Bad Biology (2008)

Directed by Frank Henenlotter
Starring Charlee Danielson, Anthony Sneed
Unrated
USA

"Where's my fuckin' jimmy jig?"

Bad Biology is cult legend Frank Henenlotter's first film in 15 years. Most horror and trash film enthusiasts know him for his pioneering sex/gore epic Frankenhooker (1990), evil-brain bloodbath Brain Damage (1988) and, of course, the Basket Case series (1982-1992), a trilogy of grungy, sick-fuck flicks about Siamese twins. 60 year old Henenlotter grew up in the shadows of the Deuce, and his films have always reflected his love and admiration for grimy, 42nd St gut-spillers. Bad Biology is no exception, but it's the first one he's done without an obvious point of reference. 42nd Street is glitzy and clean now. The grindhouses are long gone. Most of the kids who will read about Bad Biology in Fangoria or on horror movie websites will likely have no idea who he is or why he's so obsessed with vaginas and penises and monster babies. Will the new generation of splatter-kids embrace this aging weirdo like we did in the 80's? Or will they just roll their eyes at the crude, stop-motion mutant penis and hold out for the next big budget slasher remake? And most importantly, will old-school sleaze-beasts like you and I dig it? Well, let's take a look at the evidence.

The first thing you may notice about Bad Biology is its distracting soundtrack, a thumping, pumping mélange of rap tracks by people like Reef the Lost Cause (who makes an appearance) and Atmosphere (featuring star Danielson). Is this an attempt on Henenlotter's part to be 'down' with the sounds of the street, ala Abel Ferrara? Maybe, but most likely it's due to the fact that hip-hop artist Rugged Man fronted the money for the project, and co-produced. Henenlotter shot a music video for the rapper, and the two found they shared a similar vision. So there's that. There's also an odd gloss to the film. Given its subject matter, the director chose to shoot Bad Biology on film, fearing it would look too pornographic on video. First-time cinematographer Nick Deeg clearly took Henenlotter's concerns seriously, because the film has a clinical, well-lit, TV movie look, quite at odds with the punk rock grime of Frank's earlier work. Otherwise, it's business as usual for Henenlotter: tits, latex monsters, stilted dialogue, and sex-gone-wrong.

Bad Biology offers up one of the most audacious opening lines ever:
"I was born with seven clitorises."
It lets you know, right from the gate, that this is going to be a very bumpy ride.
No pun intended.

We meet Jennifer (Charlee Danielson), our many-clitted heroine, a wispy blonde who haunts dingy NYC clubs at night looking for sexual prey. In the first scene, she brings home some bar-trash and fucks him with such enthusiasm that she forcefully slams his head into the floor. After she cums, she sees the pool of blood under his fractured skull. She is not upset about this. Instead of calling the police, she grabs everything in the guy's fridge and orgasms while she's scarfing down fried chicken and cole slaw. Then she sits in the bathtub and gives birth to a bloody, screaming, mutant baby. And then she splits.

We soon find out that Jennifer is some sort of mutant who requires sex on a constant basis. She also requires an internal climax, which leads to conception, a lightning-fast pregnancy, and the inevitable messy live birth of a monster, a mere two hours later. She does not know why this has happened to her - she first started menstruating at the age of 5, and it's been pretty nuts ever since - but she suspects it's God's idea. She thinks God wants to fuck her.

So she's got that going for her. She's got a day job, too. She's an edgy photographer/videographer who specializes in hip-hop videos and album covers. By day, she stages confrontational photo shoots and by night, she either finds some dude and fucks him to death, or she masturbates with scary, sparking electrical contraptions. You may, at this point, be wondering if we actually get to see the cause of her misery/ecstasy, and the answer is sorta. Around the 18 minute mark, you get a glimpse of her monster vagina - from the inside. I can only describe it as gnarly. Literally.

Jennifer is not only physically deformed, she's also mentally unstable. She explains, via narration, that much like her sexual organs, her brain processes emotions at a much higher rate then normal. This frequently leads to erratic behavior.

For example, in one scene, she meets a guy who she actually likes. It's never happened before and after they bone, she starts feeling romantic. He gets up to bail on her - he had assumed it was merely a one-night stand - and she kills him, messily, with a lamp.

Meanwhile, across town, Batz (Anthony Sneed), a guy with a giant, drug-addicted penis, tries to eat a sandwich in a deli while some kids a few tables over talk about John Holmes and his veiny 14 inch dick, which causes the peni-sensitive Batz to puke in an alley. Later on he stays up all night because his penis wants to watch porn. Then he duct tapes it down.

After spending a long night screaming at his dick, Batz is woken the next morning by a pounding at his door. Some guy shows up at and asks to use his house for a photo shoot. You can see his point - Batz lives in a bright yellow mansion. He agrees and takes his rental advance to a crack house to buy drugs. While he's there, a crazy girl - who looks remarkably like Stephanie Fondue - keeps yelling about 'Jimmy Jigs'. It is the comic highlight of the movie. It might be the highlight of the movie, period.

Bad Biology: Jimmy Jig!
by Sleazegrinder

Anyway, Batz buys a bunch of steroids or something, and shoots them into his penis. His penis likes intravenous drugs.

Afterward, he goes home and puts his penis in some sort of milking machine, and then he starts hallucinating that the girl in the porn flick he's watching is talking to him. So, Batz is pretty fucked.

The photo shoot at Batz's place is being directed by Jennifer. It involves some rap dudes interacting with topless girls wearing vagina masks. One of the girls in the shoot is pseudo-scream queen Tina Krause (Psycho Sisters, Vampire's Seduction, etc). When she's getting dressed after it's over, she notices a creepy dude watching her from around a corner. It's Batz. It is his house, after all.


For whatever reason, Tina starts teasing and flashing him, and his penis tries to break free and attack her. Luckily it's still duct taped.

Later on, everybody cleans up and splits, but Jennifer goes back into the house to get her cell phone. When she walks in, she hears somebody arguing. She opens up a door and finds Batz wrestling with his giant dick. It looks exactly like you think it does. Jennifer vamooses, but she has clearly made an important discovery.

That night, Batz brings home a hooker (dressed, interestingly, in the same purple outfit as Frankenhooker). His monster dick literally fucks her senseless. She just lies on the floor moaning for hours. He ends up carrying her outside and leaving her on the sidewalk, still in the throes of painful orgasm. Jennifer, who's been skulking around the mansion and spying on Batz the whole time, videotapes her and takes the tape home to masturbate to. The whole scene is pretty annoying. Imagine non-stop fake orgasm sounds and hip-hop thumping mixed together for ten minutes.

I'm not sure how, but the monster penis escapes from Batz's crotch and bursts through some woman's floorboards and fucks her stupid. And then he goes to another house and does it again. These scenes are shot with the same sort of primitive stop-motion effects Henenlotter used in the early 80's for Basket Case. The penis goes through four of five girls, providing us, if nothing else, with a whole lotta nudity. At one point, he attacks this melon-breasted chick(fetish queen Jelena Jensen), and it's clearly just a dude slapping her in the tits with a modified rubber dildo. Ed Wood's got nothin' on Henenlotter, man.

After getting blasted at work for the disastrous vagina face shoot, Jennifer splits and heads over to Batz's joint. She thinks that she's finally found her mate. Unfortunately, he no longer has a dick.

The end.

Well, not really. Other stuff happens. But most of it so ridiculous that you really better just see it for yourself.

So, is Bad Biology worth the 15-year wait for Henenlotter fans? Possibly. After all, his last film was the atrocious Basket Case 3 (1992), and there's no way he could make a worse movie. Given that grading curve, it's clearly a step up. Long-time cohort Gabe Bartolos is back heading the FX team, so all the slime and goo and stop-motion hijinks you remember from Basket Case is on deck here, and even though NYC is too cleaned-up to provide much atmosphere, Henenlotter brings us to as many filthy warehouses and crack dens as he can cram in. However, unlike even his most visceral movies, Bad Biology has almost no sense of humor, and without it, we are left with a ghastly, low-budget shock show about dysfunctional assholes and mutated private parts. And that's not really what I was looking for.

But hey, it's got rap. The kids love rap. So maybe the kids will love it.

Clip: Bad Biology trailer!

Availability: Bad Biology is in limited theatrical release. A region one DVD will be available in the fall of '09.

- Ken McIntyre

Say It Isn't So (2001)

Directed by James Rogers
Starring Heather Graham, Chris Klein, Sally Field
Rated R
USA

"Do you know what the Bible says about fucking your own sister? Don't."

Although it's less than ten years old, there's something oddly quaint and antiquated about Say It Isn't So. Directed by the co-producer of There's Something About Mary, it carries all the earmarks of the Farrelly Brothers' short-lived comic reign: a village of idiots, adolescent gross-outs, and most importantly, a well-meaning but bumbling hero who is constantly humiliated and mistreated by everyone around him. This sort of role usually goes to Ben Stiller, but in this case, the abuse is heaped on aw-shucks nice guy Chris Klein, the blandly handsome semi-star of American Pie. Another sign that we're dealing with a pre-Apatow comedy is the love interest: Heather Graham. It's almost laughable to think of her getting top billing in a Hollywood film at this point, but in the dark days of '01, the golden-haired, alabaster-skinned beauty was still being fast-tracked to movie star status, hustled and bustled by producers and money-men who were sure this adorable, doe-eyed, young(ish) actress was the next Sandra Bullock, if not the next Sandra Dee. That never really worked out - she pretty much peaked in the late 90's with Boogie Nights (1997) and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) - but you can still see the glimmer of glamour in her here. Even in a dumb shock-comedy about incest.

Gilbert (Chris Klein) is a small town dog catcher, a friendless orphan reduced to spending his Friday nights having awkward dinners with his boss Larry's dysfunctional family.
"Why don't you have a girlfriend?" asks the boss's tow-headed son Buddy over take-out spaghetti. "Dad says it's because you're confused about your sexuality."
"I believe the term he used was 'fagnostic'", says Larry's teenage daughter Cher (Courtney Peldon). Annoyed, Larry tries to send her to her room, but she refuses.

"She's always doing whatever she wants," Larry complains. "Like getting her ears pierced."
"I got my ears pierced because I like it," she says. Then she rips open her shirt to reveal a pair of oversized pendants hanging from her nipples.
"And I got these because I hate you."
And that's Gilbert's life, pretty much.

Gilbert starts to notice that his co-workers are all getting terrible haircuts, and after asking around, he finds out why: there's a new hairdresser in town, Josephine (Graham), and although she cannot cut hair to save her life, she's gorgeous enough to get away with butchering dudes' heads. Gilbert decides to get a haircut himself and, despite the fact that Jo cuts his ear off, he falls head over heels for her. They start dating, and, naturally, Jo wants Gil to meet her parents.

Jo's dad, Walter (Richard Jenkins) has just had a debilitating stroke. That's why Jo's moved back to town, to help her Peggy Bundy-esque mother, Valdine (Sally Field), take care of her. Despite her teased hair, tight pants, and boozy breath, Valdine imagines herself to be someone of taste and distinction, so she's not exactly thrilled when Jo brings home a lowly dogcatcher.

A word, if I may, about Sally Field. This doesn't get addressed very often, but Sally Field is totally, utterly hot. It is a combination of many things, surely: the petite, lithe frame, her ice-melting smile, the teacup-shaped breasts, those half-remembered Gidget memories, that nutty Oscar speech, that time she walked away from a plane crash without a scratch, Smokey and the Bandit, who knows what else. She was 55 years old when she made this, and she's still sexier than Graham. I know, you probably never even considered it before - the Flying Nun thing throws people off - but Sally Field = boners popping. And yes, she's done nudity. Not here, but in the late 70's. Now, back to our review in progress.

Despite Valdine's protests, Gil and Jo decide to get married, and everything's going swell until a private investigator shows up to tell Gil some very terrible news: Valdine is his mother. News spreads around town very quickly that he and Jo are having an (accidental, but still) incestuous relationship. Humiliated, Jo leaves town and moves to Beaver, Oregon, where she gets engaged to Jack (Eddie Cibrian), the town's golden boy. Gil moves in with his new mom and dad, and his lonely life goes on.

And then, one day, Leon (Jack Plotnick) shows up, looking remarkably like a younger version of Walter. Seems the detective was wrong. Leon's actually Valdine's son, not Gil. Emboldened by this stunning turn of events, our hero hightails it to Beaver to snatch up his true love before she marries that fuckin' cad Jack. But there are, of course, a few snags to deal with along the way. For one, he ends up running over a legless cropduster pilot named Dig (Orlando Jones). Luckily for him, Dig's a forgiving guy, and instead of suing him, he decides to help Gil on his quest.

And what a quest it is. You remember these kinda movies, right? Gil gets his hand stuck in a cow's ass, wears a beard made of vagina hair, gets beaten up by rednecks, gets thrown into a mental asylum, etc.


Oh, and Sarah Silverman, who plays a cop, blows a dude underwater.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, after Superbad's geek-chic revolution, stuff like this suddenly seemed terminally square, and a lot of Say It Isn't So's attempts at spit-take gags will have you rolling your eyes and wishing for a snarky Paul Rudd cameo. On the other hand, Klein's Gil is a very likable doofus, and you really do end up rooting for him.

Graham doesn't actually have much to do here, but she is very lovely, and you can see why a guy would go to such ridiculous lengths to pursue her. Jones is hilarious, and, as mentioned previously, Sally Field is quite bone-able. So everybody wins, really.

By the way: don't count Heather Graham - or the Farrelly Brothers' brand of super-stupid comedy - out just yet. Both appear to be on the verge of roaring comebacks. Graham's new movie, The Hangover, looks really dumb. And The Farrelly bros next project is the Three Stooges, which looks tragically dumb. So, you know, prepare for the Revenge of the Idiots.

Clip: Say It Isn't So trailer

Availability: Say It Isn't So is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

Bikini Drive In (1995)

Directed by Fred Olen Ray
Starring Ashlie Rhey, Sarah Bellomo, Nikki Fritz
Rated R
USA

"I'm gonna take you to jail. I might also shoot your friend. But first, I'm gonna get a Coke."

When you think of all the garbage that's been dumped on DVD over the years, it's a tragedy that Olen Ray's magnum opus Bikini Drive-in is still awaiting it's digital rebirth. An amiable, everybody-wins homage to goofy 70's T&A flicks, Bikini Drive-in packs the screen with cult-star cameos, wall-to-wall breast-baring, and a barrel full of groan-worthy gags. It is literally all you could possibly ask for in a B movie, and it probably only cost Fred about fifty bucks to make. He's returned to the bikini well many times since, and will most likely continue to do so, but with this one, his heart really appeared to be into it. In fact, this could almost pass for a particularly saucy entry in the 60's beach party series.

As our story opens, Kim (Ashlie Rhey) and her best friend Carrie (Sarah Bellomo) are sunbathing, topless, on the beach, and contemplating what to do with their summer.
"We could get jobs," Kim suggests.
"Get real!" Says Carrie.

They're not the most productive bimbos on the beach, these two.
Luckily, fate intervenes in the shape of a shlubby lawyer, who stomps up to our half-naked heroines with good-ish news. Seems Kim's grandpa, who died a month before, left her his business, a creaky old drive-in just outside of LA. And, just like that, she's a business owner.
"What am I supposed to do with a drive in?" She asks Grandpa's lawyer. Seeing as it's 1995, a good fifteen years after most drive-ins went bust, it's a reasonable question.

The El Monte is a once-glorious Ozoner that's gone to seed. Kim and Carrie (wearing impossibly high-waisted Levis) go to check the old place out. At first it appears abandoned but then Oscar (Ed Wood alumni Conrad Brooks), the weird old projectionist, pops open a creaky window and hands her the keys to the joint.
"Now that you're here, things will run much better," he tells her. But what does he know?

Meanwhile (there's always a meanwhile in these things), a ruthless land developer, JB Winston (exploitation legend David F Friedman) has been buying up every piece of land around the drive in to build a Super Mall. The shabby old El Monte is the only bit of property that he doesn't own. Grandpa wouldn't sell it to him. After hearing about Kim's inheritance, Winston dispatches his two old-school stooges, Harry (Ross Hagen, Satan's Sadists) and Carl (Peter Spellos, Dinosaur Island), and his young, business-minded son Brian (Richard Gabai, director of Assault of the Party Nerds and Virgin High) to try and 'gently persuade' her to sell.

So while that's going on, Kim's arguing with her blockhead boyfriend Darryl (George Cost, who's hairline recedes practically to the back of his head) about helping her fix up the drive in ("It's summertime, babe. I got stuff to do") while Carrie bones her boyfriend in a hot tub upstairs. By the way, softcore hot tub bonings are generally pretty lame, but I must tell you, Bellomo fakes it quite well. This might be the hottest softcore hot tub boning ever. Anyway, Darryl storms out, which makes Kim cry.
"How can you do this to me?" She whines. "I gave you the best three months of my life!"

Soldiering on despite her broken heart, Kim starts her first day as the new owner of the El Monte, and finds out that her grandfather was $25.000 in debt with the bank. If she doesn't come up with the money in three days, she loses the drive-in. Kim finds out from her two geeky employees Tom (Tom Shell, Surf Nazis Must Die) and Susan (softcore legend Nikki Fritz, dressed in a dowdy library-nerd get-up) that the drive-in averages about fifty bucks a night, but she still thinks spit-shining the joint might save the day.

Carrie calls up her sorority sisters (who else?), who show up in Daisy Dukes to help out during the classic 80's style cleaning-the-place-up montage. Somebody pulls out a hose, and naturally, the girls end up wrestling around topless.

Brian and the boys show up to put the pressure on Kim, but she sends them packing, feeling confident that everything's going to work out just fine.

Despite the makeover, no one shows up for the Friday night showing of The Wilderness Gang. Dejected, Kim strolls solemnly along the beach in the dark, searching for answers. Brian shows up and professes his love for Kim, and tells her wants to help, regardless of what his dad wants. And so they make out on the beach and, after a few seagulls close-ups, they end up at Kim's, where they make sweet 80's love, providing you with ample opportunity to ogle Rhey's hard plastic Frankenboobs.

The next morning, Brian takes over as creative director at the El Monte. He tosses out all the family films and digs through the archives, promising a quadruple feature of blood n' boobs epics like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, I was a Teenage Tree, The Apeman Cometh, and Sorority Sister Slaughterouse.

And then he books a guest celebrity to make an appearance: scream queen Dyanne Lynn (real-life scream queen Michelle Bauer). Of course, you can't just get a scream queen of Lynn's stature to show up at your ratty drive-in, so Brian lies and tells her he's from 'Hollywood Tonight', and that they've planned an 'extravaganza' for her. She does not know what extravaganza means, but likes the sound of it, and when Brian tells her that the President of the United States will be there - he's a big fan - how can she say no?

You may be wondering, with all of this nonsense going on, where, exactly, the bikinis come in. Well, Brian's got that covered, too. He hires Candy (Becky Lebeau, Joyticks, Hollywood Hot Tubs) and Mandy (Tane McClure, Death Spa) to drum up business. In bikinis.

Mandy visits local FM DJ Randy Rocket (director Fred Olen Ray), and after nearly choking him with her oversized bra, he agrees to promote the drive-in on the air. When she gets back, Brian hands out bikinis to all the girls - including Kim, Carrie, and Susan - and gives Tom a rubber monster suit to wear.

Oh, and if you're wondering: the Nikki Fritz transformation is, indeed, awesome.

And so, the El Monte is transformed to Bikini Drive-in. Mandy and Candy go-go dance on the marquee platform while the sorority sisters take tickets dressed in itty-bitty bathing suits and Kim, Carrie and Susan - all half-naked, of course - run the concession stand.

On screen, a non-stop orgy of pure trash, including trailers for wish-they-were-real Z-epics like "Gator Babes" and "Goliath Versus the Cheerleaders" (starring Hercules himself, Gordon Mitchell!), and in the crowd, all manner of weirdo and cult hero, including Forrest J Ackeman, who nearly blows up his car with bug repellent from 1964, and Claire Polan (Angel's Wild Women), as his date. There's also a horse clopping around, for whatever reason, plus what looks like a very playful biker gang.

At one point, Mandy dances on the hood of some dude's car while cartoons are projected on her chest, and afterward, she wails on Carl (who is now in the monster suit) and then douses him in gasoline. Oh, and Susan and Tom make sweet love while covered in loops of film. Essentially, it's every cult-film geek's wildest fantasy come true.

The money starts rolling in, and it looks like Kim might just get to keep the drive-in after all.

But then Harry and JP and crooked ol' Sheriff Bloodstone (Steve Barkett) show up to bust the party up. Will they succeed in bringing down Bikini Drive-in?

Not likely. Everybody knows villainous land developers and crooked cops are no match for well-intentioned trash film fans, bubble-headed bikini girls, and Conrad Brooks.

Quite possibly Fred Olen Ray's greatest moment, Bikini Drive-in is well worth the effort it will take to dig it up from the VHS graveyard. Funny, warm, sexy and weird, it's an affectionate tribute to a bygone era that will have you pining for the good ol' days of drive-ins, monster-flicks, and big-haired girls in acid-wash jeans, whether you've actually lived through them, or not.

Thanks for this one, Fred.

Availability: Bikini Drive-in is available on VHS.

- Ken McIntyre

Losin' It (1983)

Directed by Curtis Hanson
Starring Tom Cruise, Jackie Earle Haley, Shelley Long
Rated R
USA

"I forgot my rubber."
"Did you remember to bring your dick?"

If you were to ask me, in 1982, which member of the Losin' It cast would go on to become spectacularly rich/famous/weird, I would have easily chosen Jackie Earle Haley, who really is the star of this witty little film. Tom Cruise, in comparison, is just a plank of wood. Granted, his aw-shucks virgin is the least interesting character in the entire movie, but still, if Cruise has some level of greatness to him, it is surely not in evidence here. Haley, on the other hand, nearly gulps this film down whole. And he went on to a long and lonely 13-year stretch of unemployment and obscurity. Life's a bitch, man.

Released in the wake of Porky's considerable success, Losin' It also takes place in the warm and fuzzy mid 60's. Three Californian high school kids - Woody (Cruise), Big Dave (Haley) and Spider (John Stockwell) - decide to drive down to Tijuana for the weekend, to drink their faces off and lose their virginity. Trouble brews early and often, however. When one of their other buddies drops out, Big Dave is forced, under protest, to take his conniving younger brother Wimp (John P Navin, Jr.) along.
"We can't take a kid along," Dave whines."I told you, we're going into the mouth of hell."

Wimp is a young capitalist, and wants to go to purchase cheap fireworks to resell to his idiot friends. He bribes Big Dave with a sizable loan, and joins the gang. After school, they all pile into Dave's convertible, and hit the road.

The boys stop at a mom and pop grocery store to shoplift supplies for the trip at exactly the time 'mom' and 'pop' are splitting up. Kathy (Shelley Long) makes off with the store van as her husband Larry (Kale Browne) chases after her. She almost immediately crashes it into the front door, destroying half the store. Determined to get the hell out of town, she hops into the convertible with the boys and demands they take her with them, telling her husband she's going to Tijuana to get a divorce. Since they've just robbed her store, they don't figure they've got much choice in the matter.

The motley crew makes it into Mexico without incident - it's always easier getting in than getting out - and everyone wanders off to their respective fates. Kathy finds the cheapest lawyer she can, Wimp goes off in search of illegal explosives, and our trio of high school heartbreakers visit a lively bar/whorehouse to become men.

After eyeballing their first strip show and clapping along to the bawdy ballads of piano-basher/loudouth/lounge entertainer Johnny Hotrocks ("Bring Your Mother to the Gang Bang"), the fellas meet three attractive chicas who eventually lure them upstairs, where they are greeted by a line of beat-up old whores idly watching porn loops on a Super 8 projector.

But what the hell, the price is right. Everybody picks a girl, and they take off to their respective rooms. While Big Dave (so named for his extra large member, which is clearly outlined in his pants for the duration of the film) nearly burns a hole through his Mexican mistress next door, the ever-sensitive Woody just can't bring himself to do 'it'. Luckily, despite being in the bowels of Tijuana, Woody ends up with an ethical hooker. Sensing that he's not quite ready to lose his virginity to a skinny, middle-aged whore with fried-egg tits, the saint-like prostie actually hands him his money back and sends him on his way.

A depressed Woody shuffles down to the bar, where he attempts to drink away his shame. His now-experienced pals soon join him, as does a frazzled and conflicted Kathy, her dubiously legal divorce papers in hand.
"Let's drink to mission accomplished," she says
"And I've got great news. In Tijuana, they sell penicillin over the counter."

From there, various levels of Tijuana-styled hijinks ensure. Dave and Wimp hook up with a crooked taxi driver who takes them all over town in search of "Spanish Fly". Spider gets loaded, starts a bar brawl with a bunch of American soldiers, and ends up in jail. Woody and Kathy discover that they're kindred souls - two delicate flowers lost in the jungle - and so they decide to grab a bottle of something stiff and get drunk and cry together.

Later on, they get a motel room and fuck. Gently, I imagine. By the way: it's not like I was expected Shelley Long to get naked or anything, but her aversion to showing skin reaches epic heights here. We get a shot of her back when she takes her shirt off, and when she turns around, the camera is locked on a close-up that starts at her shoulders. A bra strap. That's what we get. Ms Long, this is an outrage.

Anyway, you know how these things go. By the end of the evening, basically everyone in Tijuana ends up chasing the fellas to the border. Will they make it home before the Tijuana cops, the angry soldiers, and various incensed locals tear our gringo heroes to bits?

Of course they will, although it did look hairy for a moment. Joe "Maniac" Spinell was the border guard, and who knows what that guy is gonna do?

Although pretty chaste for a teen sex comedy - Mexican stripper tits don't really count in these sorts of things - Losin' It is still worth a look. Haley's great as the boisterous, always-up-for-it Big Dave, the script is witty and sharp, the production values are well above the norm for this kind of film, and Cruise is not in it enough to ruin the fun. I was disappointed that we didn't get to see a little more of Shelley, though. Remember her in Night Shift? We coulda used a little of that here.

Availability: Losin' It is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre