She Broke the Toilet

Via Nicci. Thanks for breaking my brain!

-Drew Buzzy

Happy Campers (2001)

Happy Campers
Directed by Daniel Waters
Starring Dominique Swain, Jaime King, Justin Long, Brad Renfro
Rated R 
USA 

“What kind of sick fucky fuck ritual is that?”

I never really understood the teenage camp counselor thing. Why put horny, stoned teenagers in charge of panicky, confused kids? It’s the perfect recipe for childhood trauma. I dunno how anyone survives it. Anyway, that’s the exact premise of Happy Campers: teenage sexcapades and prepubescent bummers. It was written and directed by Daniel Waters, the guy who wrote the classic 80’s teen-angst deathgasm Heathers. Happy Campers is actually the perfect companion piece to that seminal teen flick. It shares the same streak of pitch-black comedy, and is piled just as deep with bizzaro lines, iffy fashion choices,  and a manic ensemble cast of heroic villains and villainous heroes.

Happy Campers follows a group of camp counselors and their pint-sized charges over a six-week stay at Camp Bleeding Dove. Holy fuck, Camp BLEEDING DOVE? That’s a goddamn alarming name.

Anyway, there are many counselors here. So many. There’s Talia (Emily Bergl, the twitchy chick from Carrie II), the snippy, awkward intellectual, here because she’s in love with the camp’s Alpha Male. There’s Adam (Jordan Bridges), the jock asshole. Justin Long is Donald, the nervous geek. Brad Renfro (RIP) is Witchita, the he-dog dude everybody's in love with. Jasper (Keram Malicki-Sanchez) is the cool gay one, Pixel (Jaime King) is the kooky hot one, and Wendy (Dominque Swain, not playing a sourpuss, for once) is the crazed cheerleader. Also on board is Oberon (Peter Stomare), the fascist maniac running the joint who tells campfire stories about sodomizing serial killers to freaked-out 10 year olds. And of course, tons of screamy kids. Good times.

First week: Talia tells Witchita she's in love with him. He tells her to forget it. Pixel teaches the girls how to strip.  Week over.

Week two: Pixel skinny dips.

Wendy wears a bikini. Witchita nails her with a balloon and tries to shove a frog down her pants.  And thusly, our love/lust story begins. Important note: Dominique Swain looks fuckin’ awesome in a bikini.

I mean, seriously awesome.

Also there's a weird fat kid that gets picked on a lot and freaks out if anybody touches him. No word yet on whether he'll go crazy and kill everybody or not.

Wendy and Witchita meet out in the woods to make out. The woods are blue, just like in Heathers!

They almost bone until Oberon shows up. He tries to bust them, but gets electrocuted and is basically a vegetable. Wendy's freaked out by the whole thing and just goes back to being a counselor.

Week 3:  Jasper tries to get something going with Witchita. He's not into it. Everybody wants to bone this guy.

Also, Pixel tries to get something going with Wendy. She's not into it. Not a lot of gay stuff happening at Camp Bleeding Dove.

Wendy's starting to lose her mind, probably from sexual frustration. She gets up in front of the camp during lunch and starts banging on her acoustic guitar like a fuckin’ lunatic. At one point she screams "Isn't fun great?" It's scarier than it sounds.

Then there's a hurricane that almost blows the camp away.  Everybody takes advantage of the break in the action by trying to bone each other, except for Wendy, who gets stung by a bee on purpose to get 'closer' to the campers, and finds out she's seriously allergic to fuckin’ bees and almost dies.

Also, Witchita thinks he might've suddenly found Jesus, because he discovers a childhood photo that they were both in even though they never met. He makes out with her monster face, and then they bone. The end.

Well, it would be, but there's some complications to iron out. First off, it turns out Donald is obsessed with Wendy, and likes to stare at pictures of her while he puts clothes pins on his nipples. Also, Pixel hates Adam the asshole so much she has sex with him while he tortures the fat kid. Also, Oberon escapes to the woods and runs around naked, howling at the moon. I think this is week four, but it's hard to say, since it’s all just a blur of teenage sex at this point.

But then Witchita gets bored with boning Wendy. She has no idea why, so she and Pixel come up with a perfectly teenage plan to figure it out: Pixel is gonna take him out to the woods and offer herself to him. If he takes the bait, he clearly doesn’t care all that much about Wendy. I think that’s the idea? Also, Pixel might just want to bone Witchita. Everybody else does. But anyway, he knows what's up, and after she shows him her boobs, he just saunters off. Then Wendy goes goth and decides to either poison herself or him.

And she’s not the only one that’s bummed out. It’s the last day of camp and everybody's got the blues. Donald especially, since he bought a dozen boxes of condoms, and never even got to have sex with anybody. So, he makes water balloons with the rubbers and rallies the kids and goes to war against the other counselors.

And then Pixel and Wendy make out a little. And everybody learns an important lesson, even the fat kid. Well, maybe not the fat kid, nobody can help him.

Just kidding, he's ok, too.

It’s kind of a head-scratcher why this movie isn’t more well-known, since it seems ripe for cult-flick status. It’s filled with memorable lines (“Are you mad at me for giving the cabin girls new hairdos or teaching the girls how to activate their clitoris?”), there’s a bunch of winking nods to Heathers, the cast is young and pretty, the tone is gleefully venomous, and it’s aggressively sleazy. It might have just been a case of bad timing. Happy Campers was originally released in January of 2001, not the best month for a summer flick, and a few months later, the world had essentially ended, and nobody was in the mood for a summer romp of any kind. Whatever the reason for its flop status, Happy Campers is well worth a second look. It’s funny, mean, messy, weird, and occasionally embarrassing. Just like real summer camp.

- Ken 

Stacey says:
Man, I hated summer camp! I went to day camp every summer until I was in high school (except one, when went to overnight camp for four miserable weeks). While Happy Campers brought back all my horrid summer camp memories... it was also a lot of fun. They really got this one right!  Rumspringa-Woo!

Toxic Avenger Appears in Cloud Form on Democracy Now

So yes, the other day I was catching up on what the Internet had to say about Edward Snowden and I stumbled upon this Democracy Now video where some dude was talking about it and stuff.

I'm not sure how I noticed the clouds but I did. I started seeing what looked like Toxie in one particular cloud and then bam! He formed perfectly into the cloud seen above.

Sure it a rare 'reverse image cloud' but we've all seen reverse Bruce Lee and Samuel Jackson clouds right? The significance of The Toxic Avenger showing up in cloud form on an episode of Democracy Now featuring whistleblower Edward Snowden remains open for speculation for now, but the MAG crew is on the case and America can safely rest tonight.

Summer School Teachers (1974)

Summer School Teachers (1974)
Directed by Barbara Peeters
Starring Candice Rialson, Pat Anderson, Rhonda Leigh Hopkins
Rated R
USA 

'The Student Body Always Scores With The Summer School Teachers!"

Barbara Peeters was one of the very few female exploitation directors of the 70’s. Naturally, she worked for Roger Corman. Her biggest triumph was obviously Humanoids from the Deep, but she made a couple other kooky/cool grinders too: femme-fronted biker flick Bury Me an Angel, starring glamazonian she-warrior Dixie Peabody, and Starhops, a pleasantly insane movie about a diner. She also made this, a pseudo-feminist T&A flick that shares a lot of the themes and plotlines of Corman’s nurse flicks. Unfortunately, it also shares their draggy pace and dreary dialogue, too. But there is one very big bonus: it stars long-lost B-beauty Candice Rialson (RIP), the big-eyed scene stealer from Hollywood Boulevard, Pets, and Chatterbox. Candice’s filmography is painfully slim, so you gotta take your Candy where you can get it. Anyway, here’s what happens.

Holy fuck, I hate fiddles. Let’s ignore the goddamn fiddles on the soundtrack and just enjoy watching gorgeous Tina (Rialson) tear ass down the road in a beat-up pick-up with her hairy hillbilly brothers.

They race to the greyhound station and she hops on a bus for California with her two sexy buds Sally (Pat Anderson, Angel of H.E.A.T., Bonnie’s Kids) and Denise (Rhonda Leigh Hopkins, Cover Girl Models). They’re in Iowa, by the way. It definitely doesn’t look like Iowa. It looks like 20 miles down the road from LA, which is where I'm pretty sure it is.

They all get jobs as...you guessed it, summer school teachers at an LA high school. Dick Miller is Sam, the sexist football coach, as you might expect. Tina is the summer gym teacher for the girls, and it’s her job to whip this bunch of wise ass, cutoffs-wearing hussies in shape. She somehow convinces them all to form an all-girl football team. Good work, Tina.

Denise isn't doing so well teaching her chemistry class. The kids are unruly and rude. Of course, it might be because she says stuff like, "I thought you bohemians were big on intellect." Denise, as you probably already guessed, is the uptight one.

Free-spirited Sally is doing a little better. She's the photography teacher. She gives the kids an assignment: "Photograph something you think is obscene." That should go well.

So, Denise meets with Jeremy (Will Carney), the rebel, after class, to find out why he's such a fuckin’ prick. He tries to make out with her, so she smashes him in the face.

Meanwhile Sally, in a bitching halter top, goes shopping and literally runs into a dude she thinks is a celebrity. Dunno which one. Sonny Bono?

He watches her squeeze melons and, ahem, goes bananas. They make a date.

Meanwhile, there's a school board meeting about the girls’ football team. Sam is against it. Tina is adamant that this is going down whether he likes it or not.  The principal or whoever he is says she can add girls’ football to the curriculum next year if the team wins their first game, which is in a few weeks. I believe we now have the thrust of our plot.

Then she goes home and does jumping jacks on the fire escape, which is a best case scenario if you live next door to Candice Rialson. Unless you try and join in and fall off your fuckin' patio like her fat, dopey neighbor did.

Denise goes down to 'Flukies', the happenin’ burger joint in the neighborhood,  dressed up like one of the Jezebels in Switchblade Sisters. This is her attempt to relate to the kids. While she's there, she sees Jeremy get stabbed in a gang fight! She wraps up his bloody arm and drives him to the hospital in his crazy green dune buggy.

Meanwhile Sally is having her date with the mustache dude, who is apparently a famous rock star. He has a harp festooned with lights that he uses to cut vegetables with. He also has two kooky old ladies who live next door and listen to his conversations. Naturally, they confuse his dinner talk with sex talk. You know, "If you like my meat, you'll love my sauce." Stuff like that.

At one point, he accidentally spills his spaghetti sauce all over Sally’s dress, and she storms out of there. The old ladies poke their head out and faint because they think he banged her into a bloody mess.

Jeremy gets patched up and drives Denise home. They almost make out. She digs the bad boys, I guess. Underage ones. But he might be more of a bad boy then she thought, because the next day he gets suspended for stealing the brakes outta some kid’s car, which almost killed him.

Meanwhile, love is in the air for Tina. She goes out hiking with her new boyfriend and they stop for a picnic. They get loaded on champagne and get naked. Good times. And then she gets right back to business whipping her hotpants harlots into a functional sports team.

Denise thinks Jeremy is just a victim of circumstances, and bones him in his garage in a too-dark 'psychedelic' sex scene while a funky flute jam wails away on the soundtrack.

Sally, meanwhile, goes on a date with one of the other teachers, Bob (the awesomely named Grainger Hines). He takes her to a porn theater and then to a strip club. Classy! But then he takes her to a motorcross race and a drum circle, and they race go karts together. And then they go to to the beach, and then he takes her home for a nude photo shoot. What a day!

Back to the plot, such as it us. The school can't afford uniforms for the girls because Sam, that fuckin’ creep, pays his quarterbacks cold cash every time they score a touchdown. Tina finds this out when one of her girls rats out her boyfriend. If only Sam kept some kind of ledger detailing his shifty practices, and if only Tina could get her hands on it! But that’ll never happen.

Then our heroines all sit around in the kitchen in their bikinis and plan a party. So that's good.

Tina formulates a plan to nail Sam. She goes on a "date" with him and gets him drunk. Naturally, it's all a ruse. The football team all get dressed up in Charlie's Angels outfits and break into his office and get the goods on him. Nice work, team!'

So Tina and her buds have the party, which is really a photography exhibit for Sally’s class, you know, the obscenity thing. But for whatever reason, Sally uses it to show naked photos of Bob. He gets so pissed off that he prints his naked photos of Sally in a skin rag. The principal finds out, and suspends them both. He also doesn't believe Tinas story about Sammy, even though she has proof, so he suspends her, too. So they just sit on a bench together and ponder their fates.

Also, it turns out Jeremy really is being framed, and the principal is in on it - who knows what 'it' is - and he orders a hit on Jeremy. The guy that's supposed to kill him, Slick (one-time actor Brian Enright), looks like 70s James Taylor. Imagine getting murdered by James Taylor?! Jeremy certainly can't, because he busts outta there and they have a dune buggy race. Christ, there's way too much going on here. Suffice to say, the creeps get theirs and the all-girl football game goes on as planned with Coach Tina leading them. Also, because this is a mid 70's Roger Corman film, a bunch of nudists show up.

So what happens? Do they win the game? I dunno, but they do win the pre-game fistfight. You might be asleep by then anyway.

All the elements are in place for Summer School Teachers to be a trashy, fun drive-in crowd pleaser. After all, it’s got the effortlessly sunny and undeniably beautiful Candice Rialson, a gang of rowdy teenage chicks, a healthy dose of nudity, and summer antics. I mean, it’s almost impossible to mess a gig like this up. Yet, somehow, it never quite gets itself together. You’re never really engaged in the plot or the characters, and the whole thing just sorta unspools without consequence. It’s no surprise why this one hasn’t become a cult item like other Corman films of the era – Caged Heat, Big Bad Mama, Death Race 2000, etc – it’s just not very groovy. I gotta give it a ding by default, since all the pieces of the puzzle are there, but it’s honestly about as much fun as actual summer school.

- Ken 

Stacey says:
Hmmm... Summer School Teachers should have been a good time, no question. However, it's a mish-mash of interwoven plots that never seem to get together. It's slow and kind of boring. I found myself not paying much attention at times. Like Ken said, all the elements were there... it could have been fun. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. Ding?

Carry On Camping (1969)

Carry On Camping (1969)
Directed by Gerald Thomas
Starring Sid James, Charles Hawtry, Barbara Windsor
Rated R
UK

"We're going on a lovely nature ramble!"  

Carry On Camping was part of a decades-long series of low-budget British comedies. Directed by Gerald Thomas and produced by Peter Rogers, the films generally lampooned traditional British society and/or stuffier elements of cinema, and were liberally laced with double entendres and gratuitous T&A. The series began in 1958 with military spoof Carry on Sargeant and ended in 1978 with the softcore send-up Carry On Emmanuelle. A stock cast of British comic actors appeared in every film, and included – as this one does – Sid James, Peter Butterworth, Joan Sims, and Barbara Windsor, among others. There were 31 Carry On films in the original series, as well a mid 70’s TV series. In 2003, a boxset of the entire collection was quietly released in the US by Anchor Bay. Still, the Carry On films remain largely unseen and/or unheralded by American audiences. On one hand, it’s easy to see why. These movies, after all, are super British. I mean, Spice World, Eastenders, Upstairs-Downstairs British. They are so British they often seem like an SNL spoof of a British sex comedy, and a good portion of any Carry On film is devoted to sly references to various segments of Brit society that will sail right over American heads. So there’s that. On the other hand, their gleefully destructive sense of humor and dollops of tasty crumpet make for pleasantly dim-witted entertainment, a sort of super-sized Benny Hill with a cast of aging pratfallers tumbling through one disastrous set-up after another. Carry on Camping, produced midway through the series’ run, is widely considered one of the best and most accessible Carry On films.

Two couples are at the cinema, checking out a nudist camp movie. There’s crusty old Sid (Sid James) and uptight Joan (Joan Sims), dimwitted oaf Bernie (Bernard Bresslaw) and squeamish Anthea (Dils Laye). Naturally, the fellas love it. The women, on the other hand, are outraged and sickened by the whole thing, and demand they all leave.

Meanwhile, across town, another couple discuss their impending camping trip. Peter Potter (Terry Scott) is the classic henpecked husband. Harriet (Betty Marsden) is  his braying, self-obsessed shrew of a wife. Harriet never listens to him, so to amuse himself, he says whatever comes into his head. “
“How was work?”
“ I took a bunch of opium and spent my paycheck on prostitutes.”
“Oh, that’s nice dear.”
That kind of thing.

It’s Sid and Bernie’s job to plan this year’s camping trip with the girls. Sid comes up with a plan to go the nudist camp without telling the girls where they’re going. Seems like a can’t-miss maneuver. He and Bermie head over the sporting goods store to grab a brochure for “Paradise Resort”. That was the name of the place in the nudie flick. Also at the sporting goods store is one Charlie Muggens (Charles Hawtry), a Don Knotts type who molests a shopgirl (Hammer girl Valerie Leon) in a tent.

He wants to go camping, too. I get the feeling everybody’s going to run into each other later on.

Then we go to an all-girls school where two of the girls whale on each other in an awesome cat-fight! It turns out the girls are all camping too. Everyone's going camping!

The big day arrives. Sid and Bernie head out to pick up the girls. Joan lives with her judgmental mom, who does not approve of Sid at all. I’m not surprised, seeing as there’s at least a 20 year gap in age between Sid and Joan. Anyway, Bernie almost gives up the game, but so far, the girls have no idea what the fellas have planned.

The ride up to the county  mostly yelling and puking and hurt feelings.

So the fellas finally make it to Paradise Camp and get extorted by the owner, Mr. Fiddler (Peter Butterworth). Of course now the girls are hip to what's happening – or at least what they think is happening - and demand to go home, but the men won't hear of it, so they press on. But once they get to the campgrounds, they find out they've made a terrible mistake – it's just a regular camp. No nudity allowed, even. Plus, it starts to pour as soon as they get there!

Meanwhile, Peter and Harriet finally find a decent place to camp after Peter  has a run in with a bull and then gets an ass full of buckshot courtesy an angry farmer. Peter settles in for a well-deserved rest after his trying day, but then Mr Muggins wanders by, and Harriet lets him stay in the tent with them. Old-timey ass-on-fire physical comedy hilarity ensues as they all try to fit into the tiny tent.

Also meanwhile, the school girls are staying at a hotel for the night and getting into all kinds of pranks and antics! Mostly they try to get their matronly headmistress, Miss Haggard (Hattie Jacques) to hook up their obviously gay headmaster Mr. Soaper (Kenneth Williams).

The most mischievous girl in class, Babs (Barbara Windsor), switches some door numbers so that Soaper ends up in bed with Miss Haggard. He’s appalled, but she’s in love.

Back at Paradise camp, Sid and Bernie learn an important lesson: don't put your inflatable raft in your tent. It won't end well. Also, don’t put your aching feet in your girlfriend’s pot of boiling stew.  Just when they've had enough of this awful trip, the busload of schoolgirls show up. So what the hell, might as well stay awhile! Muggins shows up, too. He was hitchhiking and got picked up by  the bus. The Potters soon arrive, as well. Now the whole gang is at Paradise Camp!

And then Soaper leads the girls for some sexy exercises. Babs tops flies right off! Goodtimes.

Afterwards, he plans on taking them on a “Nature ramble”. First, though, shower scene! It plays out sorta like the Porky's scene, only without the boobs and penises. Soaper gets a suggestive load of toothpaste in the eye, though.

Meanwhile, Peter Potter wanders off to get drunk by himself. Another schoolgirl, Jane (Elizabeth Knight) shows up – she pretended she was sick to get out of visiting a boring old  monastery – and gives Peter an offer he can't refuse

Boning the young chippy gives him the shot of self-confidence he needs to toss out Mr. Muggins and then give his wife a little of the ol' slap and tickle.

Sid and Bernie sneak off to the monastery disguised as monks so they can make plans with Babs and Fanny (Sandra Caron).  He looks just like the Cryptkeeper from Tales of the Crypt, it's awesome. Then they sneak back to prepare for the evening's activities.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a crowd of hippies show up for a dance party and a performance by the Flowerbuds! Everybody's having a groovy time, but the campers are annoyed and want the racket to stop, so the fellas devise a sinister plan, and they end up blowing up the band’s equipment. By the way, the Buds are supposed to be playing rock music, but the music on the soundtrack is lounge-pop with an orchestra.

So that's it. The trip's over. Nobody gets laid. Or do they?

Haha, no everybody gets laid!

Despite being a low-budget, low-brow sex comedy, Carry on Camping was the biggest grossing film in England in 1969 and even played in theaters in the US. As mentioned, it is often considered to the best of the Carry On films. Although this really makes me dread running into the worst of the series, I still found CoC to be an entertaining little romp. As you by now expect from any Britcom, everybody’s miserable, uncomfortable and unsatisfied, and all the washed-out, gray and mud-soaked shots of the campgrounds make camping seem even less appealing then it usually does. None of the characters shamelessly lusting after one another are age-appropriate, the ‘psychedelic’ band is the least psychedelic thing I’ve ever seen, and Barbara Windsor’s kooky pile of hair and ill-fitting short-shorts were more odd-looking than alluring. Throw in a barrage of double entrendes so relentless in their execution that even the cast of Three’s Company would balk at the script, and you’ve got a grubby little winner on your hands. Based on Camping, I’d definitely be into delving deeper into the Carry On series. As the British often say – at least in the head of Americans who’ve never been to the UK – Carry on Camping is a jolly good show. Pip pip, and all that.


- Ken McIntyre