The Young Graduates (1971)

Directed by Robert Anderson
Starring Patricia Wymer, Tom Stewart, Gary Rist, Bruno Kirby
Rated GP
USA
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"Pills and booze. Wow."

Somebody ought to revive The Young Graduates as a rickety stage play, preferably one cast by today's most over-reaching young thespians. Is Tara Reid too old to play 18? She'd be perfect. We get all these young druggy screwballs together, fit them into body-hugging yarn dresses and bell-bottoms, give them cardboard dune buggies to drive around in, and hand them the script to the Young Graduates.

Here, let's picture it, using the film's first scene. In it, Mindy (exploitation mini-legend Patricia Wymer) and her goofy boyfriend Bill (Gary Rist), are sitting in Bill's buggy - the same kind that Charles Manson wanted to strap machine guns to - and discussing the fact that tomorrow is Mindy's 18th birthday. I'm going with creepy Evan Rachel Wood for Mindy, and Superbad's own Jonah Hill for Bill. Because Jonah Hill would totally own a beach buggy, if he could.

Evan Rachel Wood, batting her eyelashes: "Don't I get a present?"
Jonah Hill, sweating profusely and twisting the knob on the AM radio, which only seems to play suggestive, Hammond-organ driven jungle-surf:"Not until after midnight, when you're no longer legally jailbait."
Evan Rachel Wood, laughing sadistically. "What are you, on uppers?"
Jonah, actually serious about it: "The way you heat me up, I should be on downers."
EVR, punching him. "Ha ha. You are on uppers!"

I am willing to direct, for a nominal fee.

The Young Graduates is awesomely retro. Everything about it screams early 70's, from the topsy-turvy moral values to the relentlessly groovy soundtrack to the vintage threads and the post-Altamont downer vibe. The parents are all mixed-up squares who are either beating on the kids or trying to get them in bed, and the kids? Well, the kids just wanna ride their machines without being hassled by the man. It's like a bummed-out Beach Party flick with a strung-out Annette and an angst-addled Frankie. Since I was a mere infant when this was released in 1971, it is impossible for me to say whether The Young Graduates is an accurate representation of teen life in the late 60's/early 70's, but I'm guessing it was not. Now? Well sure, it's accurate now. Teachers fuck students constantly now. And then they write about it on Facebook or whatever. But in 1971, the idea was probably more fantasy than fact. Dunno. Ask your mom.

So, we have established that Mindy will be 18 tomorrow. Bill agrees to loan her his buggy to do whatever she wants on her birthday. Bad move, Bill. Meanwhile, Mindy's BFF Sandy (Marly Holiday, rocking an awe-inspiring Linda Lovelace porn-fro) has set up a surprise party for her. Too bad Mindy's got other plans.

See, there's this teacher, Jack (Tom Stewart), at Mindy's high school. He's married to the girls' gym teacher, Gretchen (gorgeous redhead Jennifer Ritt), but their marriage is on the rocks, as evidenced by a hellacious scene where Gretchen flatly denies Jack's advances.
"If there was a whorehouse in town, he growls at her, "I'd be tempted!"
"Oh, that's funny!" Gretchen replies.
"This town couldn't afford a whorehouse with all the competition your little high school girls would give it."
Rolling his eyes - he's heard this bullshit before - Jack storms out of the room.
"Where are you going?" Asks Gretchen.
"Where I always get my jollies on Friday night," he snorts, wagging an accusatory finger.
"Watching the late, late show."
Poor bastard. Gretchen is totally hot.

The next day, Mindy takes Bill's goofy car and rumbles over to Jack's house. He'd taken an unflattering picture of her at a school dance, and she's come to retrieve it from him. At least that's her excuse. As soon as she gets in the house, she rubs up against him, purrs, the whole bit. She lays it on so thick that you can practically hear the big globs of sweat dripping off this poor sap's brow. Gretchen's out of town for the weekend, so Mindy suggests they go to the mountains to take pictures for the afternoon. No big whoop, daddy-o. Just a little nature photography.
"It wouldn't be right," Jack says, sensibly. "I'm your teacher, after all."
"Ah well," says Melinda, "Your loss."
And then she starts to leave.
"Melinda? I'll be ready in two minutes," says our doomed Teach, as the camera zooms in crazily on Melinda's malicious grin.

At first it seems like Jack might actually pull this off without completely wrecking his life. He frolics freely with young miss Mindy, but for most of the afternoon, all they really do is climb rocks and take pictures. But then Mindy spies a bunch of hippies skinny dipping in a lake, and being 18 and willing, she peels off her clothes (she was going commando, by the way) and jumps in with 'em. What's a stuffy 30-something school teacher/amateur photographer/maker of bad choices to do? He pulls off his square threads and jumps into the naked fray, rolling around with the kids in the water, naked and weird and having a fuckin' ball.

Later on, they end up at the hippy pad, popping pills and chomping on some gross grub. Feeling the moment, Mindy and Jack lock lips. The Groovy Bunch exit stage left so they can fuck on the floor.

Few days later, Jack tells Mindy that it's over, baby. He might have spoke too soon, as Gretchen announces she's going on vacation with her mother for most of the summer.
Later that evening, Mindy and Sandy have a long and troubling talk about their future. It becomes increasingly clear that Mindy is a horrible, contemptuous young woman.

Mindy (once again played by Evan Rachel Wood): "Who cares about good grades anyway? Look at your father."
Sandy (portrayed here in my imaginary stage play by Anne Hathaway in a frizzy wig):
"My father?"
ERW/Mindy: "He graduated from college Magna Cum Laude, made big money, and what is he today? A drunk! An alcoholic! Well he is, isn't he?"
Sandy/AH, her enormous eyes welling up with tears: "I guess."
AVR/Mindy: "Well, a lot of good a college degree and a great job did him."
Sandy/AH: "Mindy, since your birthday, you're..." She pauses dramatically, choosing her words wisely. "You're just too deep for me."

Just then a boozy, desperate Jack- in a purple bathrobe - calls Mindy and tells her that he wants her back. Cue a queasy date montage where they hold hands, ride a motorcycle, zip around in a speed boat, and visit polar bears at the zoo while a breezy pop song goes "Your love is like shallow waters/and forever may end tomorrow morning". I know, sounds like some Nick Cave death-trip ballad, but it's actually got a Sergio Mendes sorta vibe.

Oh, I should mention that this is Bruno Kirby's first film. He's Bill's friend Les, who tells him, over slugs of coke in glass bottles, that Mr. Thompson's been banging his girl behind his back. He does not take the news well. Later on during gym class, Bill bonks Jack over the head with a basketball. That, however, is the least of Jack's worries. During a gratuitous shower scene that the leads aren't even in, Mindy tells Sandy that she thinks she's pregnant.

You figure that'd be the central drama here, but the pregnancy angle is tossed aside so that The Young Graduates can take a hard detour into Satan's Sadists-ville for half an hour. After a boring day at the drag races (Bill wears an awesome mask and almost crashes his dragster, but Mindy could not care less), Sandy and Mindy take off in the dune buggy. They meet up with Pan (an extremely young Dennis Christopher, half a decade before Breaking Away), one of the skinny-dipping hippies from half a lifetime ago.
"Oh, I didn't recognize you with your clothes on," says Mindy.

They decide they're going to Big Sur together, but almost immediately, they run out gas. They ditch the buggy, thumb a ride with some weed dealers in a psychedelic van, and eventually end up in the clutches of a psychotic biker gang who take Pan out to the woods and beat him half to death. Then one of 'em attempts to rape Sandy, but they escape during a scuffle between the bikers, and they head for the hills. Later on Mindy steals one of the motorcycles.
"I just want to go home," Sandy whines. "I'm so dirty."
"Nope," Mindy says. "We're going to Big Sur."
They really oughta cage this chick.

Mindy and Sandy have slapstick-y adventures on the motorcycle, including a run-in with two good ol' boys in cowboy hats (for some reason, I'm picturing Tenacious D for my stage version) that they meet at a diner. After wolfing down a big breakfast, the girls realize they have no money to pay the bill.
"Maybe those guy will pay for us, if..." Sandy begins.
"Ugh," says Mindy. "I'd rather go down on the motorcycle guys."
So they get chased by the dudes in a pick-up truck. Meanwhile, Jack, Bill, Les and a bunch of cops are looking for the girls. There's also a nomadic hippy tribe/large scale dope operation in there for good measure.

You wouldn't think a movie like this would have a riot scene, but it does. It also, against all odds, has a happy ending. And dancing! Also, although they do not show it, I think Gretchen finally bones her husband. Which may or may not keep him from seducing high school girls next year.

Clearly shot by bah-humbugging grown-ups during the dark days of Manson and Altamont, when the peace movement devolved into a greasy drug fuzz and free love became cheap sex, The Young Graduates is a weird and wonderful time capsule, a grumpy road movie that veers wildly between melodrama and sudden slapstick, with unlikable leads and a meandering story that reads like a lurid tabloid column penned by a confused, mean-old-man. Marketed as softcore in its initial theatrical run and then as a contemporary teen sex comedy (!) when it was released on VHS in the mid 1980's, Young Graduates is actually an overwrought teen melodrama that just happens to be fitfully hilarious in spite of itself. For better or worse, they simply do not make them like this anymore.

Patricia Wymer had already earned her place in drive-in history with appearances in tawdry 60's trash like The Babysitter and The Witchmaker (both 1969), but this is clearly her Apocalypse Now, a dark-hearted epic that gave her full reign to gobble the scenery like a pint-sized Godzilla. Unfortunately, this was her last film role. Apparently, she gave all she had on this one. Most of the cast slinked back into the murk of brown acid and Vietnam, but a couple notable actors, Dennis Christopher and Bruno Kurby, managed to ascend from triple-bill junk like this to mainstream Hollywood. Kirby died in '06, and we all miss him. Christopher is still skinny and weird. Director Anderson was already in his 50's when he made this "youth gone wild" film, so who can blame him for getting it all wrong? He called them like he saw them, man. Anderson had a very brief career, but managed to squeeze out one more exploitation head-scratcher, Cindy and Donna (1970), before moving on to greener pastures.

Availability: The Young Graduates was recently released on DVD as part of the Drive In Cult Classics Vol 4 set from BCI/Eclipse, which also includes The Van, Chain Gang Women, Don't Answer the Phone, and more. A mandatory purchase, obviously.
Buy Drive-In Cult Classics, Vol. 4 at Amazon.
-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

Hamburger the Motion Picture (1986)

Directed by Mike Marvin
Starring Leigh McCloskey, Debra Blee, Dick Butkus, Chuck McCann
Rated R
USA

"Excuse Mr. Belknap, but there's a dead woman in the drive-thru lane."
"Well then, cancel her order."

There are those among us that will swear, without irony or apology, that Hamburger the Motion Picture is the greatest, erm, motion picture ever made. And while they are obviously crackpots, they are not entirely wrong. The truth is, Hamburger is goofy 80's junk, but it's one of the finest examples of goofy 80's junk imaginable, a veritable smorgasbord of eye-rolling gags, gratuitous nudity, inappropriate stunt casting, and headache-making soundtrack music. As such, at the very least, it is clearly the greatest 80's fast-food themed teen-comedy ever made. And while it is too competent to compete with the likes of Troll II, it is also a worthy competitor in the 'Best/Worst' film sweepstakes as well. So yes, it is pretty fucking great.

First sign that you're in for a good time: the theme song is awesome. "Hamburger for America" by Michigan rock legend Bill "Blue" Mueller is a maddeningly catchy blues-pop song that really does say it all about hamburgers, and about America: "Sliced tomatoes, cheese and bacon/Soda pop, and shakes a shakin'/And while you're listening and lookin'/It makes them proud, that they're a-cookin'/Hamburgers, for America!"
Once heard, you will probably never forget it. For better or worse.

Second sign that you're in for a good time: Hamburger the Motion Picture actually opens with a shower scene. Russell (magnificent bastard Leigh McCloskey, who would later become an enduring soap opera heartthrob) is caught banging a coed in the girl's shower. He is sent to see the school psychiatrist, Victoria Gotbottom (exploitation vet Karen Mayo-Chandler, RIP), who, of course, has sex with him. That's his problem, you see. Chicks dig him, and he very much enjoys boning chicks. So, the dean walks in on them, and he gets expelled.


Back at home, Russ's dad (Bob Hogan) explains to his cocksman son exactly why he must change his randy ways. Seems he stands to inherit $250,000 from his grandfather, but will not receive a cent until he gets a college degree. Unfortunately, he's already been expelled from four universities for sexual misconduct, and now his parents have no money left to send him anywhere else. The two men sit there, pondering this sticky issue, when an ad pops up on the television for hamburger college. It's sponsored by a fast food chain called Busterburger. Graduates receive a real degree, and it's free! Prayers answered, Russ heads over to the nearest Busterburgers to apply.

Busterburgers is a yellow and red monstrosity of a place, with gimmicky steer horns poking off of the roof and jutting from the employees' caps. Clearly, Kevin Smith looked to Hamburger the Motion Picture for inspiration when he wrote Clerks II, because the look of Busterburgers and Smith's fictional burger joint, Mooby's, is nearly identical. One thing Mooby's did not have, however, was a smart-ass six-foot pickle at the drive-thru. Buster's order-taking pickle calls women "Toots" and sounds like a sarcastic Snagglepuss. He sasses one old woman so badly she has a heart attack and dies right there. Sarcastic Pickle is awesome.

Russ picks up an application and hops on a bus to burger college. As you would expect, it's filled with screwballs and misfits, including a twitchy nun, Sister Sara (Barbara Whinnery, Stewardess School) a militant Latina, Conchita (former Playboy bunny Maria Richwine), a suspenders-sporting nerd named Nacio (Jack Blessing), a fat guy, Prestopopnick (John William Young) a clueless, would-be ladies man, Fred Domino (Sandy Hackett, Buddy's son) and a Rick James doppelganger named Magneto Jones (Chip McAllister). Chuck McCann is a goggle-eyed professor. Dick Butkus is Drootin the drill sergeant, which is a weird thing for a college to have. Also lurking around the joint: skull-faced Lyman Vunk (Charles Tyner), Busterburger's founder, his helium-voiced, bra-straining trophy wife (Randi Brooks) and his daughter Mia (b-movie queen Debra Blee), Russ's obvious love-interest.

Buster University has strict rules. There is no alcohol, drugs, sex, or outside food allowed. The students are forced to sleep in hamburger shaped beds and talk into hamburger shaped phones. They take burger-related classes, like onionology (everybody sobs), cow-butchery class (Mia chops up a wooden bull with a chainsaw; the wooden 'testicles' roll across the floor and the fat kid pours salt on one and chomps into it), and, um...pickle midwifery. If these jokes sound lame on paper, just wait until you actually watch them. It's aggressively stupid stuff, and it's relentless.

At one point, Fred and Russ go out for Chinese food, where they see Mia and Mrs Vunk having dinner.
"Look," Fred says, "It's Mia and her mom. Mama Mia!"
They join the women. Mrs. Vunk says,"You haven't lived until you've tried their Sum Young Guy!"

Sigh.

So, they're eating when Dick Butkus shows up. Not only has he been dating Mia, but eating outside is strictly forbidden for students, so Russ and Fred dive under the table. Butkus, of course, imposes himself and gobbles down some ribs while the two idiots are hiding under the table. Fred, being at vagina level with the ladies, cannot help himself. He starts nuzzling Mrs.Vunk's crotch. She has a screaming orgasm, upending the table and revealing the two culprits. As punishment, they are both put in pickle jail, which is, in fact, a giant pickle.
"Oh no," Fred cries. "We're in a pickle!" Indeed you are, sir.

Russ tries to stay out of trouble. While Fred sneaks off to bang Mrs. Vunk, he stays in his room to study for finals. Unfortunately, his sexual charisma is so pervasive that Conchita busts into his room and forces him to have sex with her at gunpoint.


Also, the nerd guy starts turning into a chicken, for some reason (he lays an egg at one point).


Part of the final exam involves all the students running a Busterburgers for the day. A busload of fat people show up ("Oh no, it's the eating club!") and order hundreds of burgers. There's about ten minutes' of footage that is nothing but fat people stuffing burgers into their maws while pig noises play on the soundtrack. They try to get rid of them by putting laxatives in their food, but all the farting eventually blows up the restaurant.

Yes, you heard that right. And then some bikers show up and destroy whatever's left. And then two Mexicans with a truck full of chickens crash into the rubble. Haha, what a mess! Can the gang possibly find a way to fix this crazy jam? Of course, it's the 80's! In the end, everybody wins. Except for Dick Butkus. That guy is an asshole.

So, there you go. An utterly ridiculous movie about hamburgers. Not like today. Today, hamburger movies are dramas, like Fast Food Nation. Obesity is an epidemic in America, causing more Diabetes, heart disease, and death every year. But in 1986? Pure comedy. Almost makes you wish there was some sort of portal you could jump into and escape to the mid 1980's for awhile. Chortle at nerds and hide under tables at Chinese restaurants. But there is no such portal, so thank fuckin' Christ the VCR still works.

Hamburger the Motion Picture is a beloved cult favorite amongst 80's junkfilm fans, and will surely remain so. It is not actually funny, but it's still pretty fun, an eager-to-please dimwit of a film that will resort to anything, from aggressive gay pickles to farting fat people, to make you laugh. As for the crew and cast, although he mostly stayed away from comedies for the rest of his career, director Mike Marvin deserves some sort of merit for also producing Hot Dog the Movie. I mean, what a legacy! Most of the cast kept going after this one. 70's funnyman Chuck McCann is not dead, and is in fact still acting, most recently in Horrorween, which also features Alice Cooper, Jenna Jameson, William Shatner, and Flavor Flav. Debra Blee had a short but pretty incredible run in low budget exploitation flicks: The Beach Girls (1982), Savage Streets (1984), The Malibu Bikini Shop (1986), and Beach Fever (1987). Blee had excellent taste in film roles, and although she bared no skin in Hamburger, there's plenty more of her to admire in Beach Girls and Malibu Bikini Shop. Unfortunately, she has not acted in 22 years, and we miss her and her fleshly charms terribly.


Availability: Amazingly, Hamburger the Motion Picture remains unavailable on DVD. You can still find it on VHS for a reasonable price, though.

Clip: Hamburger the Motion Picture the Trailer!

-Ken McIntyre