sleaze? Only one way to find out.

And away we go. First off, the theme song is terrible. It sounds like Kenny Rogers. Like a hippy Kenny Rogers with a flute. Is that anyway to pump us up for hijinks? There's some decent opening credits imagery, though. Three chicks in a hot tub. A blonde in white hot pants aerobicizing on the beach. Stuff like that. Cut to the set-up:

Two ditzy broads: pint-sized Dit (Leslie Brander, presumably the director's wife/daughter/sister) and breezy blonde Cheryl (Suzanne Somers doppelganger Roselyn Royce) get stuck in a small-town diner because the doorknob on the ladies' room door came off, causing their Greyhound bus to take off without them. Usually this means they will soon be skewered and eaten half-alive by inbred desert mutants, or run down by some unseen maniac in a black pick-up truck. But that's just not the kind of movie we are watching. In this universe, they run into yet another woman who can't figure her way out of a bathroom, and so the three bond over it. Girl number three, Janice (Terry Congie), has a convertible. Better still, Dit just inherited a beach house in LA with her cousin Steve. Who inherits houses with their cousins? I can't even remember most of my cousins' names. Anyway, Janice offers to drive them all to Los Angeles, and Dit suggests they all stay with her at the newly inherited beach house. This is precisely when - if the Charlie's Angels outfits have not already tipped you off - it becomes obvious that Sizzle Beach USA was made a lot earlier in Costner's career than Troma would like you to believe. Nobody invited anybody anywhere in the 1980's.

Sizzle Beach USA was actually shot in 1974 under the title Malibu Summer, and initially released to drive-ins and grindhouses as Malibu Hot Summer. There was no script. The actors made most of it up as they went along. Hence, the bullshit about the doorknobs. It was made with no money, on the weekends, with amateur talent. At one point, just to try and squeeze a few more bucks out of it, producer Eric Louzil thought about retitling it Silicone Summer, since all three of the female leads were chestically enhanced. It was re-released on VHS in the mid 1980's with the name change to capitalize on Costner's involvement, since he'd gone on to super-stardom. At one point, Mr. Waterworld attempted to buy the film outright from Troma's head schemer Lloyd Kaufman, so he could bury it in the desert somewhere and avoid future Mr. Skin appearances. Nobody bests ol' Lloyd, though. He cleaned up for six or so months on the back of Costner-mania.

So yeah, it's the early 70's. As such, we can forgive the lack of plot. There was very little plot anywhere in 1973. Back at the beach house, cousin Steve (Robert Acey) is slobbering over a heavy-breasted brunette named Candi (Victoria Taft) who says, while they are making out on the couch, "Why don't we go upstairs to see your John Travolta poster?"
"Yeah," Steve answers. "Great idea."
Unfortunately, Dit barges in with her friends, effectively ruining the afternoon.

From here on in, Sizzle Beach USA is just a maddeningly random collection of scenes and images that your brain works overtime to try and connect, lest the very universe start collapsing around you. Some Russ Meyer-esque Asian chick saunters around her bedroom completely and gloriously nude for five minutes before Steve calls her to tell her he's leaving town for two weeks. She flops down on her waterbed and says, "Well, I guess I'll have to find someone else to make love to me while you're gone. I can't let a body like this go to waste."
Tramp.
Cut to: Dit and Cheryl frolicking with a dog on the beach.
Cut to: Janice with an acoustic guitar, singing a song that goes "A world's creation dies of cancer, a tender rose hides it's thorns/Breasts of destiny hold no answer, again feelings of scorn". I'm assuming she ate half a bag of mushrooms and then freestyled those lyrics.

Cut to: Dit watching TV in bed while Cheryl works out, topless, on a stationary bike.
Cut to: Ranch hand John (Kevin Costner) taking Dit out horseback riding. Suddenly his pal Pete (Peter Risch, RIP), a two-foot dwarf dressed like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, pulls up in a convertible.
"Nice work, boss," he says to Costner. "I like a tall woman."
"But I'm only 5 feet tall," Dit points out.
"Baby," says Pete, chomping on a cigarillo, "That's tall to me."

Cut to: Janice in the recording studio, playing more of her awful mushroom-head folk songs.
Cut to: A lingering shot of Cheryl's ass on the beach.

Cut to: Dit in an acting class, pretending she's a banana. "I want you to let go of your inhibitions," the acting teacher tells her.
"I don't think I have any," Dit says. And then she takes off her shirt. Peeling the banana, I guess. Then she goes home and fucks Kevin Costner.

Etcetera, etcetera. Stuff happens - Janice enters a fixed talent show; the midget's in on it. Cheryl gets a job as a high school gym teacher and starts dating a middle-aged, molester-mustachioed asshole in a tracksuit. There's a big party where this fat fucker pretends to be a Hollywood agent to have sex with a pendulous-breasted blonde chick from Rhode Island (Sylvia Wright, Terror on Tour, Bloody Birthday).

Janice gets dosed and starts hallucinating. Kevin Costner wears a suit jacket with leather elbows and guzzles booze with the dwarf. Later on they hijack a car by gunpoint.

Is there a happy ending? Honestly, how could all that bullshit not end happily?

In conclusion: although I initially had my reservations about Sizzle Beach USA, I can now say without irony that it is full-on amazing, for all the wrong/right reasons. All three leads are constantly disrobing, there's ear-gouging folk songs, a scheming dwarf, disturbing improvised dialogue ("I didn't do too good in acting class yesterday. She told me to be a pillow, but she couldn't tell whether I was a...like a... foam pillow, or like a feather pillow"), even more disturbing anti-comedy, and no plot whatsoever. It's fucking nonsense, but gloriously so, a minor masterpiece of stoned-immaculate, pseudo-Dadaist, 70's fuck-everybody filmmaking. I don't know where this Richard Brander character is now - this was the only film he ever directed - but wherever he is, I hope he's rich, still weird, and happy.

PS: Roselyn Royce, who later went on to form an "erotic wrestling" video company called Golden Girls, died in 2007. Rose, we hardly knew ye, but all signs pointed to awesome. RIP, golden girl.

Clip: Roselyn Royce whalin' on some dude named Juan.



Availability: Sizzle Beach USA is available on DVD from Troma.
Buy Sizzle Beach, USA from Amazon.

-Ken McIntyre

Confessions of a Pop Performer (1975)

Directed by Norman Cohen
Starring Robin Askwith, Antony Booth, Kipper
Rated R
UK
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"Have you seen my Fanny?"
"I've seen Curse of Frankenstein, and I think that's bloody well enough."

Tim Lea is an accident-prone stooge who looks like Brian Jones, sounds like Dudley Moore, and somehow blunders his way into bed with a seemingly endless stream of horny/lonely/married women. A window washer by trade, he rarely gets any actual work done, since he's always getting suckered into some crazy scheme by his brother in law Sid or being stripped naked and mounted by a randy housewife. If this sounds at all familiar, it's because the Confessions of series played relentlessly on late night cable in the 1980's. Dated even then, these curious time-wasters were hugely popular in the UK, but were almost universally despised in the states. I have never heard anyone discuss these films fondly, despite the fact that any teenage American skin-seeker with a premium cable plan in the '80's has seen every one of these films, and can quote groan-worthy Tim Lea dialogue verbatim. In fact, the Confessions series may be where most Americans learned how to do a British accent, because Robin Askwith's Tim sounds exactly like a yank goofing his way through a cockney bit: "Oh, 'ello guvnor!"

So yeah, we endured 'em. After all, on many long and lonely nights in 1985, it was either this or an even dumber Shannon Tweed movie. Confessions' reign on the 3AM timeslot ended two decades ago, and now they mostly sit quietly on dusty UK DVD racks, waiting for some sort of Askwith revival to be rediscovered as long-lost cult comedy classics. And while they do have their charms, my guess is, they'll be waiting a while longer.

Confessions of a Pop Performer was the second film in the Confessions series, rushed out a year after the smashing success of Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974), the (ahem) towering comic monolith that started it all. Pop Performer starts exactly where the last one ended, with Tim banging away on some meaty-hipped cheating wife while a rather awesome theme song, a gooey Britop confection called Confessions of Timmy Lea by Dominic Bugatti, plays over the credits. Not surprisingly, the old bird's husband walks in on them. They speed the film up, Benny Hill style, as he gets chased around the room. Timmy makes his escape through the window. That scene was essentially the entire plot of the first movie, so they at least got it over with quickly this time and actually threw a little storyline into the mix.

After a hard day of fucking other men's women and not washing any windows, Tim and his brother-in-law Sid (Antony Booth, who would later become Tony Blair's father-in-law) head down to the pub for a pint. They hear a catchy pop band playing upstairs, but are too lazy to actually go up there and watch them. Still, Sid decides on the spot that he wants to manage them and take them to the top, so when the goofy looking band trundles downstairs sometime later, Sid writes up a contract and signs them, right then and there. Later on at home, Sid and Tim go about the difficult task of naming the new pop sensations. Apparently they hadn't gotten around to choosing a moniker yet. Tim wants to go with "Bloater", which does sound pretty awesome, but Sid doesn't think it's modern enough, and decides on "Kipper".
"Well, the name smells of success," notes Timmy.
"I bet they play sole music," quips Tim's mum.
And then Tim's dad comes home from work dressed in a gorilla suit.

Sid sets up a showcase gig for the band at a local club, but there's a slight problem. Turns out that Kipper weren't actually playing their instruments at the pub, they were just lip-synching to records, so there's a good chance they can't actually play anything. Then again, maybe they can, so Sid and Tim forge ahead regardless, running around London hyping the gig. Tim meets a pretty young reporter named Jill (Carol Hawkings) who wants to do a story on a modern pop group. She brings him up to her office and he proceeds to accidentally start a fire. Panicking, he grabs a fire extinguisher and sprays it wildly, covering the room in foam but somehow managing to miss the actual fire. Then he stumbles backwards and knocks down an entire wall. Her dad (Robert Downing, RIP) runs in to see what all the commotion is, and of course he gets sprayed in the face and falls on his ass. Eventually, the entire room gets swallowed up by foam. It's the sort of comedic overkill Brit humor is known for, but it's more puzzling than funny.

Tim's mom tells Sid she can get a mob of girls together to chase Kipper when they arrive at the club that afternoon. Always looking for cheap publicity, Sid agrees to the plan.
At the appointed time, the mob shows up. Imagine that, they're all old women. One of the biddies somehow jams her hearing-horn (or whatever you call them; granny had one on the Tweety Bird cartoons as well) onto the drummer's hand, so Tim is forced to drum for Kipper, despite the fact that he does not play the drums. But since there's a good chance that none of them can play instruments, how bad can it be?

Surprisingly, the show starts out well. The band launch into a pretty great Gary Glitter-esque glam-stomper called "The Clapper". The old ladies go nuts. The record label dude, Mr. Barnwell (Benny Hill alumni Bob Todd, RIP) is pleased. Sid's already counting his dough. And then, quite suddenly, it all goes to hell. Tim rips off his shirt and goes on an Iggy Pop style vandalism spree, trashing his drums and knocking over the rest of the band. For some reason, the piano blows up. The song devolves into destructive noise. A bunch of people all start running around screaming and smashing into each other. And then a groupie thinks Tim is Mick Jagger, so she drags him into a prop room and fucks him. And then Tim escapes by dressing up like a horse.
So, overall, good gig.

Next morning, at the breakfast table, Tim's dad says, "What I don't understand is why Black Beauty here came home last night dressed as a horse."
"Well, if you can come home dressed like a gorilla," Tim replies, "Than I can come home dressed like a horse."
Touché!


So a bunch of dumb stuff happens, mostly involving Tim and his penis. He has sex with a record store clerk in a pile of 7" singles and later on hits a guy in the face with a banana cream pie. Etc. It all climaxes with Kipper floundering their way into playing a black-tie charity gig at a large London venue. Tim almost misses the gig, of course, because he was busy fucking a melon-chested contortionist (you really do just wanna castrate this kid after awhile). In a scene reminiscent of Spinal Tap, Tim attempts to find his way backstage, and ends up poking through a hole onstage while the Climax Sisters perform a nutty Shangri-Las-esque song that goes, in part, "I'll never forget the day you drove off in a rage because you thought I loved Bill/You were on a motorcycle, I wish you'd been killed".

Does it all work out? Yes but no but yes. The usual, really.

In Summation: There's a good chance that Confessions of a Pop Performer would be impossible to sit through were it not for the fantastic music. Askwith's aw-shucks mugging really starts to grate like nails-on-chalkboard after awhile. But since its got a fistful of vintage glam, bubblegum, and girl group numbers, ga-roovy fashions, and half a dozen full-frontal scenes, I am quite willing to recommend it for gooey retro kicks. I will probably feel much differently by the time I finish this series - I mean, people hate 'em for a reason - but the bubblegum put me in a charitable mood. The old pop narcotic trick.

Availability: The Confessions series is available in a Region 2 Pal DVD. Also, and perhaps more importantly, a soundtrack LP was released. I've never seen it, but can only assume it's incredible.

Clip: Theme song!

-Ken McIntyre

Getting It On! (1983)

AKA American Voyeur
Directed by William Olsen
Starring Martin Yost, Heather Kennedy, Jeff Edmond
Rated R
USA

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"Alex, why are we driving to the woods?"

We live in a much different world than we did in 1983. One of the most dramatic changes we've gone through in the past two decades is the intrusion of surveillance into our daily lives. I read this book on the subject a couple years ago - it might even have been called "Surveillance" - that pointed out a pretty astounding fact. In the US, you are under surveillance about 70% of the time you're outside. Whether it's the security cameras at a store or an office or a parking lot, or the traffic cameras on the streetlights, there are very few places to hide anymore. It's no wonder that voyeurism has become a national obsession, whether it's the alarming proliferation of 'webcam girls', the seemingly endless confessional video-blogs that clog up Youtube, or the general public's unquenchable thirst for celebrity dirty laundry, we just can't seem to mind our own business anymore. And not only are we being watched, but we're doing a lot of watching, as well. In 1983, not so much. Sure, there were security cameras here and there, but for the most part, people generally trusted one another not to piss in their soup or to snatch their underwear from the dryer at the Laundromat. Which brings us to our feature.

Getting It On! is about a voyeuristic teenage zero who turns his creepy hobby of spying on neighbor girls with binoculars into a thriving home surveillance business by renting out equipment to people who want to bust someone they know doing something weird. A far-fetched comedic conceit for 1983, but a clear harbinger of things to come. So, did director William Olsen have some sort of fever-driven vision of a Dystopian future that somehow came true? Did he know that we would someday live in a constant state of heightened paranoia, ducking and running from all-knowing electric eyes that clock our every move, just waiting for us to steal a cookie or fuck a whore? Or was he just looking to exploit the then-burgeoning home video business for a few cheap yucks and bucks?

Let us explore the evidence, and then come up with a crackpot theory sometime shortly after. Our hero is one Alex Carson (Martin Yost), who we are introduced to as he creeps around his new neighbor's backyard with a pair of binoculars. It's quite dark out, so he slips and falls, hurting his ankle and alerting the object of his desire, new girl in town Kelly (Heather Kennedy). Perky, cornfed Kelly comes outside to help Alex home, and doesn't even seem all that upset that she's being peeped, chalking it up to the generic immaturity of boys.
"Girls just mature faster," she tells Alex, who answers her by staring at the tiny bumps under her t-shirt.
"Maturity isn't just physical, dumbass," she says.
Good one.
It's clear that Alex has a serious developmental problem. Guys wandering around with binoculars usually require some sort of counseling. Instead, when he shows interest in starting up some sort of vague surveillance company to his all-business father, dad brokers a profit-sharing deal with him right there at the breakfast table (while mom sucks down a cigarette over her plate of eggs) and gives his weirdo kid $4,000 seed money.
Confident that his wacked-out scheme will work, Alex takes the dough and splits, looking for his best bud Nick.

Nick (Jeff Edmond) is a goofy, thick-lipped sleazebag, a sort of Mick Jagger/Vinnie Barbarino-esque clod who gets busted for passing out Polarioids of his balls to the girls in his typing class. Narrowly escaping expulsion, he bolts out of the principal's office and meets up with Alex. They go on a spending spree, buying up piles of high-end video equipment while a truly awful song by The Brains about...well, watching video tapes ("Video, I'm watching my video/ It sure looks good to me!") plays in the background.

This is the conversation the two have, while driving home in Nick's beat-up Plymouth Horizon.
Nick: "So, you gonna start videotaping now? You giving up the 'nocs?"
Alex: "Yeah. Binoculars get old after awhile."
Nick: "Who you gonna start with first, Sally?"
Alex: "Probably, yeah."

Isn't this the same sort of conversation that Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole used to have? Anyway, that's exactly what Alex does. He sets up a video camera outside and sits there, monitoring his neighbor as she walks around her room, wrapped in a towel.
"C'mon, Sally, dump the towel," grunts our slobbering voyeur, huddled behind his monitor. "Please dump the towel!"
So, that was creepy.

As with all great 80's teen movies, there's a gratuitous video arcade scene. Nick is playing Robby Roto, but when Alex ambles up, he says,
"Hey Alex, can you lend me a quarter so I can play another game of Nuclear Madness?"
Nuclear Madness? Sounds intense.

So anyway, Alex continues to shoot women undressing without their knowledge. Jeff gets in on the action and tapes his brother and his brother's girlfriend having sex (ick), and through the usual mix-ups, the tape ends up being broadcast to an auditorium full of students, including one dude who rocks the ruling combo of wraparound new wave shades and a red bandanna.

Also, I'm not sure how this happened, but they taped a bunch of girls having a pillow fight, and if you look really close, you'll notice that one of the girls is completely naked. That bit seems random, but why question full-frontal? If you really start to add these sort of scenes up, there's at least half an hour's worth of movie here that has nothing to do with the plot. Stuff just happens. Like when Nick gets busted for stealing a skin mag at the convenience store, and suddenly this little black kid saunters through the door with an oversized boombox on his shoulder. He walks up to the camera, looks it in the eye, and says, "Wanna see my radio?" And then he splits. This kind of thing happens a lot in Getting It On!.

Eventually, Alex asks Sally out on a date. Initially, his plan is to film it for whatever fucked up movie he's supposed to be making, but he decides to just play it straight instead. Then he gets whacked out of his gourd on booze and ruins the evening. I should admit at this point that, although I have watched this film three times, I still don't know what it's about. I do not understand what these two screwballs are doing with these cameras and how it can possibly make them any money. All I know is that the next day, Sally is going to some charity costume party, and Alex thinks it's going to solve his and Nick's problems. Whatever their problems are.

Col Hampton and the Late Bronze Age play a horrible redneck-Zappa song at the costume party. Obviously, the host agrees, because she calls the guy who booked them and says:
"I guess the band you sent doesn't play jazz. They play shit."
Nick wears a ghost costume, which looks alot like a Klan outfit. Uncle Sam and George Washington do coke.

The DVD version of Getting In On! has a director's commentary track, and during all this bugfuck madness at the costume party, Olsen says, "I'd like to think we stayed one step ahead of the audience." Try three blocks, sir. Some plot-congealing does occur during the course of the evening, however, which helps to explain at least half of the story. And it's got tits, which is nice.

By the way, this film features some of the itty-bittiest boobs I think I've seen in a movie that is, after all, about topless chicks. As such, it should serve as some sort of cinematic nirvana for tiny-tits lovers. Regular sleaze-beasts, however, may be wondering where all the silicone has gone. Anyway, there's some final moments where everybody works their shit out, and then it's over. The credits list Amrita Bost as "Nude Girl With Flamethrower", but I did not see any nude girls with flamethrowers. If I did, I'm sure I would have remembered. I suppose it is possible that I blacked out somewhere during this film's excessive 96 minute running time, so if you spot her, please drop me a line. Thank you in advance.

In summation: Well, who knows? Filmed on a shoestring budget ($200,000) in a small North Carolina town, Getting It On! is a weird bit of southern-fried teensploitation that makes very little sense but ambles on good-naturedly enough. The videotape angle would seem sorta ominous if you could place the story and the characters in some sort of recognizable reality, but reality is out the window five minutes in, and it does not return. William Olsen returned to the teen-com well several times, following this one up with the equally incomprehensible but decent-enough Rockin' Road Trip (1985) and After School (1988). He also acted in the classic hicksploitation saga Hot Summer in Barefoot County (1974), so no matter what, the man deserves a round of applause. Most of the cast did this one on a goof and never acted again, although lead-girl Kennedy had a small part in Leprechaun (1993) and something called Raw Adventures at Bikini Point (1995), which sounds incredible. Getting In On! did pretty well, given it's paltry budget and non-actors, and still has a small-but-loyal cult following. The VHS release also had one of the greatest covers I have personally ever seen (the same image was also the theatrical poster), which made it a huge hit on the rental shelves.

Honestly, though....what nude girl with a flamethrower?

Availability: Getting It On! is available on DVD from VCI. Get it at Amazon.

Clip: Getting It On! Trailer:

-Ken McIntyre