Up the Creek (1984)

Directed by Robert Butler
Starring Tim Matheson
Rated R
USA
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"Down liver, don't you get it? That's Japanese for down river!"

In the middle of the night, four feckless slobs from a low-rent university are dragged from their beds and corralled into a dark, dank boiler room, where they are propositioned by molester-mustachioed Dean Burch (Magnum PI's John Hillerman). Seems the dean is tired of his college's bottom-rung status. He just wants to fuckin' win something, already. The assembled schlubs are his bottom four students: overconfident cocksman Bob McGraw (Animal House's Tim Matheson, clearly channeling mid 70's Hunter Thompson), near-mute overeater Gonzer (Flounder himself, Stephen Furst, who was making a tidy living at that point playing fat maniacs), twitchy nerd Irwin (Sandy Helberg), and constantly-bewildered Max (Dan Monahan, best known as Pee Wee in the Porky's films). It is unclear why Burch would pick his least-likely-to-succeed students for this, but he wants them to enter a collegiate white water rafting race. They know nothing about rafts or racing, but the dean promises them degrees in whatever subject they desire if they win (Gonzer: "Even Home Ec?"), which is incentive enough to figure it out.

Our heroes climb into a rickety van and head to the river. Along the way, Matheson launches into his first of many inappropriately literary monologues. As he swills a Bloody Mary and chomps on a cigarillo, he explains their chances of winning to a nervous Irwin.

"Everybody's got a chance, kid," he tells him. "Look at you, for example. You're skinny, uncoordinated, you've got a yellow streak down your back a mile wide. You're anemic, you dress like a creep, and you've got the personality of a mayo and baloney on white. You're the kind of guy most people wouldn't give the time of day to. But that doesn't mean you don't have a chance."
I'm not sure how effective that is as a peptalk, but it at least sounded rousing.

They arrive at the river and meet their various allies and foes. There's military nuts, bouncy coeds, golden-haired preppies, and even a bunch of greasers who look like they got lost on their way to the Sha Na Na concert.
"The competition is weirder than I thought," notes our man Bob.
Of course, the preppies have rigged the race, and the ROTC screwballs are quite willing to blow up their rivals, so the usual 80's style mayhem ensues. Heather (the unforgettable blonde b-goddess Jennifer Runyon) is at first a preppy-moll, but is almost instantly seduced to the slob-side by smooth-talking McGraw, who manages to bed her the same day they meet.
"Tell me, was that as good for you as it was for me?" He asks her, as they cuddle in post-coital bliss.
She shakes her head. "No." Tough crowd!

The second half of Up the Creek is taken up with the race. Our heroes are sabotaged, beaten, and kidnapped, but with pluck, humor, friendship, and a Charades-playing dog, the scrappy SOBs endure. But will they win the race and defeat the rich, pompous, Dockers-wearing douchebags? Crazily enough, in 1984, we really did believe they could, man. We really did.

Although it is all formula - Up the Creek pilfers from Stripes and Animal House without shame - this is one of the most consistently entertaining and easy-to-watch movies of the 80's teen-sex cycle. The chemistry between the leads is obvious, and it looks like they're all having a blast. The actual race sequences are fantastic, dropping you right in the middle of some pretty hairy moments, and the mashing of actors and professional racers is pretty seamless. The running gags are actually funny (drink orders are always for grandpa-style concoctions: Brandy Alexanders, Old Fashioned-s, etcs), the dialogue is sharp and witty ("Here's to mediocrity!"), and the music is surprisingly good for a mid-80's film, including a great pop metal theme song by Cheap Trick.
The nudity is sparse, but memorable. There's a brief naked RV party in the opening scene, a topless massage, a blonde chick (Lori Sutton from Night Patrol and Malibu Express) who rips her top open to rally the crowd before the race, and a dean-banging coed (Peggy Trentini) who whips her superjugs out moments before the house she's in blows to kingdom come.
"I think maybe your toilet is overflowing," she says, right before a mountain of mud splinters the room, in what has to be the most expensive gag in the history of teen-sex flicks.

In summation: Up the Creek is pretty swell. Director Butler was already a 24 year TV vet at this point, having directed everything from 60's vintage Batman and Star Trek to iconic 80's cop show Hill Street Blues, so some bullshit about a raft race was kids' stuff to him. He retired from the biz of show ten or so years ago, and is now either laughing all the way to the bank or bobbing away on a yacht somewhere. His actors have also gone on to lucrative careers: I don't think I've ever watched anything else Tim Matheson is done, but we all know who he is, so he must be doing pretty good. Stephen Furst has been steadily acting and directing, mostly in kid-ertainment. He's not fat anymore, but seems happy enough. Dan Monahan is taking it easy and raking in the Porky's royalties. Sandy Helberg's producing. And what of our knockout lead actress? Jennifer Runyon's alpha-blonde, Marilyn Monroe-meets-Erika Eleniak looks and easy grace made her an instantly recognizable fan favorite, and she made a decent 13 year run of it, appearing in a host of sitcoms (Charles in Charge, Who's the Boss, Valerie, etc.), before landing the plum role of Cindy Brady in the 1988 TV-film A Very Brady Christmas. The goofy holiday special was such a success that a reunion TV show was rushed into production and, smelling long-green, the real Cindy, Susan Olsen, stepped back into the fray. So, Jen was out. She did a host of one-off spots on various series afterwards and did one final film: 1993's dinos-on-the-loose romp Carnosaur. The film was a Roger Corman production and, soon enough, so was her life. She married Roger's son, Todd. She has not acted since. We quietly await her comeback.

I leave you with this parting shot from Mr. Matherson, who was peeling himself off of the lovely Jennifer Runyon at the time.
"As soon as this is over, as soon as someone has won this damn thing, I'd like to think I could jump on you again, sometime."
You and me both, sir. You and me both.


Availability: Surprisingly, Up the Creek is a bitch to find. There's an out of print DVD and some very dusty VHS copies floating around. Or you could always scour the internet.
Buy Up the Creek at Amazon.

Clip: Up the Creek opening, including Cheap Trick's theme

-Ken McIntyre

Beach Balls (1988)

Directed by Joe Ritter
Starring Phillip Paley, Heidi Helmer, Amanda Goodwin, Steven Tash
Rated R
USA

"I've got a gun!"
"Well, I've got a fishing rod. Let's go camping."

First of all, if you've been wondering all these years about what happened to monkey-boy Cha-Ka from Sid & Marty Krofft's berserk 70's kidventure series Land of the Lost, rest easy, because here he is, Phillip Paley, grown to sturdy adolescence and ready to conquer the world of beachsploitation films. Phil's our conflicted protagonist Charlie Harrison, a straitlaced teen recently run afoul with the law. He's a good kid though, and spends most of his summer days hanging around the beach with his wisecracking sidekick Scully (Island of Blood's Steven Tash), dreaming about jamming in some superduper rock band and bedding the inevitable blonde-of-his-dreams, Wendy (Heidi Helmer). But Wendy only digs dudes in bands, man, particularly dudes in her favorite band, glam-metal scuzzballs Severed Heads in a Bag (AKA real-life lipstick warriors Dr. Starr). Charlie just can't compete. The fuckin' jerk doesn't even have long hair. In 1988, for chrissakes!

Charlie: "All I want is that girl and a guitar. Is that too much to ask?"
Scully: "Yeah."

So that's Charlie's life. Throw in religious-nut parents who are consumed with the supposed satanic messages on back-masked heavy metal records, a dismissive sister who thinks Charlie is a dork, and three criminal-minded clods (including Gary Schneider, the bully-retard from Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke 'Em High) who are making his otherwise carefree life miserable, and you've got your standard babes & bedlam teen-flick cocktail.

Oh, and there's twins in bikinis at the guitar shop. So that's cool.

Beach Balls was quite obviously produced during the hair-band era - the soundtrack is rife with crotch-grabbing nuggets from obscure flash metal suicides like Castle Blak, Puss n' Boots, Mox Nix, and Hans Naughty, and the bullshit about playing records backwards was ripped straight out of the headlines, back when the senators' wives-led Parent's Music Resource Center was trying it's damnedest to have rock n' roll outlawed. It seems almost impossible, in these relatively saner days, to think that lawful institutions were really taking this stuff seriously - that presumably intelligent adults were actually spinning Judas Priest and Twisted Sister records backwards, in court, no less, to see if there were any 'hidden messages' in the resultant white noise - but that's really the way it went. It is doubly mind-boggling when you hear - as you do, relentlessly, on the Beach Balls soundtrack - the kind of music that so incensed the moral majority twenty years ago. Spandex wearing numbskulls with cocaine brains and sock-stuffed crotches yelping about backstreet women were actually threatening once. The 80's really were fucking nuts. Anyway, back to our story.

Fate slams Charlie in his beachy balls when two momentous events occur at once. His parents head out of town for a week on some record-burning crusade, and Severed Heads in a Bag have to play a showcase gig for some record exec. Their scheduled set at Gazzari's was canceled and every other hairspray dive in town is booked. Chuck's already on probation for driving a stolen car (long story, and not a good one), so he should probably refrain from a cop-baiting event like a booze-powered heavy metal show in his backyard, but seriously, how else is he gonna fuck this Wendy trollop? A horny young man has gotta do what a horny young man has gotta do. And so, the party is on.

The band plays, seemingly forever. Wendy finds out her rockstar dreamboat is just another groupie-abusing jerk. A bunch of asshole lifeguards show up to yell at the metal dudes. Gary Schneider and his slimy cohorts rob Charlie at gunpoint while the party rages on. There's a climactic, everybody-in fist fight complete with Three Stooges sound effects, the rollerskating twins, and a blow-up sex doll. And at the end, everybody's happy. Except for you, if you were expected some tits.

I am unsure why Beach Balls received an R rating, because there's nothing here to justify it. Some blonde loses her top for five seconds (counted 'em) on the beach near the beginning, and a groupie gets banged (in the dark) backstage at a Severed Heads gig, but otherwise, you could pretty safely watch this film with your grandmother. I mean, if your grandmother liked 80's screech metal. It does serve as lite, breezy entertainment, and the band is suitably charismatic, but for a Roger Corman production, Beach Balls is seriously lacking in...well, balls. And boobs.

Availability: Beach Balls is available on a barebones DVD from Buena Vista. The soundtrack is also available, on cassette and vinyl, at better record and tape emporiums everywhere.

Link: Dr Starr!

-Ken McIntyre

Pretty Smart (1987)

Directed by Dimitri Logothetis
Starring Tricia Leigh Fisher, Joely Fisher, Julie K Smith, Patricia Arquette
Rated R
USA
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"Does this look like a salad fork, you silly cow?"

If we were standing on some street corner somewhere, preferably in the dope, gun, and fucking in the streets district, and I started spouting off the key plot points of Pretty Smart, you'd rush to the nearest sticky-carpet grindhouse showing it and slap down whatever it took to get in. After all, we are dealing with an all-girls school in Greece run by a maniac who secretly films his teenage students showering, pillow-fighting, and having sex with everyone from fat, hairy dope dealers to the gardener. Speaking of dope dealers, the dean is also using the girls to run drugs to Rome. The film is filled with cat fights, nude beaches, shower scenes and topless aerobics, including half a dozen eye-popping glimpses of future softcore queen and Penthouse Pet Julie K Smith, and even features a pubescent Patricia Arquette, hot on the heels of her star-making turn in Nightmare on Elm Street 3.

And then like two hours later, you'd find me throwing dice in an alley somewhere, and you'd punch me in the mouth, because I convinced you to see a chick flick.

I can only assume that Pretty Smart was created specifically for teenage lesbians. How else can you justify a girl power-centric story about two rival sisters sent off to an exclusive all-girl private school, who put aside their differences to take down the corrupt dean who's taking advantage of them, when it's sandwiched by a boing-ing boob scene every 7-10 minutes? Even with all the young bared flesh, the stuff in-between would send your average teenage boy screaming from the room: dance-offs, bunny-hopping, and ten minutes' worth of innocent, good-timey girl-frolicking on a Greek island. It's like a 90 minute slumber party with tits.

Tricia Leigh Fisher is the awesomely-named Daphne Zeigler, or "Zigs" to her freinemies. She's a difficult girl. She wears black and snarls a lot. Her sister Jennifer (Lisa Lorient) is the exact opposite, a blonde, pastel-loving good girl. They live in LA, and appear to be upwardly mobile. Although it is never really explained why, their parents obviously hate them both, since they send them away to Greece. As soon as they get to school, they are immediately divided up into cliques. Jennifer, being the prim and proper type, ends up in the "Preems", AKA the snotty...well, they're all rich, so I guess the snottier rich kids. Daphne joins the Subs, or the 'Subzeroes'. The misfits. Which, in this case means the black chick, the Asian chick, the chubby chick, and Patricia Arquette, who calls herself Zero and seems sorta suicidal all the time.

For most of the movie the two sects of schoolgirl clash, pouring wine on each other or getting into punch ups or pulling pranks. But once it becomes obvious that Dean Crawley (70's TV hunk/heel Dennis Cole) is using them to run drugs and make porn, the all band together and use their wits and pluck to bring him down. And then they dance.

Extremely frothy and amazingly sleaze-free, Pretty Smart is a strange and bewildering movie. The fashions are deplorable - I don't know if I've ever seen another movie that looks so...so hideously 80's - and so is the plinking synthesizer score. There's also a short but painful performance by Greek spandex-abusing new wave band Bang. ("Please don't panic, we're professional musicians," says the singer/keyboard botherer before they launch into their sub-Human League squall. Thanks for the warning, pal.) And yet, it is so generous with its nudity that it is impossible to dismiss outright. Perhaps it's a test of some kind, a litmus test to see how much girly bullshit the average teenage dude will put up with just to see girl-nipples. If so, I guess the answer is 95 minutes' worth.

Pretty Smart was shot on location in Greece by Dimitri Logothetis, who also directed campy heavy metal horror Slaughterhouse Rock (1988) and, perhaps more importantly, produced seminal booby-bouncer Hardbodies 2 (1986). He also acted in Dracula's Dog (1978), so if you ever run into him, he probably has a lot of awesome stories to tell.

The girls of Pretty Smart were largely one-time actresses, which is pretty evident. Patricia Arquettte obviously went on to bigger and better things, like True Romance (1993), and...well whatever else she did. She hasn't been on the sleaze-beast radar in many years. Tricia Leigh Fisher - the daughter of 50's TV star Eddie Fisher and Connie "Scorchy" Stevens, by the way - has been busy doing mostly television all these years. She is probably most embarrassed by 1989's Chud II: Bud the Chud. I know I'm embarrassed for her. Joely Fisher (Tricia's sister), played the chubby "Sub" here; she's gone on to a wealth of TV roles, most recently as Brad Garret's bosomy, wise-cracking wife on sitcom 'Til Death.

Most significant to the T&A fan, however, is the career arc of busty "Preem" Julie K. Smith. From this film on, she's appeared in a dizzying amount of primo trash, from Andy Sidaris sexy-action flicks (Dallas Connection, 1994; Day of the Warrior, 1996), to the Angel series (Angel III: The Final Chapter, 1988) and Roger Corman produced sci-fi junk (Wasp Woman, 1995), and gobs of softcore spoofs (Survivors Exposed, 2001; Bare Wench Project, 2002; The Da Vinci Coed, 2007).She is a bonafide topless institution, and it all started here.

Availability: Pretty Smart is available on VHS from the usual suspects.
Buy Pretty Smart at Amazon.

Link: Julie K Smith

-Ken McIntyre

Gas Pump Girls (1979)

Directed by Joel Bender
Starring Kirsten Baker, Linda Lawrence, Huntz Hall, Joe E Ross
Rated R
USA
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It's graduation day at Home Town High. Mid-ceremony, in fact. The senior girls rise to sing some pep-rally standard when suddenly...Swoosh! Their robes rip right off, revealing their relentlessly perky and poky double-whammies underneath. You may wonder why none of them are wearing bras - or, indeed, anything - under their graduation robes, but you will certainly not complain. Surprisingly, the girls are not particularly shocked or embarrassed by this sinister prank, and they actually try to finish their song before they get the hook.

So, who was behind this mischievous caper? Why, it's the Vultures, a trio of wise-cracking greaser clods. The US was still in the grips of Grease-mania when Gas Pump Girls was produced, and our lovable villains were clearly patterned after the T-Birds. Adding to the retro flavor is the American Graffitti-esque narration by still-kicking oldies DJ Cousin Brucie, who offers up color commentary on the action between a nearly non-stop battering of late period disco. The disco fucks up the 50's vibe, but it does, at least, offer ample opportunity for jiggly dance sequences.

Anyway, on to our story. Former Bowery Boy Huntz Hall (then 60, but looking at least ten years older), is Uncle Joe. He runs a gas station that's getting clobbered by the full-service chain across the street.

Run by the ironically named Mr. Friendly (Dave Shelley) and backed by evil conglomerate Pyramid Petroleum, the scumbags across the way are choking Uncle Joe's tiny filling station to death. When Joe falls ill, his niece June (Kirsten Baker, one of the topless graduates) decides to take it over. And when she decides this, Gas Pump Girls quite suddenly becomes a musical, as she sits at the empty gas station and belts out a Kermit the Frog-gy sunshine pop song called "I'm Lonely."
So, that was weird.

June gathers up her booby-flashing friends April (Sandy Johnson), Betty (Linda Lawrence), Jan (Rikki Marin), and Jane (Leslie King) and they give the run-down old place a make-over. And they all wear uniforms: cut-off short-shorts and halter tops. It's pretty majestic.


As you might expect, Joe's Gas becomes an instant favorite with the men in the neighborhood. The girls dance, flirt, and pump gas as pornographically as possible. The Vultures join on as tow-truck drivers and Mr. Friendly seethes. Nothing happens for a good hour, but boners are constantly popped, so it hardly matters. The evil Mr. Friendly can stand no more, so first he sends out two blundering old mobsters (Joe E Ross and Mike Mazurki) to terrorize the kids, and then he sabotages their gas delivery. Even with half-naked girls bouncing around, a gasless gas station can't do much business, and it looks like Uncle Joe's will have to close down forever.


"Are we just going to sit around and let this happen?" June asks the gang.
Her dopey boyfriend Roger shrugs. "I guess."
Roger always was a quitter.

Eventually, our motley crew rallies, concocting the usual 1970's solution to any given problem: put on elaborate costumes and lie. In this case, they dress up like sheiks and harem girls to barge in on the president of Pyramid Petroleum. Once they get in there, June tells him their terrible true tale, leaving him in tears. In perhaps the most unrealistic plot twist of all time, the president of an oil company develops a conscience, and does the right thing. Uncle Joe gets his station back, Mr. Friendly suffers the indignities of the working man, and the kids go back to poppin' wheelies and showing their tits.

Although Gas Pump Girls is never particularly funny, it is consistently entertaining. Featherlight and good naturedly goofy, it mashes up a kitchen sink's worth of unrelated ideas - 50's style bikers, 70's disco, aging slapstick comedians, Playboy-centerfolds-as-actors, and an out-of-nowhere musical interlude - into a meaty, fragrant stew of 70's drive-in weirdness. The girls are consistently gorgeous and frequently topless, and the film wears it's big, fuzzy heart on its sleeve. It's been a consistent cult favorite since its initial release. Girls in hotpants never go out of style.

Director Joel Bender has never been one for genre consistency. He's worked on everything from children's TV (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) to cheeseball vampire romps (Midnight Kiss, 1993). He does, however, have a seriously twisted side: not only did he write urban survival splatterfest Tenement (1985), one of the most violent films ever made, he also directed Karla, the controversial, harrowing, and deeply depressing 2006 biopic about Canadian murderess Karla Homolka. Treacly junk like Gas Pump Girls must have driven him nuts.

The cast of Gas Pump Girls has fared better than many 70's T&A vets. Half of them also appeared in the immortal H.O.T.S. (also 1979), a masterpiece of drive-in sleaze cinema. All three of the Vultures had long and lucrative careers in television. While none of the gas pumping girls are still acting, they all did their share of notable genre work.

Rikki Marin married Cheech and appeared in most of the Cheech and Chong films.


Leslie King was one of the wild cheerleaders in Cheerleaders Wild Weekend (1979).


Sandy Johnson appeared in Surfer Girls (1978), Halloween (1978), H.O.T.S. (1979), and Playboy magazine.

Linda Lawrence starred in Al Adamson's screwy Kung Fu/blaxploitation mash-up Death Dimension (1978).

Kirsten Baker was in the amazing Teen Lust (1979) and Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981).

All five deserve a table at the next fan convention, right between Deborah Van Valkenburgh and Bobbie Bresee.

The old dudes (Joe E Ross, Huntz Hall, Dave Shelley, Mike Mazurki) are all dead. But what the hell, nobody lives forever. And they had better runs then most.

Availability: Gas Pump Girls is available on a bare-bones, semi-legit DVD from Jef, and on beat-up VHS ex-rentals. It also plays on late night cable pretty frequently, so, uh... check your local listings.
Buy Gas Pump Girls at Amazon.
-Ken McIntyre

Revenge of the Nerds TV Pilot (1991)

Directed by Peter Baldwin
Starring Rob Stone, Lightfield Lewis, Julie McCullough, Robbie Rist
USA


"I'm either allergic to pom poms or pretty girls with perky breasts. I'm just hoping it's the pom poms."

Although it almost always ended in either tears or bitter disappointment, throughout the 70's and 80's, desperate television execs would green-light woefully inadequate sitcom spinoffs of popular Hollywood comedies, usually employing one or two minor characters and just bullshitting through the rest of it. Ok, so MASH worked, and Private Benjamin had a decent run, but what about Fast Times at Ridgemont High...the series (1986)? Or Delta House (1979)? Or Harper Valley PTA (1981)? Those, not so much.

One film series that actually did seem like a sensible pick for small-screen treatment was Revenge of the Nerds. For one thing, the first two movies were already playing on television pretty relentlessly, with only a smidgen of nude scenes to excise and a few bleeps to make them family-friendly. The concept also had potential for long-running storylines as well, since college does, after all, take a good seven or so years to get through. Most importantly, people adored the characters. Who doesn't love an underdog who bests the golden-boy douchebag and gets his girl? It was money in the bank, this idea.

Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

There are many things wrong with the Revenge of the Nerds TV pilot. In fact, the only thing right about it is that it went unaired. Big mistake number one was to recast every character with new actors who bore no resemblance to the Robert Carradines and Anthony Edwards-es we knew and loved. The second biggest mistake was to go broad. The original 1984 film had its share of sight gags, but was, at its heart, a character-driven comedy, one that fairly bubbled over with do-the-right-thing sentiment. Revenge of the Nerds had a fuckin' message, Jack, about overcoming the vanilla-flavored alpha-jerks of this world by standing your ground and, you know, being yourself. The TV pilot aimed for an impossibility - a G-rated Animal House - and ended up with a warmed-over rehash of the original film with lesser actors and cheapjack production values.

After an admittedly bouncy synth-pop theme song ("Get ready for the nerd attack!"), the show opens on the first day of classes at Adams University. We are introduced to the 'new' Louis (Rob Stone) and Gilbert (Lightfield Lewis), the two asthmatic, horn-rimmed, supergenius protagonists from the films, as they unpack in their new dorm room.
"Wow," says Louis, "My poster on the history of mold. It's beginning to look like home already."
"It's gonna be a great year," says Gilbert. "And this time, no one's going to call us nerds."
A thick-necked jock walks by their door and yells at them.
"Nerds!" He barks. He is joined by another musclehead.
They both chime in. "Nerds!"
Cue the laugh track.
Moments later, the fatheads from the football team barge in, carrying the rest of our motley crew under their arms. There's Harold Wormser (Grant Gelt), the twelve-year old law-student wunderkid, and fan-favorite Booger, now essayed by former child star Robbie Rist, who re-imagines the snot-eating gross-out as an over-confident, pony-tailed slacker tool in a Hawaiian shirt. Ogre (one-time American Gladiator Jeff Benson) drops the dorks. A furious Booger calls him "Steroid breath". Harold makes a smarmy comment about the metaphysical implications of wearing another man's underwear on your head. He says this because he's got underwear on his head.

Seems the Alpha-Beta fraternity house burned down, so the frat assholes want the nerds' dorm. They make this point clear by throwing all of Gilbert's stuff - and then Gilbert himself - out the window. The fellas storm off to the cafeteria, where they run into a gang of evil cheerleaders, led by tasty, fresh-faced blonde Julie McCullough, who had just made a splash as Kirk Cameron's girlfriend on Growing Pains. Julie and her boner-popping pals convince our nerdy heroes to pledge Alpha Beta, since they're already living in their house, and all. Cue the humiliating hazing, including a bizarre scene where they stand in the shower in their underwear while Ogre cracks eggs on their heads, and that old comedic standby, tar and feathers.
"I think our dignity is being offended," says Booger. That can be said for all of us at this point, Mr. Rist.

Realizing they've been had, the plucky young geeks vow revenge. Well, it is in the title.

As may seem obvious by now, the TV pilot apes the first film's plot. The boys blunder their way into being sponsored by all-black fraternity Lambda Lambda Lambda. They find a cheap house to move into (there'd been a few unfortunate axe murders in the parlor), get threatened - for no reason - by the Alpha Betas, and square off with them the following day. Facing down the entire football team, the nerds pull out mechanical gizmos and shock the jocks into submission. It ends with a weapon of mass destruction joke (a decade ahead of it's time!) and Robbie Rist rolling around under a pile of cheerleaders. That sounds more fun than it is.

The series was never picked up, so this episode is all that remains of Nerd-TV. Director Peter Baldwin could cook stuff like this up in his sleep already - he'd done episodes of everything from The Brady Bunch to Full House by this point. He stepped right over this corpse and carried on, directing dozens of series until he retired in 2002. Writer Eric Cohen attempted to revamp the nerd-com with Dweebs, a short-lived 1995 series starring Corey Feldman. Lightfield Lewis appeared in 2006's Hookers, Inc. alongside Kato Kaelin. So things are going well with him. Julie McCullough appeared in Playboy a few times, had sex with Scott Baio, and is still waiting for her big break.

The Revenge of the Nerds series did not die with this stillborn television show. It was revamped for two overbearing TV movies: 1992's Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation, and 1994's Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love. Both films sensibly brought back many of the original actors. A raunchy, R-rated remake was planned by Fox in 2006 starring Napolean Dynamite's own Efren "Pedro" Ramirez and some of the jiggle-bunnies from teen drama Laguna Beach, but production shut down after the studio heads balked at the dailies. It is reasonable to assume, however, that we will experience Nerd-vana again sometime soon. And that Robbie Rist will not be involved.

Availability: the Revenge of the Nerds TV pilot is available as an extra on the Panty Raid edition of the original Revenge of the Nerds DVD and on the Atomic Wedgie Collection. (Fox).
Buy Revenge of the Nerds: The Atomic Wedgie Collection at Amazon.


Clip: The First six inglorious minutes of the pilot. Theme song included!

-Ken McIntyre

The Party Animal (1984)

Directed by David Beaird
Starring Matthew Causey, Tim Carhart
Rated R
Canada
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Even amongst the lowly flotsam of z-grade T&A flicks, The Party Animal is a genre nadir, a witless non-starter that almost defies you to keep watching. Other films may torment you with terrible acting, absurd plot devices, paper-thin production values or lop-sided boobs, but The Party Animal commits sleaze cinema's greatest sin: it is terminally, mercilessly lame.

The Party Animal in question is one Pando Sinatra (Matthew Causey), who arrives at college literally on the back of a turnip truck. The narrator says he's 26, but his hairline suggests another 10 years, at least. The film is presented as a documentary of Pando's college quest which was, as it was with all of us, to get laid. Here's the thing: besides the receding hairline and a wardrobe ripped from Mork from Ork's closet, there really is no reason why Pando wouldn't find some willing coed to relieve him of his virginity. He's not a bad looking guy, sort of a dopey Sam Rockwell type. So from the beginning, our premise is deeply flawed. But let's roll with it, since we're already here.

Pando's one and only friend is a droll cocksman named (ahem) Studly, essayed by constantly-working character actor Tim Carhart. You'd think, given his name, Studly would have better things to do than mentor a social leper like Pando, but since nobody in this un-named school appears to actually attend classes, he has to fill his time between blowjobs with something. And so he offers advice, Pando fucks it all up, and they try again. Eventually, Pando sells his soul to the devil for pussy, but he ends up blowing that deal somehow, as well. And so we must slog through absurd set-pieces, including a Pando-as-pimp bit, where he's dressed up in a purple satin mac-daddy suit and gets walloped (off screen) by a bunch of angry black dudes in dashikis, a scuzzball house party, where Pando ingests a Johnny Thunders-esque amount of drugs to prove his mettle, a confusing visit to a sex shop, where he buys a dildo the size of a rocket, and a slumber party, where our feckless zero gussies up in a housedress and a hairnet and cheats at strip poker. At least that scene provides us with a much-needed dose of nudity. Female nudity, that is.

In what appears to have been an alarming trend in Canadian teensploitation films of the 80's, there's an extended bit of homoeroticism to wade through. In this case, Pando drops by an all-male revue to watch a bunch of oiled-up muscle-boys gyrate and thrust to a brassy lite-funk groove. They never even mention why. He just does. And we have to watch for five minutes straight. Imagine paying for a ticket and being subjected to glistening man-groin projected ten feet high?

Anyway, if you think a guy dressed up like the Red Baron, chasing a woman around the room with a paper-mache rocket between his legs is funny, than you'll want to stick around, because it just gets zanier. Pando gets tossed out of school, but then he invents a sex potion, goes to see ska-punk funsters The Untouchables, and then bangs a dozen sorority girls. Satan condemns him to have sex with fat girls sometime after that. BBW fans will interpret this twist ending differently than the rest of us, although we will all breathe a sigh of relief that it's over.

The Party Animal sputters out after a not-so-brief 78 minutes. It is fondly remembered by almost no one. David Beaird redeemed himself two years later, when he wrote and directed My Chauffeur, one of the warmest and most well-loved films of the teen-sex genre. Matthew Causey, sensibly, got back on his turnip truck and drove the fuck home.

Scene: Pando Vs. Drugs.

Availability: The Party Animal is available on DVD from MGM. Doesn't mean you have to watch it.
Buy The Party Animal on Amazon.

PS: Who's this chick? I desperately wanted to marry her in 1985.

-Ken McIntyre