The Taming of Rebecca (1982)

Starring Sharon Mitchell, George Payne, Stella Stevens, Velvet Summers

Directed by Phil Prince

Rated X

USA

"You piss on my floor and you steal my fuckin' pin? And you're gonna go to the cops?!"

Oh, The Taming of Rebecca - you scab-encrusted, pus-infested time capsule of cinematic perversion and depravity. What can be said about a movie found in both serial killers Steven Pennell and Jeffrey Dahmer's video collections, and who spearheaded the Meese commission's attack on the adult industry as one of the prime examples of extreme, offensive pornography? Well, probably not much, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. So "nanny nanny boo-boo" to you - and enjoy.

Although quite notorious for it's content - and to a good degree, rightly so - I can't say that the film deserves as maligned a perception as it is given. Yes, the scenes intend to offend and feature terrible and grotesque subject matter, but all of this is dealt with in a manner that - as far as I care to believe - is done firmly with tongue-in-cheek sensibilities. Think early John Waters doing a hardcore horror film, and you'll start to get an idea of what to expect.

What sort of person would choose to orchestrate such a filthy opera of obscenity? In this particular case, the dubious honor goes to none other than Phil Prince, The Prince of Porn. During his heyday, Mr. Prince directed some of the roughest "roughies" of "Golden Age" porn, including such titles as Dr. Bizarro, Kneel Before Me, Tales of the Bizarre and The Story of Prunella.

In 1985, Mr. Prince was incarcerated for armed robbery and subsequently paroled in 1988. The claim from Bill Landis of Sleazoid Express that Mr. Prince is currently serving 25 years to life for murder appears to be conjecture at best. Details are sketchy, but it does appear that Phil has indeed made public appearances in recent past and perhaps even directed a few titles under an alternate name. This would be a difficult task to accomplish whilst being in prison, I assume, but who am I to judge?

Whatever the truth may be, all of these tidbits are merely a digression from the real task at hand: painting a shit-smeared portrait of this vicious classic. Since Ken (The King of Podcasting AKA Sleazegrinder) prefers a non-penetrative photo spread (most likely due to the fact that his Sunday School class follows the MAG site, shall we say, religiously), I will be forced to use literary flourish to highlight the debauchery contained within that which is called The Taming of Rebecca. You have been warned.

Looking much like an ABC Afterschool Special, The Taming of Rebecca begins with the titular Rebecca (adult film legend and founder of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, Sharon Mitchell) hightailing it out of her unassuming suburban home and hopping in the old hoot ride to find a phone booth (remember those?).

Upon finding said talk box, Rebecca calls up her main homegirl, Miss Zorda (Stella Stevens; or Stella Steves is you're the guy who did the credits on this) at the bad kids home to share the lurid details of her torturous home life. Miss Zorda proclaims, "Sex?! With you?" as Rebecca explains what her father has been doing to her. Quite understandably, Miss Zorda urges Rebecca to seek refuge with her and the other at-risk teens.

With a safe home waiting, Rebecca hits the road. As she drives, flashes of her sexual abuse molest the screen and John Carpenter's iconic Halloween theme plays (as it also does during many of the sex scenes), setting the tone of the film nicely.

Now in the caring hands of Miss Zorda, Rebecca recounts the event that led her to leave her dysfunctional home. We, the viewer, are the unfortunate recipients of a visual reenactment of the painful mistreatment poor Rebecca endures at the hands of her father.

As the flashback begins, we see Rebecca's father (David Christopher AKA "Pussyman") sitting atop the toilet butt naked, jerking and waving his flaccid penis around half-heartedly for what seems like an eternity as he shouts for his daughter to pay him a visit. Enter Rebecca.

In a nutshell, the scene plays out as such: Rebecca fellates her father on the crapper in a manner in which the kids nowadays call "quasi-blumpkin stylee" or something, they make sexual intercourses in various positions, he spanks her until her butt is red (which really isn't that hard to do), gives her some toothpaste in super-slow motion, and at long last, she makes pee pee on his wiener parts - all the while her father goes about muttering things to her that I'm pretty sure are not suggested in parenting classes.

After Rebecca is finished sharing her TMI moment with Miss Zorda, the kindly old lady takes Rebecca to meet the other delinquents that she will now be sharing her time with: Saundra, Barbara, Cindy, John, Paul and Bob (Velvet Summers, Cheri Champagne, Ambrosia Fox, Ron Hudd, Tony Mansfield, and Jamie St. James, respectively).

Now that Rebecca has met her peers, it's time to introduce the Dean of Discipline himself, Mr. Minindao (played with maniacal brilliance by George Payne and his amazing hair) -"whom we all love and adore." - and his tag along secretary, Linda (Niko). Without a moment's repose, the domineering dean lays down the law. "Just keep in line, and do everything I say," he slurs drunkenly. He then singles out Rebecca and Saundra to pay a visit to him in his office when Miss Zorda is through with them. Having satisfied his desire for control and power, he and Linda leave to finish their "reports". And by "reports", I think they mean "sex".

After a semi-erect, outrageously oily vagina'd, drug fueled expression of love in front of an American flag, it's time to take a peek at what the "kids" are up to. It just so happens that the gang are all hanging out in the bedroom, chatting about Mr. Minindao's sex cave where he takes the girls for punishment. All that talk about sexual violation gets the group in the mood for love so they proceed to have an awkward, undulating gang bang. Paul then gets the hankering for partial fisting, so he pulls Barbara aside and works himself knuckle deep as the gang look on with slightly inquisitive expressions. Just then, Mr. Minindao and Miss Zorda burst in.

The dean totally blows his top at seeing this audacious public display of affection and for some reason takes out his aggressions on Rebecca and Saundra - commanding them to go to his office.

Mr. Minindao sees Rebecca first, being that she's the new girl and perhaps needs a little extra attention paid to her. He bends her over his desk while telling her how things are going to be and proceeds to penetrate and whip her with his cat o' nine tails. Sex is then had and Rebecca is sent on her way after the requisite slo-mo cumshot.

After Rebecca receives her taming, the dean calls John and Saundra in. Upon retrieving a large safety pin from his desk drawer, he commands John to stick it in Saundra's nipple. John scoffs initially, but is soon coerced into doing so.

The pain and embarrassment of this causes Saundra to make piddle all over the dean's office floor, which totally pisses him off. Saundra then runs out of the room crying.

Much controversy has been made regarding this scene, but truthfully, I don't find it all that mysterious or shocking. First off, it appears that Velvet Summers nipple is already pierced and, even if it wasn't, is nipple piercing really that big of a controversy? The liberal amount of blood on her chest afterwards is obviously an add-on (nipples don't bleed that much, generally) and there seems to be little expression of genuine pain on her face or evidence that this was done against her will - besides maybe the all-so convincing pout on her face as she stands before a mirror examining the safety pin in her nipple, which she has yet to remove for some reason.

Mr. Minindao's secretary Linda comes in and plays the kind and caring card, leading Saundra away to the dean's cave. Linda then reveals her true colors and forces some rug munching dominance on poor Saundra ("Come on, lick it! Get into it!").

While said munching is being administered, the dean comes storming in and sadly, things get worse for Saundra. He berates and intimidates her viciously, culminating in a sex scene that is made all the more unarousing by the dirt and grit stuck all over Saundra's butt as the dean pounds away at her.

Now, I don't want to be the jerk who ruins the ending for you, so suffice to say, the film concludes with Miss Zorda, in a cave, with the gun - much like a Clue board game accusation. As illustrated below, the dean seems to be pretty stoked about how things turn out. Or maybe he's just completely fucking insane.

As far as an official DVD release of this fine, filthy film goes, word from the streets is that Alternative Cinema are now the proud owners of many of Avon's classic line-up. Whether or not The Taming of Rebecca is one of those titles is something I've yet to be made aware of, but I am definitely atwitter with excitement at the possibility. My main concern is the uncertainty in regards to rights and whether the original soundtrack will have to be altered for a legitimate release. I have my doubts that Brian Setzer or John Carpenter are willing to clear their music for this movie, but I also have a very pedestrian knowledge of copyright legality, so stranger things could happen, right?

Until or if this film is to see an official DVD release, you can find it through the usual sources out there in the intertubes - and I highly recommend to do it ASAP. As my wife said when I read her this review, "That sounds like something I don't want to watch." And what higher praises can be sung about a movie, I ask you? None, that's what.

- Jeremy Vaca

Revenge of the Cheerleaders (1976)

Directed by Richard Lerner
Starring Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith, Patrice Rohmer, Helen Lang, David Hasselhoff
Rated R
USA

The title of this highly absurd, highly amusing slice of drive-in mid-seventies fun suggests the film might be a sequel to The Cheerleaders, the 1973 smash hit that this film’s director, Richard Lerner, co-wrote and co-produced. The mysterious “Ace Baandige” (or “Baandage”) -- listed as a co-writer of both films’ scripts -- suggests another connection as well.

Even so, there is no explicit link between Revenge of the Cheerleaders and the earlier film in terms of plot or characters, although Revenge does reprise the same setting and scenario. As was the case in The Cheerleaders, we are again presented with a California high school full of oversexed teens in which the cheerleaders enjoy the greatest power -- exceeding that of even the teachers and staff -- at an otherworldly place that really only ever existed on the silver screen and/or in adolescent boys’ dreams.

While Revenge doesn’t really challenge the original film’s sexploitation classic status, it is nevertheless a mostly entertaining romp that delivers in most of the same areas as did the earlier film, with a bunch of babes, burlesque, and buffoonery.

It also most certainly delivers a Boner, too. Literally. (Read on.)

The story opens in rockin’ fashion, with the half-dozen cheerleaders riding to school in a convertible with the top down, changing into their uniforms as they go. Upon their arrival, a caption informs us they attend “Aloha High School, Aloha California,” the scene, it seems, of a non-stop party. The girls instinctively lead an impromptu pep rally, to the delight of all.












Once inside, a conflict is established when a couple of non-cheerleaders, including the goody-goody Joanne Hartlander, watch our heroines goofing off in the halls while noting “things are about to be flushed clean.”











As they pass by, Joanne hands Heather, played by the doe-eyed Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith, a copy of the school paper, calling her a “slut” as she does.

The epithet seems inspired by the fact that Heather is obviously pregnant. Indeed, Smith was herself expecting during the filming of Revenge, and the story goes the pregnant cheerleader character was written into the script to accommodate her condition. The girls then see the paper’s ominous headline:












Apparently the “moral crisis” is so severe the school board has decided to merge Aloha with their hated rival, Lincoln Vocational. If that seems like a strange solution to the problem, there’s a reason for that. Eventually we discover the plan to close A.H.S. is part of a larger plot by land developers to build a shopping plaza on its grounds. The developers have secured the help of the corrupt Walter Harlander -- father of Joanne and member of the school board -- to help make their evil plan come about.

We’ll worry about all that later. For now, let’s follow the girls to the bathroom for a little primping.












One of the cheerleaders, the vivacious Sesame (Patrice Rohmer), disappears into a stall just before Nurse Beam (Eddra Gale) arrives. Amid Nurse Beam’s lecturing the girls, we hear squealing from the stall, from which eventually Sesame and her lover boy emerge. And who might that lover boy be?












“Boner!” cries a disappointed Nurse Beam. “Get out of here! This is the girls’ room!”

That’s right. It’s a young David Hasselhoff -- well before his star rose on “Knight Rider,” “Baywatch,” and the German pop charts -- appearing here as the unforgettable Boner, an early role which he later tended to leave off the career résumé.

The sass with which the cheerleaders respond to Nurse Beam’s censure shows they are clearly uncontrollable. The principal, Dr. Ivory -- played by Carl Ballantine (of “McHale’s Navy” fame) -- seems mostly unconcerned about the “moral crisis,” too, giving little heed to an upcoming visit by an investigating committee sent by the state’s Board of Education. He’d rather work on cooking a turkey in his office from a recorded recipe, aided by both Heather and Nurse Beam, a scene that ends -- like a lot of scenes in Revenge -- in a slapsticky mess.

Onto to the soda shop, where one of the squad, Leslie (Helen Lang, July 1976 Penthouse Pet) hooks up with soda jerk Jordan (David Robinson). While he services a customer, she services him.












Soon a couple of rough-looking girls from Lincoln Vocational arrive, telling the girls from A.H.S. to stick it “up your middle-class ass.” Apparently this rivalry between the schools is formed along class lines, thus adding additional tension to the prospects of an upcoming merger.

“You ladies may be the queens of Aloha today,” says one of the Lincoln girls. “But tomorrow you’ll be the slaves of Lincoln.” Erm... slaves of Lincoln? Never mind. We get it... the merger wouldn’t be desirable for the cheerleaders, given how damaging it would be to their royalty-like status at Aloha High.

The Lincoln girls leave, and finally the Aloha squad and their boyfriends can relax. The scene rapidly transforms into a funky good dance time. Boner, in particular, shines with some creative moves here:












An odd scene follows. Actually, all of the scenes are pretty odd in this one, but this one might be the strangest. A couple of Aloha cheerleaders visit a class at Lincoln, holding them up and robbing the students -- and teacher -- of their drugs and booze. They carry said booty back to Aloha, dump most of it in the spaghetti sauce being prepared for the day’s lunch, then sit in the bleachers and get high while watching the boys’ basketball practice.












The investigative team from the Board of Education then arrives, and soon all devolves into an extended sequence of cross-cutting between two chaotic scenes -- one in the cafeteria, where everyone (including the Board of Education folks) gets blotto on the spaghetti and a food fight erupts...












...and the other in the shower, where the cheerleaders and basketball team enjoy a super-sudsy orgy.












We end up seeing a lot more of the former -- and less of the latter -- than we’d necessarily like. That said, Hasselhoff’s most ardent fans will see fit to freeze-frame certain moments here which likely embarrass the celebrity even more than did his dancing.

This imbalance is made up for somewhat, however, when Sesame awakes the next morning (in a tent on the school property?), feeling especially refreshed:












Alas, news of the inspectors having been drugged makes the papers, making the Aloha-Lincoln merger now seem all but a done deal. Dr. Ivory is sent off, replaced by a new principal, Hall Walker (Norman Thomas Marshall). As a first order of business, Walker meets with the cheerleaders, the obvious first cause of all of Aloha’s anarchy.












Walker “fires” the cheerleaders, soon announcing that there will be tryouts to replace them. Distraught, the cheerleaders vow to fight back, and at last we see some sort of significance for the film’s title.

The new principal appears to be somewhat successful in cleaning up Aloha, which is kind of getting in the way of the plans of Hartlander and the developers to close down the school. Hartlander therefore employs his daughter Joanne (now a cheerleader) and Nurse Beam in a scheme to thwart principal Walker’s efforts to avert the “moral crisis.”

Cut to a field trip, some strange class taught by Nurse Beam that includes all of the now “fired” cheerleaders. This scene, incidentally, takes place at the Cabazon Dinosaurs in Cabazon, California, later also memorialized on celluloid in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.












The girls wander off, with Sesame and Leslie finding a boyscout whom they soon help earn his Outdoor Threesome badge. On their way back, the girls are “pulled over” by a cop, who engages in some frisky frisking.












The pair jiggles their way out of that fix, then the squad rushes back to the school where the big basketball game between Aloha and Lincoln has already reached halftime. Aloha is getting crushed, and the Lincoln cheerleaders’ cries of “M-E-R-G-E-R” make it seem as though the outcome of the game may bear some relationship to the impending merger.

With a less than a half-hour to go, there’s a lot of plot left to sort out. Will the cheerleaders reclaim their spots on the team? Will Aloha come back and win the big game? Will the school survive?

Will Boner ever get up?












(Ooh... that still kind of recalls another embarrassing film Hasselhoff would later make.)

Finally, and perhaps most importantly... will there be more dancing?












Actually, the answer to that last one is kinda obvious.

During the final wild sequence, Revenge actually transforms into a kind of comedic thriller in which the cheerleaders become action heroines amid the many plot twists, all as absurd and confusing as what came before. Will leave all that for you to experience, aside from noting that Heather does have her baby -- as evidenced in a nice, post-credits wave from Rainbeaux Smith as she holds her newly-born, real-life son, Justin.












As already noted, Revenge of the Cheerleaders doesn’t quite match the especially-inspired standard of the original Cheerleaders, though it does provide a large dose of wacked-out entertainment, further fueled by its bevy of babes, delirious dances, and abundant absurdities.

Revenge is available from Anchor Bay on DVD in a three-disc set along with The Cheerleaders and another genre entry, The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974).

- Triple S

Girls Nite Out (1984)

Directed by Robert Duebel
Starring Julia Montgomery, James Carroll, Hal Holbrook, Lauren-Marie Taylor, Al McGuire
Rated R
USA

One of the dozens and dozens of low-budgeted slasher flicks to appear in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th, Girls Nite Out failed to attract anywhere near the audiences of those films, and stands as a mostly overlooked entry into the genre.

Those who do remember this one might do so for its having dressed up the killer in a bear costume -- perhaps the only element of the film one might rightly call “original.”

Or they might remember it as having starred Hal Holbrook as Jim “Mac” MacVey, the harried looking campus cop.

Julia Montgomery is here, too, as Lynn, better known for having fallen for a nerd (and appeared on a pie plate) in another 1984 film, Revenge of the Nerds.

Of course, neither Holbrook nor Montgomery could save this amateurish production, mostly interesting for its formula-following, though even there Girls Night Out doesn’t quite fulfill slasher fans’ expectations.

Other expectations aren’t met, either. We might start with the title. While the film does show girls going out at night, that’s about all the title has to do with the story. (Or that poster up above -- none of those women appear in the film.) In other words, it is not as though a group of ladies are on some group outing here.

Nor is the film’s alternate title -- The Scaremaker -- any more accurate. Unless people dressed in bear suits make you scared, in which case the title is spot on.

The movie starts with an ambiguous opening sequence at “Weston Hill Sanitarium.” This scene is mildly alarming for two reasons. One is the nurse smoking cigarettes like she was some cartoon camel or something. (A different time, it was.) The other is a dude hangs himself, although we don’t see his face.

From there comes a quick cut to a college basketball game, accompanied by Tommy James’ “Do Something To Me” to help brighten the mood.

Walking the sidelines as a coach is none other than Al McGuire (R.I.P.), best known as a basketball commentator and for having coached Marquette to the NCAA title in 1977.

McGuire appears here in his first and last dramatic role as Coach Kimble, yelling at his star player, Pete “Maniac” Krizaniac (Mart McChesney) to “get your head out your ass.” Pete subsequently does remove said head from said ass and hits the winning basket, after which McGuire acts his heart out in the locker room while congratulating the team.


There in the locker room we see Michael Benson (Mathew Dunn) in a bear suit -- the team mascot. Benson is giving one of the players, Mike Pryor, some grief over something, which later we learn probably has to do with the fact that Benson has stolen Pryor’s girlfriend.

Pryor is played by Hal’s son, David Holbrook, and I think he’s the reason why Hal agreed to appear in this stinker. In fact, all of Hal’s scenes were apparently filmed in one day, and aside from a couple of instances doesn’t interact with any of the other cast at all. Instead he spends most of his on-camera time talking on the phone. Like this:


There’s a big party scheduled that night, but before we get to that there comes another ambiguous scene in which a couple of gravediggers are shown apparently trying to bury the body of the fellow who hanged himself, Dickie Cavanaugh. Before they can, a figure leaps out of the dark and kills them, though.

What’s going on? Who cares? Party time. But first, let’s go to the diner for some burgers and shakes!

Teddy (James Carroll) orders from a waitress weirdly named “Barney” (played by the also-weirdly-named Rutanya Alda). That’s where we first glimpse Hal Holbrook, too, as the cop, Mac.

Let’s see... a lot of romantic-entanglement-stuff happening here. We see Pryor and his cheating girlfriend Shelia having an argument. Teddy and Lynn are an item, although he has a wandering eye. Oh, and Pete, a.k.a. “Maniac,” has apparently been dumped by his girl, Leslie.

We get to the party, introduced by an especially energetic (if awkward) dancer. Let the Schaefer flow!


It’s apparently a costume party. Also, there’s a big scavenger hunt scheduled for the next day, an annual event at the college.

We meet a couple more weird characters, and finally most of the slasher elements are in place. A sketchy backstory with some off-campus murders, a few candidates to consider as possibly being the killer, and a bunch of horny, fun-seeking coeds.

To set the stage further, we get more about this Dickie Cavanaugh, an alum who apparently went berserko some years back and killed his cheerleader girlfriend -- the daughter of the campus cop, Mac -- after she dumped him, earning himself a room at the sanitarium. No one knows, apparently, that Dickie has hanged himself.

At the party, a drunk Teddy aggressively flirts with the pretty Dawn Sorenson (Suzanne Barnes), who also is in a relationship. Meanwhile, Benson -- in his bear suit -- is making out with Shelia right in front of Pryor. Finally Pryor flips out, and before a fight breaks out chooses to leave, but not before angrily calling everyone at the party “whores.”

Pretty soon the killings commence, starting with Benson, the killer taking the bear suit afterwards. “Sorry, but I need this more than you do,” says the killer, breathing heavily like any self-respecting slasher would.


By the way, there’s a disc jockey who sorta erratically narrates things throughout the movie, and the next day will be announcing the scavenger hunt clues amid playing the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” over and over again.

Teddy and Lynn are next shown in bed arguing over his problem with flirting. He also has a problem with farting, as he soon demonstrates. I’m not making this up. Apparently he thinks pooting equals personality.

The killer gets a copy of the scavenger hunt clues from the radio station, which I suppose is going to help immensely with the killing.


Also helping with the killing is the nifty, Freddy Krueger-like enhancement the killer has constructed for one of the paws of the bear suit. Yikes!


As the scavenger hunt continues the following day and night, there are more killings. Also of note, Dawn takes a bath:


Flatulent Teddy interrupts Dawn’s bathing, and the two commence an affair. Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up around campus, eventually causing the scavenger hunt to be called off and Mac finally to get involved.

Among the victims is Shelia, played by Lauren-Marie Taylor. She was also a victim in Friday the 13th Part 2, and so should’ve known better than to stand so close to windows.


Once the cops get involved, the film becomes tediously talky as students are interrogated. Here is Julie Montgomery, by the way, whose character Lynn gets questioned (in case you don’t remember her from the pie plate):


Soon we are being shown flashbacks from earlier in the film, in some cases from just minutes before. Really, the most exciting thing during this sequence is this detective’s mustache:


At last we arrive at a sorta-surprising-though-also-sorta-laughable finale which I can’t honestly say delivers much, though after the first 75 minutes the film doesn’t really set one’s expectations all that high, anyway.

With way too many characters (all underdeveloped), lotsa clumsy dialogue, and a plot more convoluted and nonsensical than is generally found even in lesser examples of the genre, Girls Nite Out obviously fails when measured using conventional standards for filmmaking. Even according to the standards of eighties-slashers the film falls short, with no nudity, not much gore, and minimal suspense.

What about camp value? Okay. There is some of that. Worth it, I suppose, if you can bear everything else. (Rimshot.)


- Triple S

The Teacher (1974)

Directed by Howard Avedis
Starring Angel Tompkins, Jay North, Anthony James
Rated R
USA

“She Corrupted the Youthful Morality of an Entire School!”

That’s the more-than-a-little-overblown tagline of this modest slice of mid-seventies exploitative entertainment. Written and directed by Howard Avedis (listed as “Hikmet” in the credits), responsible for a number of similar sex-and-violence-driven titles of the era, The Teacher presents a fantasy familiar to any schoolboy who ever found himself “hot for teacher.” And -- following the formula of many of these low-budgeted drive-in flicks -- such a fantasy isn’t allowed to play out without consequence.

We begin with the exceedingly creepy Ralph, played by Anthony James, a character-actor who shows up in a lot of films and TV shows of the ’70s and ’80s where thanks to his not-so-good-looks he generally gets cast as a villain. Ralph, alone on the top floor of an abandoned warehouse, grins while crouching over a red coffin. He runs downstairs, hops in a white hearse, then drives to the high school as the students are leaving, their summer vacation having begun.

Ralph follows one of the teachers, Diane Marshall (played by the lovely Angel Tompkins), as she drives her blue Corvette. Eventually he’s back on the top floor of the warehouse, watching through a pair of binoculars as Diane sunbathes topless on her boat on the neighboring lake.












Ralph is weird all right. And a voyeur. But I guess we are, too. Later we learn Ralph has spent time at a VA hospital, the implication being he’s veteran whose returned home with some variety of mental instability.

Ralph’s brother, Lou (Rudy Herrera, Jr.), and his friend, Sean arrive at the warehouse. Sean is played by a perpetually nervous-looking Jay North, the former child actor who starred as Dennis on the Dennis the Menace TV series. They scamper up to the building’s top floor, from which Ralph appears to have disappeared.

Soon they are watching pretty Mrs. Marshall with Ralph’s binoculars, retrieived from the coffin where a rifle, knife, and other items are stored. Amid their sight-seeing, Lou tells Sean that Mrs. Marshall has been “horny ever since her old man left her,” and that she likes Sean, something the latter has a hard time believing.












Suddenly Ralph shows up bearing a large knife, scaring the pair. And just as suddenly, Lou surprisingly falls off the ledge and to his death.












Ralph immediately -- and wrongly -- accuses Sean of causing the accident, which he strenously denies. They tussle a bit, then Sean runs home to his parents, Joe (Med Flory) and Alice (Marlene Schmidt, director Avedis’ wife who regularly appeared in his films), retiring to his bedroom where he can be freaked out alone without having to hear their bickering.

Following a warning from Ralph through his bedroom window, Sheriff Murphy (Barry Atwater) arrives to question Sean about Lou’s death. The sheriff couldn’t be less passionate while still being awake. Sean admits to having been with Lou after school, but offers no details regarding the accident. The sheriff is satisfied and leaves.

The mood quickly shifts as Sean begins his summer vacation, his last before going away to college. The boy has big plans. He’s gonna fix up his van, a project that is going to involve lots and lots of wood paneling.

Those plans eventually get sidetracked, though, as his relationship with pretty Mrs. Marshall -- who lives in the neighborhood -- develops into something more than a simple crush. Cues for this plot turn are loudly signaled, such as when Sean’s teacher invites him inside her house, and when he hesitates she assures him “I’m not going to rape you.”

It’s a predictable turn. But it takes a while, largely thanks to Sean’s reticence. Finally she coaxes him into an awkward kiss.













A little while later, after he’s admitted to her he’s never made love before, she offers to teach him. They fumble a bit more, then make sweet seventies love, although as tends to happen in these flicks, the clothes never do seem to come all of the way off.













A saxophone-laden soundtrack accompanies their lovemaking. Oh, and a miserable-looking Ralph pops by for a glimpse, too.












This scene gets replayed on Diane’s boat, again with Ralph -- in scuba gear! -- coming by for a visit.












As the film moves into the final half-hour, Diane and Sean begin to become more public with their relationship. They go out for dinner together where a couple of old ladies -- played by Katherine Cassavetes (director John Cassavetes’ mother) and Lady Rowlands (mother of Gena, wife of John C. and star in many of his films) -- express distaste at the display.

Their fun continues out to the car, where they are just about to enjoy a drunken drive home when you-know-who arrives. Sean and Ralph scuffle...












...but again, nothing comes of it.

Crazy Ralph is getting majorly pissed. His brother is dead. Sean is making it with Mrs. Marshall. And he has to wear that unattractive yellow jacket everywhere he goes. Never mind the hearse (which never does get explained, by the way).

Understandable, then, why Ralph is so down in the dumps.












Sean and Diane go back to his house where Sean tells his parents the truth about Lou’s death and Ralph’s erratic behavior. They plan to go meet with Alice’s brother, a lawyer, the next day. As they leave, Sean’s father makes him promise to stay in the house until they return.

Of course, moments after they leave, temptation to disobey the order arrives on a tenspeed.












What will happen? Will the creepy Ralph finally cause genuine harm? And what about Diane’s estranged husband -- might he reenter the picture?

The last act does provide a bit of suspense, though overall it continues in the same, somewhat sluggishly-paced vein as does the rest of the film.

The Teacher does have a few things going for it, even if it turns out the teacher only corrupts one dude and not the entire school. Angel Tompkins’ way-above-average hotness is one. Anthony James’ portrayal of Ralph is effective, too. And Jay North does a good job as well as the John Boy Walton-ish, young and innocent Sean.

Still, even if the film does have some historical value in the way it prefigures other, similar coming-of-age titles like Private Lessons, My Tutor, and few others, there ultimately isn’t a heckuva lot that is too memorable here.

Incidentally, check out the last half-hour of Episode 46 of the Movies About Girls podcast to find out what Ken & Mike Demonik thought of this here opus.



- Triple S