Biscuit Roller Boogie

From some screwy German TV show circa '78.
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Roller Boogie (1979)

Directed by Mark L Lester
Starring Linda Blair, Jim Bray, Beverly Garland, Roger Perry
Rated PG
USA

"Do you have a mental problem, or something? First you want to skate, then you don't want to skate!"

Produced in wake of Saturday Night Fever's phenomenal success, Roller Boogie's premise, angle, and target audience are all pretty obvious: It's Fever, only for teenagers, and on roller skates. Brilliant! While it clearly didn't click with audiences the way Travolta's polyester epic did, Boogie is nonetheless a fine example of 70's exploitation, filled with sparkle, charm, and a delightfully loopy plotline that borrows as much from Saturday morning cartoons as it does from the roller disco scene it's based on.

Linda Blair is Terry Barkley, a poor little rich girl whose parents never listen to her. Bobby (one-time actor Jim Bray) and Phones (Stoney Jackson, Streets of Fire) are the best skaters on the beach. Bobby works at the skate rental shop, but he does not let this deter him from splitting to disco-skate whenever the mood hits. And it hits him often. It is therefore inevitable that Terry and her busty, high-brow buddy Lana (Kimberly Beck) would cross paths with Bobby and Phones and their gang of hot pants-wearing rollerkids. Interestingly, when Bobby first approaches Terry, she rebuffs him, and then skates off to eat ice cream. Bobby asks around about her, and his pals tell him she's from Beverly Hills and drives a million dollar car. So, this going to be a tough nut to crack, especially since Bobby looks like the dude from REO Speedwagon and spends most of his life in brightly colored shorts.

Besides being rich and beautiful, Terry is also an accomplished flautist (!)with a scholarship to Juliard and an equally well-heeled suitor named Franklin. Alas, despite being handsome and snappily-dressed, Terry finds him to be a grabby creep.

With their day of vigorous culture-clashing over, all the kids at the beach, rich and poor, head over to Jammers for an evening of roller boogie-ing. They all disco-skate to Boogie Wonderland, which was a requirement in 1979. By the way, it looks like the most fun ever. Whatever happened to disco-skating?
Bobby saves Terry from a potential face-plant when a wayward skater almost slams into her. He takes the opportunity to ask her out. She again rebuffs him but offers him a business proposal: She'll pay him $10 an hour to teach her to dance on skates.

 Their lesson goes on for about 15 minutes, and then Terry skates off with some other dudes. She runs into Bobby the next day at the beach, but by now, he's pretty much had it with this dizzy chick and her Linda Ronstatd get-up. But he's a forgiving fellow, so they give it another go.  The skating goes ok, but things get weird later during a beachside make-out session. Sexual tension and abandonment issues and whatnots.

Later on she goes home and tries to have a heart to heart talk with her mom (50's star Beverly Garland!), but it does not go well. Mom ends up popping pills just to get through it. The upshot is that Terry has no real interest in flutes or rich douchebags. All she really wants is to win the Roller Boogie contest.

And then Terry decides to run away from home, but instead, she goes to the beach to skate and make out with Bobby. So that's going on.

Then, in a very Saturday morning cartoons turn of events, a bunch of thugs show and try to force Jammer to sell his place. Luckily, Phones accidentally records the whole conversation on his jam box! Nobody knows that yet, though.

So Jammer gets tanked and gives the kids the bad news - he's closing the roller rink for good.  Or is he? See, the kids have a plan! What is it? Well, Terry's dad (Roger Perry) is a lawyer. That's pretty much the plan.  Dad agrees to help out Jammer after Terry's recital. Said recital takes place in their backyard. All of Terry's beach-bum friends attend. So do the thug guys, who attempt to slaughter the kids. As these things often go, everybody ends up in the pool.

Also, some people end up covered in cake.

Anyway, it turns out dad is in cahoots with the thugs, so the kids need a plan B. Meanwhile, Bobby does a solo disco-skate dance just for Jammer. His shirt says "BJ" on it while he does this. Granted, those are his initials, but still.

Anyway, none of his flouncing around matters, because Jammer sold the rink to the thugs, dad is sending Terry off to stay with her aunt, Phones joined the Hare Krishnas, and the Roller Boogie contest is dead. The end. Or is it?

Of course it's not the end. Phones recorded the whole fuckin' conversation when the thugs threatened to burn down the rink, remember? And Bobby just discovered the tape. So Terry and Bobby zoom to the scene of the crime in their skates and nail the bad guys.  And finally, we get to the roller boogie contest. Was it worth all this bullshit? Yes. Totally worth it.

One of the all-time greatest 70's disco-sploitation flicks, the relentlessly bubbly Roller Boogie is a perennial crowd-pleaser that never fails to provide laughs and boners. Linda Blair's almost impossibly curvy figure and her equally improbable perm are the two of the major highlights here, but there's so much more to take in: the excellent ensemble cast, the spandex and hotpants, the Scooby Doo villains, the obvious stunt doubles, the goofy dance routines, and some of the loopiest dialogue of the era. It all adds up to a sugary ball of dumb 70's fun, an aggressively frivolous joygasm on the wheels that will have even the crankiest among us contemplating a visit to the roller rink.

PS: Come back, Kimberly Beck! We miss your bountiful talent(s)!

- Ken McIntyre

Starhops (1978)

Directed by Barbara Peters
Starring Jillian Kesner, Sterling Frazier, Dorothy Burhman
Rated R
USA

"Don't you have any regular pies?"

Director Barbara Peters and screenwriter Stephanie Rothman - the creative team behind Starhops - were both responsible for an astonishing amount of girl-centric drive-in trash throughout the 1970's.  Between the two of them, their resume reads like a grindhouse marathon: It's a Bikini World (1967),  The Student Nurses (1970), Velvet Vampire (1971), Bury Me an Angel (1972), Terminal Island (1973),  Working Girls (1974 - AKA the movie-where-you-can-see-Elvira-naked), Summer School Teachers (1974), Humanoids from the Deep (1980).  Both were adept at making films fast and dirty, packing them with as many cheap thrills as their paltry budgets would allow. And so it was with Starhops.

A minor career blip for both women, Starhops borrowed liberally the then-popular nurse and cheerleader films, wrapping the age-old underdogs VS. creaky old corporate asshole plotline around a girl-powered cast of Karate-chopping, bikini-clad world-beaters, and then liberally shoe-horning then-relevant pop culture references on top.

Roger Corman's main-man Dick Miller is Jerry. He runs a drive-in burger joint called, sensibly enough, Jerry's. Problem is, business has nose-dived thanks to the rise of fast-food chains, and Jerry owes the bank so much dough that he's going to have to close down.

Naturally, he has to fire his waitresses, Angel (gorgeous Jillian Kesner, The Student Body) and Cupcake (spunky one-time actress Sterling Frazier). The enterprising carhops have a different idea, though - they want to buy the place.

The girls manages to charm the loan officer into giving them enough dough to buy the joint, and they commence to fixin' the place up. They even hire a nutty French chick, Danielle (Dorothy Burhman) as a chef.

Here's the problem, though. A sleazy oil baron, Carter Axe (Al Hopson, RIP) wants to build a gas station on Jerrys property. He saunters by to threaten the girls with some vague legal action, but they scoff at him. Then they head out to the disco.

The next morning, they start their new business. They call it Starhops, dress in space girl bikinis, and deliver the food on rollerskates, which is difficult, since none of them actually know how to skate.

Carter convinces his idiot son Norman (Paul Ryan) to get a job at Starhops so that he can spy on the girls and dig up dirt on them. Unfortunately for him, the girls are squeaky clean, although he does eavesdrop on a very suspicious, Three's Company-esque conversation. The old "Can you help me with my plumbing problem?" routine. Classic stuff.

Norman informs dad that the girls are running a legit operation. Determined to get that restaurant, Carter calls in an anonymous report about deplorable working conditions at Starhops, so the public health inspector shows up to investigate. Naturally, Norman attempts to sabotage the girls by sticking a live frog in the salad and tossing a dead rat in the soup. The health inspector gives them thirty days to clean up their act. The girls finally figure out that Norm's behind their troubles. To get him on their side, Cupcake seduces him, and he becomes part of their team. Undaunted, Carter calls in the big guns: Mad Dog.

Mad Dog figures the best way to fix the problem is by blowing the joint up. So that's what he does, with everybody in it. Blood, brains and burgers everywhere. The end.

 No. Not really. It was 1978. 1978 was all about happy endings.

For a film that's got gratuitous everything else - gratuitous Star Wars reference, gratuitous roller boogie, gratuitous Dick Miller - it's a surprisingly chaste affair. In fact, upon completion, the producers reportedly had to toss in some stunt-ass just to bump the film's rating up to an R, correctly assume that their intended audience - horny teens and drunkards - would scoff at a nudity-free 70's jiggle-com. So don't explain a sleaze-fest. Do, however, expect everything else - comic book-y bad guys, comic book-y bikers, bad French accents, a fixin' stuff up montage, groan-worthy sex gags, a heart-warming, friends-first message, a pseudo-feminist slant, and, naturally, a little kung-fu. While hardly a lost classic, Starhops nonetheless floats effortlessly on its fizzy 70's pop-culture bubble. If you like rollerskates, hotpants, and cheeseburgers - and who doesn't? - you may want to dig through the bottom of the VHS pile to find this one.

- Ken McIntyre