My Tutor (1983)

Directed by George Bowers
Starring Caren Kaye, Matt Lattanzi, Crispin Glover, Clark Brandon
Rated R
USA
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"Sue-Anne, would you like to dance with me?"
"No thank you."
"Then I guess a blowjob is completely out of the question?"

My Tutor stars Olivia Newton John's ex-husband, former Xanadu dancer Matt Lattanzi as Bobby, your average 17 year-old muscle-bound, feathered-hair sporting, upper-class virgin, currently lovesick over picture-pretty Bonnie (Amber Denyse Austin, Cathy Crosby's daughter) and best friend to a phlegmy, sex-obsessed, sweater vest wearing nerd named Jack.

Ahem. Clearly, this Lattanzi character is way too Alpha-male to be playing this role, and even an ugly rich kid with his own wheels can get laid plenty in high school, so this premise is deeply flawed from the start. But we're already ankle-deep, so let's just roll with it.

As the film opens, Bobby's slamming his head into the side of his bitchin' black van, in mortal agony over Bonnie's casual dismissal of his affections. Oddball Jack ambles over to lighten his load.
"It's over," croaks Jack (an already-creepy 19 year old Crispin Glover),"Time to kick out the jams. Summertime fun!" He says this like a serial killer. Not on purpose, but still.

Later that evening, Jack's gregarious older brother Billy (Fast Food's Clark Brandon) takes them to a whorehouse to lose their virginity. Crispin ends up with an S&M freak. Bobby gets Russ Meyer's ex girlfriend, Kitten Natividad. Crispin ends up bolting out of there in his boxers, crying his eyes out. Bobby, who gulped down a flask full of whiskey to bolster his nerves, just falls asleep on Kitten's mountainous tits. In his defense, they do look very pillowy.

The next morning Bobby meets with his dad (cranky genre vet Kevin McCarthy) who informs him that he will not get into Yale unless he passes his French final, which he just failed miserably. Dad's one of those nasty old fuckers with connections though, so he worked it out so that Bobby can take the final again, and this time, he's going to have a tutor to help him get ready. The very next day, while he's lazily splashing around in his in-ground swimming pool, his tutor arrives. Terry Green (sitcom vet Caren Kaye) is a pretty, no-nonsense 30-something that's taken the job as live-in tutor for the summer to escape an old boyfriend. She seems alright but Bobby, who really is a dick, is both snotty and vaguely lewd to her.
"I can tell, you're really going to work me hard this summer," he snorts.

Back on the pussy trail, Billy takes the fellas to a diner, where he introduces them to a melon-chested waitress named Silvia (Graem McGavin, Weekend Pass, Angel), who is also a part-time prostitute. Or maybe she's just really slutty, hard to say. At any rate, he convinces her to fuck these two idiots in his car in the back alley of the restaurant. Bobby's up first, but before they get too far, Silvia's psycho biker boyfriend (is there any other kind, in these movies?) shows up and chases a naked Bobby around. Biker gangs, loony bin whorehouses, and waitress-hookers...what town is this, Sodom?

Later on, Terry takes a nude moonlight swim, while Bobby hides in the bushes and beats off. Wow, this movie sounds sleazy on paper. Later on, he fantasizes about fucking Jewel Shepard. Who knows how Jewel got roped intro this, but she pops 'em out and then splits.

The fellas go to a bar with mud wrestling. Crispin, for whatever reason, has a fake ID with a black kid's face on it. He hands it to the (black) doorman, and says, in a wack 'urban' voice: "Hey blood, what's happnin', my man? Alright alright cuz, please lemme in!" I almost expected him to add "Hidey-ho!" on his way in. Fucking crazy. Anyway, Bobby waits outside, but Jack and Billy wrestle Katt Shea (Hollywood Hot Tubs, Preppies) and then get tossed out. A buncha bullshit happens and as they leave, Billy tears off Katt's dress, leaving her in the alley naked.

Meanwhile, Terry decides to reconcile with her asshole ex-boyfriend, but when she drops by, he's in his car getting a blowjob, so she picks up a weed whacker and tells him if he gets out of the car, she's gonna cut his dick off.

And then she goes home and fucks Bobby. I can't believe I actually saw this in the theater when I was 14. Without a raincoat, even. Anyway, the last half-hour shifts gears completely, as Bobby gets romantically entangled with Terry and all the main characters have to figure out who they are and what they want out of life. The usual 80's dilemmas, albeit with way more kink than most of us dealt with.

For a variety of reasons, My Tutor is clearly one of the best examples of the teen sex comedy. For one thing, it's practically swimming in tits, and even if it does attempt to wrap everything together in a sappy, everybody-wins ending, for most of it's running time, the film is about as morally vacant as you can get. Predating the modern obsession with older women and the alarming teacher-student hook-up trend by more than two decades, My Tutor presents a repercussion-free world where if it feels good, you know, do it. And that, after all, was exactly the message your average 80's teen was hoping to hear. The cast is top-notch, filled with once and future cult icons like Glover, McCarthy, Shepard, Natividad, and Shea, and for once, it looked like they tossed a few production-value dollars into the pot.

And then, of course, there's Caren Kaye, (still) the very definition of fetching, and quite liberal, at that point, with her nudity policy. And although she offered no bared skin, Amber Denyse Austin was a vision, a still-ripening peach that practically radiated with girl-magic. Unfortunately for us all, she only appeared in one other film. Fortunately for us all, it was the amazingly awful Neon Maniacs (1986), a classic badfilm howler that holds up to many (painful) repeated viewings. So we got that, at least.

Director Bowers followed this one up with the equally accomplished teen sex romp Private Resort (1985) but spent most of his career in the editing room, where he cut a number of seminal cult flicks: Galaxina (1980), The Pom Pom Girls (1976), The Beach Girls (1982), Buckaroo Banzai (1984), The Stepfather (1987), etc. He continues to work as an editor today. As for Caren Kaye, you'd think, given her near constant state of undress here, that she'd build up a long resume of sexy roles. Sadly, this was it. She spent most of her career in television, and now serves on some charity board somewhere, trying to make the world a better place. Ah, but you already have, Caren. I salute you, and your jutting nipples. May you both continue to inspire.

Availability: My Tutor is available on DVD from BCI (RIP), and as a rental from Netflix.
Get it at Amazon.


-Ken McIntyre

Party Camp (1987)

Directed by Gary Graver
Starring Andrew Ross, Jewel Shepard, Peter Jason, Billy Jacoby
Rated R
USA
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Guy falls asleep in the gutter with a burrito in his hand. Dreams about some hot chick with big hair. Wakes up to an alley cat licking his face. You'd think the cat'd be more interested in the burrito. So he looks around and finds a chewed-up brochure for a summer camp, and wouldn't you know it, the chick from his dreams is in the brochure. Suddenly, a school bus shows up. "Camp Chipmunk, here I come!" Says the dude. And here we all go. Hold on to your fuckin' balls.

Directed by prolific sex-com vet Gary Graver (Garage Girls, Coed Fever, Private Teacher, Nerds of a Feather, etc. etc) and produced by Mark Borde, the man who brought us Summer Camp, Lunch Wagon and Hollywood Hot Tubs, Party Camp seems like a can't-miss, especially with Jewel Shepard top-lining the cast. The name alone conjures up vivid teen fantasies of lakeside Bacchanalia, of underage boozing and whoring and cabins blowing up and uptight counselors getting ass-banged by grizzly bears. I mean, this is fucking PARTY CAMP, right?

Sigh. Let's just get to it.

Jerry (Andrew Ross) is the burrito guy. A slacker by trade, he's fibbed his way into a summer camp counselor gig. The camp is run by one Mrs. Beadle (the very Ruth Buzzi-esque Cherie Franklin) and silver-helmeted loudmouth Sarge (prolific asshole-authority figure character actor Peter Jason), who spend their spare time dressing in elaborate costumes and chasing each other around Beadle's cabin. There's two groups of kids: the Falcons, who look like Nazi youth, and our protagonists, the Squirrels. The squirrels are, of course, the freaks, losers, poor kids and weirdoes. You know, our people. Jerry ends up in charge of the Squirrels, and Tad (Kirk Cribb) runs the Nazi kids. They, of course, hate each other, and a series of escalating pranks ultimately ends in a do-or-die competition at film's end.

That's pretty much it. It's Meatballs with tits, although not nearly as many tits as you'd think. That's because there are only three of-age girls in the entire movie. There's Nurse Brenda (April Wayne), who is in the movie for about three minutes, Heather (Kerry Brennan) the aerobics instructor, and Dyanne (Jewel Shepard), who dates Tad and appears to be either manic-depressive or on pills.

That's the set-up. It is quickly followed by the expected camp activities montage, which is accompanied by the expected ear-battering theme song. It's by Dennis Dreith, and it goes "I'm going to party camp, gettin' loose is cool."
Indeed.

Best part of the movie, part one:
One of the Squirrels, Winslow (Silver Spoons' star Corky Pigeon) is a computer wiz, so he's somehow rigged up a camera to record the action in the girls' locker room. The boys watch while the female counselors towel off. There's half a dozen of them in there, which is more than we ever see in the movie, but whatever. The point is, while we all peep in, Dyanne stares into the mirror and admires her admittedly magnificent rack.
"Oh wow," she says. "Oh God. These really are amazing. I really was blessed at birth. I must have the best body in the entire town."

Jewel Shepard performs this monologue with such conviction, and with such a weird, off-kilter energy, that it transcends the entire movie. The other actresses completely disappear from the scene. It's practically Shakespearean. I'm not even kidding. Aspiring thespians should watch that shit in acting class, because it's the real thing.

Either that, or she really believes what she's saying. And who could blame her if she was?

Meanwhile, Jerry tries to convince the Squirrels that girls will dig them if they know how to play hackey-sack.
"Chicks see you doing this, they'll know you've got class," he says. "And good breeding."
I know it's not funny. That's the point. So let us fast forward to the...


Best Part of the Movie, Part Two:
While out in a nature walk, the Squirrels come across a patch of weeds that smart-alecky Corky Pigeon identifies as "Angelica Vulgaris", an herb known for it's aphrodisiac qualities. They waste no time in chopping it into a salad and feeding it to Jewel while they sit around the campfire. She fellates a marshmallow and then convinces her young charges to play a round of strip poker. Strangely enough, she loses every hand. And there she is, just standing there, tits-out, in the night air. It's pretty intense. Suddenly, a dude in a hockey mask emerges out the bushes. The chivalrous little brats take off running, leaving Jewel standing there in nothing but panties while hockey mask dude hovers over her. She yelps and bails into the darkness.
The menacing intruder lifts up his mask.
"Anybody seen my puck?" He asks.
Ok, so that's a really long way to go for a dumb gag, but the teenage me practically passed out during Jewel's big reveal. The adult me just felt bad for the actress, but I'm sure she's over it by now. At any rate, that scene is one for the fuckin' books, Jack. One for this book, anyway.

So concludes the boner-popping portion of Party Camp. Unfortunately, we still have an hour's worth of lame 'comedy' to slog through. So let's get it over with. Emboldened by their locker-room surveillance gag, The Squrrels bug (ahem) Mrs. Beadle's cabin while she's having a role-playing session with the Sarge (he's dressed like a fly, she's chasing him with a swatter) and play the tape over the loudspeakers the next morning. Beadle nearly has a heart attack over it. In retaliation, she has Tad and Dyanne confiscate Winslow's computer. Of course you realize, this means war.


Jerry and the Squirrels cook up a revenge scheme. Tad ends up in a pit, Silence of the Lambs style. Dyanne gets caught up in a net and hung from a tree. "Are you guys Iranians?" She asks. "Are you Libyans?"
They both get tossed into black bags, dragged through the mud, and left in a pigsty. For a second there, it looks like this movie is going to go into another direction entirely. If Party Camp was made today, surely, this pigsty business would quickly devolve into torture porn.
Tad finally frees them from their bags. Dyann thinks it was all Tad's idea.
"Is this your idea of a date, Mr. Kinkmeister?"
One of the pigs tells her it was the Squirrels. Seriously, the pig talks.
"It's ok," she says. "I kinda liked it."
I feel as though Jewel Shepard may have been having a nervous breakdown at this point. She definitely looks like she could use some Valium.

Some other things happen. They are not important. There's another locker room scene, at least. Eventually Party Camp ends, as summer camp movies must, with a competition that pits the scrappy underdogs against the overconfident overachievers.

I feel the need to point out the obvious here. The film is called Party Camp, and yet, there are no parties in this film, except for a limp dance at the end. And Jewel Shepard, the sole reason why anybody would ever want to watch this film, is mostly just abused. She's either being dragged through pig-shit or forced to undress in front of underage boys.
She even gets shoved out of the way by the other pretty girl - because there are only two, in this 'party' camp - when Tad finally stumbles at the last leg of the race, as we knew he would.

There are brief flashes of goodness in the muck. Dean Miller, who plays Cody, the camp's druggy bus driver, pops up every so often dressed like a teenage dirtbag Hunter Thompson, chomping on his cigarette holder and swilling fruity drinks. He has nothing to do, really, but makes the most of it anyway. Billy Jacoby's portrayal of the earnest, good-natured, poor-kid DA has a lot more gravity than the role really requires. The whole cast, in fact, takes the whole hopeless mess a lot more seriously than you'd expect. But Party Camp is hobbled by a lame script that refuses to get crazy. Its as if they wanted to please twelve year olds and horny teens alike, and ended up leaving them both wanting. Certainly, Gary Graver knew sleaze - there are ass-fucking movies in his resume, after all - but Party Camp is never really sleazy, and it should be. Creepy here and there, but never sleazy.

The fault may not lie with Graver's direction, but with studio tampering and...well, with decency laws. According to an absurdly detailed report on the internet's leading cinematic suckhole, IMDB, there are over twenty-five minutes of deleted scenes languishing in vaults out there, and most of them involve sex. If this obsessive report is to be believed, we are missing out on several Tad-on-Dyanne fuck scenes, a Dyanne shower-masturbation scene, and half a dozen sex scenes involving Nurse Brenda, including one wherein she sports a cheerleader outfit. There is one strange moment at the film's end where she's dressed in tight black leather and whipping young Mr. Jacoby; apparently, a whole sex scene was shot, but when the producers realized that the actor was only 17 at the time of shooting, they destroyed the footage. It is entirely possible that if the offending scenes were left in, and the forty-five or so minutes of tedious camper hijinks were excised, we would have the Greatest Camp Movie Ever. But we'll never know, will we? As it stands, we have a so-so T&A comedy with a mere wisp of T, no A to speak of, and a very broad definition of 'comedy'.

Party Camp remains a minor cult hit, mostly for the strip poker scene, but honestly, there are much sexier, and funnier, camps to party in. Like Crystal Lake. That place is nuts.

Availability: Party Camp is available on VHS.
Buy Party Camp at Amazon.
-Ken McIntyre

Hollywood Hot Tubs (1984)

Directed by Chuck Vincent
Starring Jewel Shepard, Donna McDaniel, Paul Gunning, Edy Williams
Rated R
USA
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"Oh god, what a time to lose my Valium!"

A legend amongst 80's skinema aficionados, Hollywood Hot Tubs is simultaneously wonderful and wretched, a cheap and often ugly film so far off in it's attempts at ribald humor that it almost plays like anti-comedy. On the other hand, it also offers perky naked breasts approximately every ten or so minutes, and a handful of scenes so absurd they border on the surreal. A devil's bargain, then.

In accordance with the established rules of 80's sex comedies, the plot is both simple and implausible. Shawn (Paul Gunning) is teenage ne'er-do-well who runs afoul with the law in a confusing opening scene involving two of his buddies, a car, a camera, a sexy girl, and...well, it's not important, although the opening dialogue is pretty funny:

Shawn's dorky friend number 1: "Can we stop at my house? I need to get my Asthma pills."
Shawn's dorky friend number 2: "Yeah, and I have to pee."
Shawn: "And I need to get new friends."

After getting nabbed by the police, he is escorted back home, where the cop and his parents discuss his fate. Turns out, it's either jail, or go to work for his Uncle Al, the plumber. And he's too pretty for jail.

Mom: "I'm only trying to save you from the butt slammers."

Uncle Al's plumbing company specializes in hot tub repair. Apparently, California was in the grips of Hot Tub Fever in 1984, because there's plenty of work to go around. Shawn is dispatched to various establishments to fix their hot tubs. Sex naturally ensues.

In one scene, future Carrie II director Katt Shea, playing a young starlet named Dee Dee, has sex with a Hairy Harry Reems lookalike on top of a hot tub while Shawn tries to fix the leak underneath. Later on, he visits an "Oriental Massage" parlor. Former Russ Meyer siren and perennial Z-movie fixture Edy Williams nearly rapes him. When she jiggles her ample, aged boobs, they punch in a sound effect of two balloons rubbing together.

There's also a giant penis lamp in the room. It's disturbing.

All of these jobs are small change, however. The real money is in scoring the Hollywood Hot Tubs account. HHT is an ever-expanding pleasure emporium that offers private rooms equipped with hot tubs and, apparently, whatever else you might need. The company is run by straight-laced Pam (genre vet Remy O'Neil), who employs her dizzy daughter Crystal (Jewel Shepard) as her secretary/Girl Friday.

It is at this moment that Hollywood Hot Tubs reaches a crossroads. Up until now, it is a pleasantly cheeseball 80's comedy. None of the jokes work and the music is dismal, but the constant threat/promise of tits keep things moving along nicely. And then along comes Jewel Shepard.

Miss Shepard needs little to no introduction to trashfilm fans. She is most easily recognized as Casey, the neon-mohawked punkette in Return of the Living Dead (1985), to say nothing of her voluminous nude modeling career. Agonizingly gorgeous and much smarter than her roles, Shepard was a bonafide exploitation movie goddess in the 80's. And this stunning role provides ample evidence why.

To say that her acting here is bad...that's like saying nuclear war is merely a bummer. Her acting her is phenomenally bad, jaw-droppingly awful, the stiffest, most awkward attempt at a bubble-headed 'valley girl' imaginable. And that's not all. Besides the teeth-gnashing "Like, you know" dialogue, Jewel performs every scene braless, her then-26 year old boobs jutting straight ahead like fleshy torpedoes armed and ready to strike. In one memory-searing scene, a half-shirted Jewel forcibly jiggles them up and down for five minutes straight, vibrating like a jackhammer for no other reason than the obvious.

Here, watch this. It'll blow your mind.



It's quite possible that Jewel's hamming is on purpose. After all, the worst actor in a film is even more memorable than the best. But whatever possessed her, we can only sit and stare and bask in her untamed badfilm glory. She is a colossal force in this film, and whenever she's in a scene, the rest of the cast dissolves into dust. There are other reasons to watch this movie, surely - the all-girl soccer team, for example, or Edgar Blood - but the reason to own it, savor it, and share it with friends and neighbors is because of Jewel Shepard's performance. It will rock you to the core.

Oh yes, the soccer team. The fellas fix a hot tub at HTT and somehow get an entire female soccer team topless in said tub. Well, all except for one headband-wearing blonde, who, oddly, wears a towel while soaking in the sudsy water. Watch this scene closely, because when Shawn tosses the soccer ball across the room, it ricochets back and accidentally smacks her right in the mug. It's an awkward gaffe that really should have been cut out, but...well, that's just not the kind of movie we're dealing with here.

There's another weird encounter with Edgar Blood (Victor Marko, who, sadly, never acted again), a Vincent Price-wannabe aging horror actor with a hot-tub equipped stretch limo. They drop him off in a cemetery, so that he can do 'research' for his next role.

And so on. I should mention Donna McDaniel, who plays Shawn's love interest. This is Donna's sole acting credit, but she is well-known in heavy metal circles for serving in the surely thankless role of back-up singer for Motley Crue. She was one of the 'Nasty Habits' during their late 80's tours. Her role here is pretty thankless as well. But probably less embarrassing.

What else? There's a three-man biker gang with one guy who appears to have escaped from the Hair Bear Bunch. There's a gay bath-house scene. At one point, two horny grannies buy a hot tub - the deluxe party model - to "orgy in." There's also the expected nutso party at the end, which features a Burt Reynolds impersonator, a beer swilling chimp, rubber monsters, a Mariachi band, and people just randomly running back and forth.

This all sounds like the most fun ever, especially when you consider that it was directed by porn-maven gone semi-legit Chuck Vincent, the hallucinatory anti-genius behind Summer Camp (1979), Hot T-Shirts (1980), Wimps (1986), and Slammer Girls (1987), and written/produced by Mark Borde, who also wrote Summer Camp and produced the Chuck McCann/Louisa Moritz jiggle-fest Lunch Wagon (1981). The reality - at least without the benefit of booze, weed, or LSD - is that it lumbers along in a rather clunky fashion, and only really brightens up when either a woman doffs her top or Jewel rolls her eyes and says something inane. Luckily, both things happen quite a bit.

Hollywood Hot Tubs is not on DVD. The VHS is pretty rare. Most people remember it from repeated viewings on USA Up All Night. It's not a good movie. Most of the time, it sucks. Chuck Vincent is, of course, dead. Mark Borde has gone on to produce A-list material, like...uh...Kickin' It Old School. Donna McDaniel sings back-up for Glen Frey now. Jewel Shepard is a mostly-respected culture reporter. Only old people and coke addicts sit in hot tubs anymore. Quite obviously, this film's time has come and gone. And yet, it remains mandatory viewing for sleaze-beasts and trash-fiends, and it probably always will be. Why?

Well, like, you know.

Availability: Hollywood Hot Tubs is available on VHS.
Buy Hollywood Hot Tubs from Amazon.
-Ken McIntyre

Link: Jewel Shepard