Teenage Pajama Party (1977)

AKA Pajama Party
New Wave Pajama Party
Sharon's Sex Party
Directed by Jim Clark
Starring CJ Laing, Sharon Mitchell, Terri Hall, Susaye London
Rated X
USA

"I'm gonna fuckin' cut ya!"
"Haha, what?"

It's a chicken and the egg sort of situation, really. What came first...dopey R-rated sex comedies, or dopey X-rated sex comedies? That's a question for the ages, I suppose, but throughout the 70's and 80's, guys like Clark, Chuck Vincent, Gary Graver, and Robert Houston churned out an endless supply of lightweight T&A flicks that could go either way, really. Teenage Pajama Party, for example, was re-released years later under the hilariously misleading title New Wave Pajama Party, with most of the hardcore snipped out. Other films had unrelated hardcore clips added in, usually to the horror of the non-porn actresses involved. Crazy times, man. Teenage Pajama Party arrived a little earlier then most, so it still smacked of early 70's grindhouse scuzz. Clark clearly aimed for art here, but landed squarely in the gutter.

A quartet (sextet? The amount seems to change a few times) of giggling girls, clearly in their 20's but dressed in babydoll dresses and pigtails to suggest a teenage (or pre-teen, depending on how creepy you are) innocence, are having a sleepover. Mom and dad (David Debin and Carol Field, a 20-something woman in a gray wig) leave for a night out on the town, trusting Barbi (Barbi James) and her friends to conduct themselves in a sane, civilized manner. This does not happen.

As soon as mom and dad split - and I mean seconds later - the girls are stripping off their clothes and dancing around to a bizarre instrumental version of David Bowie's Fame that mixes the song's pop-funk guitar with a bleating, death-drone Moog synthesizer. It's probably just some crazy fucker mashing the primitive synth's keys over a loop of the original song. Maybe they were trying to mask the fact that they stole it, because there's no way, given the ugly dimestore look of things, that they paid for licensing. Anyway, it's fucking weird.

The girls eventually slip on sheer nighties and settle down, but their evening is suddenly disrupted by a phone call from The Sheik (some uncredited middle-aged zero who looks suspiciously like Barbi's dad) who grunts into the phone and makes lewd, Black Christmas-y comments about "Ripping the girls legs apart" and stuffing 'em with his ghastly junk until they are "screaming in agony with blood running down their legs."

The dude appears to have some dark foundation make-up smeared on his face, and he's dressed in a filthy wifebeater and grungy boxer shorts. As he threatens the amused girls, he masturbates, his smallish-to-average sized penis nearly swallowed up by a thick roll of bellyfat. Said masturbation is shot in almost 3D style angles, as if Clark wants us to imagine that stubby, middle-aged member poking us right in the eye. The Shiek spews his clam chowdery goo all over the phone receiver as the girls laugh. What the fuck am I watching?

Cut to: Disco singer/soap opera actor/gay porn star Wade Nichols (RIP) as an altogether more palatable sheik with a Chester-molester mustache and a $10 tent. He bangs Barbi. The Moog goes fucking nuts on the soundtrack. Afterwards, we return to the party where the girls, now fully worked up by the creepy phone call, start making calls of their own. Sharon Mitchell (looking much prettier and less severe than her razor-thin, lesbian-haircutted 80's persona) calls some fireman, and in yet another dream sequence, former ballerina-turned-cock gobbler Terri Hall (RIP) and Candy Love, both dressed in rubber goggles and manning hoses, double team a guy in a fireman's hat (Robert Kerman, who would, like Wade Nichols, later graduate from porn stud to mainstream actor). It's a pretty psychedelic scene for 1977 and it ends, sorta surprisingly, with the girls squatting over the dude's face and peeing on him. Puttin' out the fire, I guess. And then Candy Love waddles away like a duck. Bananas.

You get the idea, right? One-time pornstress Priscilla Major, being sorta zaftig, naturally calls up a soda jerk and then imagines him eating an ice cream sundae out of her furry nether regions. That's probably why she never made another film: frostbitten vadge.

Then everybody lezzes out, and Susaye London calls up a pimp (Gilbert Palmitier) who she then imagines having sex with. While she's already having sex with Sharon Mitchell. Insatiable! Later on, CJ Laing does flips and fucks some dudes. Whatever. It all ends with mom and dad coming home to find the girls fully-clothed and snoozing away like angels. Roll credits, although not enough credits to tell you who was jammin' on that Moog.

Jim Clark shot the vastly superior Debbie Does Dallas a year later, which sorta rendered this one moot. It definitely feels moot. The fucking poster makes you think you're in for a good time, filled with laughs and hot girls, but all you get is grubby sex in weird costumes, a fat asshole making obscene phone calls, uncalled-for peeing, and Sharon Mitchell proudly displaying a Rosannadanna-esque afro. Half the cast is now dead and the rest are delusional or in hiding.

In summation: Yes, boners were popped. But they were shameful, confused boners. Oh, and I liked the dancing. And there was a tuba solo during one sex scene, so that was cool. And Candy Love looked pretty cool with the goggles. Maybe it was alright. I just have a hard time relating to movies without at least one rubber chicken joke.

Availability: Teenage Pajama Party is available on DVD from Alpha Blue Archives.

-Ken McIntyre

Bimbo Cheerleaders from Outer Space (1988)

Directed by John T Bone
Starring Tracey Adams, Vera Butler, Cheri Hill, Valentina, Randy Spears, Randy West
Rated XXX
USA

"Long ago in a galaxy far, far away called Pacoima, a group of brave junior college cheerleaders fought against uncoolness, negativity, and a teensy-weensy production budget..."

So begins the lo-fi, Star War-sy scrawl that announces this goofball porn satire of....well, goofball late-night cable programming. It stars (or, more accurately, toplines) real-life junior college graduate and beloved 80's fuck-flick starlet Tracey Adams, in a difficult dual role. On one level, she's Captain Bimbo, the leader of a crack crew of silicone-enhanced space-bimbos, on a mission to explore the mysterious Pancreas 4 planet. On another level, she's just an Earthbound cheerleader named Bambi with aspirations to direct, gamely attempting to perform a no-budget space opera with her bubble-headed pals.

The film opens with Captain Bimbo receiving a holographic transmission from Galactic (Randy West), her space boss. Bimbo's spaceship is constructed, quite literally, out of sheets of paper and flattened cardboard boxes. Knobs and switches are provided by black magic marker, and if Captain Bimbo needs some sort of high-tech communication device or interstellar space modulator, she just draws it. Or, if it no longer serves her purpose, she just rips it up, as she does with the holographic transmitter. Seems you can't suckle a holographic penis, so Mr. West had to break character and, you know, give her the real thing.


After their tryst, Bimbo has a cheerleading rehearsal with her crew. Said crew includes Scotti (Valentina), Laya (Cherry Hill), and, of course, Screwlu (Nina DePonca). To be honest, their cheering skills leave much to be desired, as does their lackluster chant:
"Two bits, four bits, six bits, a buck/We're the crew that loves to fuck
Aliens and members of the human race/Beam us up, and we'll sit on your face"
The random crashing cymbals on the soundtrack don't help much either. Anyway, after practice, Bimbo announces their mission to Pancreas 4. Pinky, of course, asks the obvious:
"What's a 'Pancreas 4'?
Captain Bimbo doesn't get it. She goes on to explain that they'll be spending the rest of their flight time having a pajama party. And then they have one. Things quickly get out of hand, as they often do at pajama parties.

Later on, Laya runs a security check of the ship. She does this by walking by the same upside-down triangle over and over, stopping every time to talk into a magic marker TV set.
"Deck 12, all clear...deck 13, all clear, deck 118, all clear..."
Eventually, she runs into a dude wearing a poncho and a werewolf mask (Randy Spears).
"Freeze, intruder!" She says. Since she has no gun, she just makes one by pointing her finger at him.
"My name is Chewy," he tells her. "I'm a nookie."
Exasperated, Screwlu...er, Vera...breaks the fourth wall.
"Look, I know you spent all that time in study class writing this, Bambi," she tells the director/space captain, "But I just can't say this line. It's ridiculous."
Bimbo/Bambi/Tracey is not about to let her movie be ruined by a cranky actress.
"Just say the line, and Steve here can pork your puss."
She says her line. And Steve/Chewy porks her puss.


Some time later, the ship hits a meteroid belt. This effect is achieved by turning on a yellow lightbulb and throwing cheeseballs at their paper towel tube rocket ship model.
"I need a damage report!" Bimbo yells into an unconnected phone receiver.
"I'm sorry guys," she says. "I just got the damage report. There's no fruit juice tonight."
Visibly disappointed, the crew goes about the difficult work of repairing their damaged spaceship. With Scotch tape.

Eventually, the crew lands on Pancreas 4, where they greet the Queen (Eva Allen, in some sort of new-wave/S&M outfit) and the lisping King (Robert Bullock, in a mustache, crown, and nothing else).
"We're here to bring peace to your land!" announces Captain Bimbo.
"Good," says the Queen. I could use a piece, after being stuck on this godforsaken rock with this limp-dicked fairy."
In order to extract more information from the Queen, Captain Bimbo has sex with her.
Works like a charm.



Turns out, the king is the last man on Pancreas 4, and if he doesn't go straight and start impregnating the women-folk, his people will die out. And who, I ask you, is more equipped at turning gay men straight then bimbo cheerleaders?

Indeed. Their mission accomplished, Bimbo and her crew head off to their next grand adventure.
"Warp speed one jillion-quadrillion," Bimbo says, as they blast off.


Taking its cues equally between Nick Zedd's gutter-budget primitivism and Ed Wood's hallucinatory ineptitude, Bimbo Cheerleaders from Outer Space is a colorful and frequently hilarious mash-up of Plan Nine and Geek Maggot Bingo with a dash of John Waters and a whiff of George Lucas. Tracey Adams - who would later join the star-making improv group The Groundlings - shows off her impeccable comic timing here, delivering her lines with a knowing wink and a generous smile. Interestingly, the whole cast seems to have anticipated the awkward silences and mumbly delivery of post-ironic comedy in the YouTube era by a good two decades, and looks, for all intents and purposes, like a modern-day sketch troop lampooning an ancient porn cheapie. Shot well after the triple X feature had devolved into plotless, generic sports-fucking, Bimbos is that rare treat: a fully serviceable stroke flick that's just as much fun to watch with your pants on.

-Ken McIntyre

Totally radical and outerspacey: Bimbo Cheerleaders intro