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Much less vile, though no less prurient, is My Tutor (1983). As so often happens, a concerned Dad (Kevin Invasion of the Body Snatchers McCarthy), hires a hot, pouting thirtyish knockout (Caren Kaye) to get his head-in-the-clouds son, Bobby (Matt Lattanzi, onetime Mr. Olivia Newton-John) to hit the books. The conjugation of French verbs quickly becomes an exercise crackling with sexual tension. Not only does the instructress ease Junior’s mounting frustration (he spends the first half of the movie trawling around biker bars and brothels), but she unshackles him from the weight of his dad’s ambitions, encouraging him to pursue his dreams of studying astronomy. My Tutor earns points for leavening its smut level with a certain sweetness. It also contains a scary performance from Crispin Glover as Lattanzi’s Horny Toad bud.
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“If I could go back to school knowing what I know now.…” That pitiful impulse experienced by so many of us as we long to escape adulthood was exploited in a couple of movies. In the opening moments of Hiding Out (1987), we’re asked to accept the premise of Jon Cryer in glued-on beard and wig as a stressed-out Wall Street power guy. Suddenly, his world of fast cars and pliable brokerettes is overturned when he witnesses a mob killing. He’s whisked into the world of witness protection. Then his guardians are killed. He goes on the lam, winding up at the high school of his teenage cousin. He jettisons the ludicrous facial fuzz and registers at the school under the name Maxwell Hauser (fabricated Usual Suspects–style from a nearby can of coffee). Considerably more credible as a fresh-faced 16 year old than he was as a grizzled 27, Maxwell Hauser has a modicum of adult wit and restraint which makes him seem like a repository of cool in the eyes of his new classmates. He’s even put forward as a candidate for the school presidency against the angry white male whose girlfriend (Annabeth Gish) he’s just filched. Hiding Out is no more than an okay cable time-waster but Jon Cryer’s unerring affability stays the normally itchy zapper finger. He carries the picture on a pair of scrawny shoulders (as, to a lesser extent does the always-on-the-cusp Keith Coogan as his cousin), even when director Bob Giraldi, notorious for his lavish pop videos, had him cavorting through the empty high school corridors, pirouetting and whooping like a chimp.
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Actor Arliss Howard, memorably creepy in the TV movie I Know My First Name Is Steven, was a strange choice to pass for teen, but there he is in Plain Clothes (1988) as a cop investigating the murder of a teacher after his brother has been nabbed as chief suspect. Howard adopts the name Nick Springsteen, moistens English teacher Suzy Amis with some erotic verse reading (Casey Siemaszko did this in Three O’Clock High, too) and keeps some classmates on the straight and narrow. He also gets his brother off the hook. In the end, George (Norm!) Wendt did it!
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With its generous allocation of soft-focus shower shots and long, lingering close-ups of unclad female flesh, Private School (1983) rented through the roof to an audience willing to disrupt the movie’s narrative through judicious use of the Pause and Slo-Mo functions. Matthew Modine stars as the poor schnook caught between good girl Phoebe Cates, who wants to wait while all around her are boffing their brains out, and lascivious wild child Betsy Russell, who wants him to abandon himself to the moment. In keeping with the film’s late-night premium cable soft-core tone, Sylvia Kristel shows up as sex teacher Regina Copuletta. She gets to keep her clothes on, probably because no one wanted the target audience to be put off its popcorn by all that old, sagging, wrinkled flesh.
Cherry Forever?
Loss of Virginity Movies
“A wake-up call to the world,” they called it. “An amoral and unflinching examination of adolescent sexuality.” I refer to Larry Clark’s 1995 film Kids, rhapsodically reviewed by the majority of movie scribblers as a cautionary tale for our times. I say that’s a lot of hooey. For any teenager living outside the New York metropolitan area, a viewing of Kids was an invitation to sneak out the back door and board a bus to the big city where a bunch of brats were having a high old time. The boys in Kids got any girl they wanted, robbed shops and never got caught, had instant and endless access to booze and drugs and walked straight past the line of losers into nightspots where everybody knew their names. For a real study of the teenage horrorshow, one so consistently raw and squalid that it made half its audience want to lop their cocks off, there is only one movie, The Last American Virgin (1982).
One of the reasons Cannon, the indie movie studio run by Israeli exploitation specialists Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus, attained its mideighties status of mini-major was the success of its Lemon Popsicle series. Though largely unseen in America, these movies (threadbare titillation set in the fifties, executed in a style that aimed for Porky’s but achieved Benny Hill), packed European cinemas, largely on the backs of TV-advertised soundtrack albums stuffed to the gills with early days rock ’n’ roll standards. The series’ director, Boaz Davidson used its components—sex-seeking stud, shy guy and gutbucket—as the basis for The Last American Virgin. But there the similarities end.
As soon as you catch a glimpse of the titular hero, Gary (the never-heard-of-before-or-since Lawrence Monoson), you can’t stop your shiver of identification. He tries to look cool, but cool clothes don’t hang right on him. He’s got a big nose and a high voice. He can’t get a handle on his emotions. He’s real. Even though most of the situations he’s stuck in are beyond farcical, his anguish and infatuation never fail to assert themselves. From the moment the film begins, when he’s sitting in a garish cafe with his friends, Rick, the predatory hedonist (Steve Antin), and David, the fat guy (Joe Rubbo, great fat guy name!), and he catches sight of his dream girl, Karen (Diane Franklin), he’s lost. But he’s also lost in a world where sex with strangers is easy and accessible to everyone but him. When he accedes to peer pressure and provides his parents’ home as a location to nail the unappetizing trio from the opposite table, he’s stranded on the couch with a surly fat girl (“Don’t start that small talk with me, it’s not going to get you anywhere.”) while his friends make out in the upstairs bedrooms. One of the more surreal scenes in cinema history follows as Gary catches Victor, the high-school nerd, engaged in the fine old teen movie tradition of peeping through a hole into the girls’ shower room. Gary insults Victor’s manhood and a penis measurement contest ensues (“The man with the biggest tool wins the pool.”). A student scrupulously measures all the organs and Victor is the victor with a throbbing nine inches. “It’s nine and a half!” he claims. “We’re not including your balls,” he’s told. “Neither am I,” he retorts.
Gary pursues the lovely Karen, letting the air out of her moped tires and then charmingly offering her a lift to school. They connect sufficiently for him to ask if she has a boyfriend, but she stays coy. She’s less coy at the crazy new wave pool party that night where Gary sees her in the arms of his best friend, Rick. The lights dim, the smooching starts and Gary stands sucking on a bottle of Wild Turkey. He gets lachrymose and unsteady, aching for the love of his life who’s suddenly a million miles out of his reach.
Just as the penis measurement scene seemed like it was conceived to fuck with the expectations of the audience, the subsequent plot turn was even more confounding. On his pizza delivery route, Gary is chased around by a shriekingly caricatured Hispanic nympho. He flees but returns with friends in tow. She services Rick the stud, then eyes David hungrily, purring, “Come to Carmella, my big burrito.” We are then privy to an unbelievable fat guy sex scene with the big boy thrashing around like a whale, revealing vast expanses of flabby white ass. The senorita’s sailor boyfriend arrives home before the hapless Gary is forced to take sloppy thirds.
Gary’s crush on Karen and resentment of Rick grows with every passing humiliation. First, he’s forced to go on a double date with them and Karen’s quirky girlfriend Rose (Twin Peaks’ squeaky Kimmy Robertson), then Rick asks him for the keys to his grandmother’s empty house so he can be alone with Karen. Gary mindfucks Rick, deriding him for wanting to
play house with Karen, when he could be out scoping the streets for hookers. Amazingly, this has the desired effect of keeping Rick away from Karen. In a genre boasting its share of teen-friendly hookers-with-hearts-of-gold, The Last American Virgin presents its audience with the most unpleasant and intimidating whore in living memory. “You move like you don’t want to get laid,” she snaps at Gary, “You ain’t still a virgin, are you?” She attempts to manipulate him manually, then gives up, sneering “You’ve got a lot to learn, little boy.” Gary stumbles away and vomits. The others avail themselves of her services and are subsequently struck down with scorching cases of crabs.
Gary’s delaying tactics are ultimately to no avail. “Rick took her out to the football field to bust her cherry,” Victor the nerd cheerfully tells Gary when he sees Karen’s moped parked outside the cafe. Sure enough, Rick will come in later, giving a blow-by-blow account of the event. Gary drives away in his pizza delivery van, tears streaming down his big nose. But he will soon come across Rick and Karen in the school library. “I already told you that we’re through,” Rick is telling her, “so get the fuck away from me, you’re embarrassing the shit out of me.” Karen’s pregnant. Gary rises to the occasion. He takes her to his grandmother’s empty house, sells his stereo and borrows money from his employer at the pizza service to pay for her abortion. He comes to the hospital with a Christmas tree and teddy bear for her. He’s told his parents he’s gone on a skiing trip so he can spend the next few days with Karen, sleeping on the couch while she recuperates. He finally tells her that he loves her and they embrace.
The next day is her birthday. Gary has a locket inscribed with the words To Karen with Love inscribed on the back. He turns up at her birthday party with the locket in his hand. When he walks into the kitchen to give it to her, she’s kissing Rick. Their eyes meet but no words are exchanged. One last time, Gary drives into the night, tears in his eyes. And that’s how it ends! No American movie would have a more downbeat climax till the advent of the similarly stomach-churning Seven. What sort of message could audiences at the time have possibly derived from The Last American Virgin? That it’s a cruel, cold world? That selflessness and tenderness will be rewarded only by the betrayal of trust? A million after-school specials and preachy P.S.A.s couldn’t have done a better job of scaring kids off the terrors of the flesh.
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Following The Last American Virgin with a few lines about Losin’ It (1982) is kind of like saying, “Yeah, the Sex Pistols were great but did you ever hear Mr. Mister … now there was a band.” The usual quartet of high schoolers—stud (John Stockwell), sensitive (Tom Cruise), stupid (Jackie Earle Haley from The Bad News Bears, actually very funny and accoutred after Come Fly with Me–era Sinatra) and resourceful underage smart-ass (John P. Navin)—cross the border to Tijuana in search of hookers and Spanish Fly. Along the way, they’re joined by runaway housewife Shelley Long, who’s seeking a Mexican divorce. Stud Stockwell puts moves on Long but is rebuffed. Nice guy Cruise gets her before she reunites with hubby. Directed by Curtis (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle) Hanson, the movie is at least adroit enough to chastise the fun-seekers for treating Mexico like a dumping ground for their dirty little desires.
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In the 1979 summer camp classic Meatballs, little Rudy (Chris Makepeace) was a lonely camper who wanted to go home till he was befriended by gonzo counselor Bill Murray. What a difference a few years makes. In Meatballs 3 (1987), Rudy (now played by always-on-the-cusp Patrick Dempsey) is desperate to get laid, but crippled by his nerd status, faces a destiny of rejection. Luckily, he’s got a guardian angel in the cross-eyed form of Sally Kellerman. She’s a porn queen who drops dead on the job. Refused entrance to the gates of heaven on account of never having done a good deed, she’s assigned the task of aiding Rudy in his attempt to find That Special Someone. The elusive Dempsey magic fails to crystallize here. Sally Kellerman actually didn’t seem too humiliated by the demands of the role, which suggests an impressive degree of denial.
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Which brings us to the bottom of the barrel. Then way beyond, to the special level of ignominy reserved for Party Animal (1983). The films of David Beaird—My Chauffeur, It Takes Two and Pass The Ammo to name a few—share a unified directorial signature, i.e., they all feel like they were made by a drunk. Party Animal, on the other hand, is the work of a madman. The title character is a campus loser, an unhappy wookie called Pondo Sinatra who can’t get laid even in a college filled, as this one is, by Swank centerfolds. He makes a deal with a mute lingerie model who might be the devil: his soul in exchange for his virginity. Every moment in this movie is extraordinary. The cast are left desperately improvising as scenes sprawl on long past their natural parameters; there’s one of the most ill-advised white-guy-in-a-black-bar bits ever filmed (yup, Pondo’s in pimp gear, talking that fly shit); for no rhyme or reason, one sequence is shot in black and white. Party Animal is guaranteed to turn any social gathering into a suicide pact. (R. E. M. completists will be pleased to learn of their heroes’ presence on the sound track to this monstrosity).
Beaches Ain’t Shit
Spring Break and Summer Vacation Movies
Annette Funicello never got sand in her crotch. Frankie Avalon never roamed the sands in shorts that barely concealed a boner the size of a banana. That’s why movies like Muscle Beach Party are rarely seen relics and shit like Hardbodies (1984) lives on in cable perpetuity.
When it’s cold outside, murky, dank and depressing, Hardbodies may possess a recuperative travelogue quality. Any other time, it’s a long, dark night of the soul. Endless volleyball montages, studies of the application of suntan lotion and thong close-ups are soundtracked by the keening of Loverboy tribute bands. The jiggling is so interminable you’re desperate for something—anything!—to happen, but when an impoverished piece of plot actually develops, you’re praying for a resumption of jiggle. Hardbodies is almost John Hughes–like in its open contempt for the old, the out-of-condition and the corruption they trail in their wake. Three fat, fortyish swingers turn up at a beach bursting with buff nugs. Finding their attempts to hook up ignored or spat upon, they engage the services of a waterfront Casanova. He shows them how to walk and talk, but then one of the old guys attempts to put the moves on their mentor’s girlfriend and has to be punished. A much less complicated sequel followed.
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The only Spring Break movie that has any kind of merit is Fraternity Vacation (1985). And when I say merit, I’m talking about a degree of merit so infinitesimal, technology has not yet produced a device capable of measuring it. Fort Lauderdale is, as ever, the destination for hordes of American teens, lemminglike in their determination to pour beer over each other, participate in teeny weeny bikini contests and generally regress to a primeval state. Which is fine if you’re there. Among this movie’s revelers is a crew that includes Tim Robbins (playing a character called Mother) and that odd little guy Stephen Geoffreys as geek incarnate Wendall Tvedt. While Wendall’s affections are being toyed with by the hard-ass sheriff’s daughter, Mother’s boys are locked in combat with some rival frat scum, led by ex–Dallas pretty boy Leigh McCloskey. Not only do they hate each other but they’re vying for the affections of Hot Sex Babe, Sheree J. Wilson (another Dallas graduate, now attempting to act opposite Chuck Norris in Walker, Texas Ranger). The big twist at the end is that the sought-after hottie rejects the advances of the big men on campus, choosing instead to shower her affections on Wendall.
Dumb and Dumber
Stupid Movies
For me, stupidity in teen movies is synonymous with three words: Savage Steve Holland. The brief series of films that sprung from the imagination of this writer/director/animator were not big hits. They were not well reviewed. They weren’t even very good. What they were, though, was filled past capacity with scattershot gags, acts of whimsy and triumphantly realized running jokes. When I hear plodders like Ivan Reitman and Garry Marshall hailed as Zen masters of comedy, I want
to hawk up a rope of phlegm. Savage Steve Holland has funnier stuff going on in any given frame than these vets have mustered up in their entire filmographies. What he never had was a coherent movie. Savage Steve was a man enamored of the margins but bored by the blank canvas.
Better Off Dead (1985), the first and best of Savage Steve’s canon—and a film which predates Heathers by three years in finding teenage suicide a suitable source of slapstick humor—is a perfect illustration of his dichotomy. The nominal plot has high-school ski team hopeful Lane Myer (John Cusack) dumped by Beth, the girl to whom he’s made his home a shrine—the hangers in the closet bear her image—in favor of slope stud Roy Stalin (“I think it would be in my best interests if I went out with someone more popular,” she explains). Lane variously tries to gas, hang and hurl himself to his death before deciding to regain his self-respect by taking on Stalin (whose brilliant moniker requires characters to say things like, “Stalin’s a hero!”) in a race to the death down the treacherous terrain known as the K-12.
Savage Steve can’t be shackled by such structural requirements. He’s too busy conjuring up nonsense like an over-enthusiastic adolescent magician. Fear of paperboys runs rampant throughout the movie. Lane’s dad (David Ogden Stiers) begins the film rushing downstairs in a fit of panic, pulling on one of his wife’s frilly robes, trying to open the garage door before the paperboy can smash the windows with the velocity of his pitch. Johnny the paperhood (he does his hair with a switchblade comb) will terrorize Lane, demanding the $2.00 he claims to be owed. Massed ranks of paperboys will take up Johnny’s claim, pursuing Lane into the night like vengeful Klansmen. In the midst of the dumped Lane’s misery he is frequently assailed in his car by a pair of Asian kids demanding a race and deriding him over their loudspeaker, Howard Cosell–style (“The once bright champ is a portrait of mawkishness!”). His 8-year-old brother Badger sends away for ridiculous contraptions advertised on the backs of cereal boxes and comics—and they all work. Lane signs for the UPS delivery of Badger’s book on How To Pick Up Trashy Women, and a few scenes later the tyke is surrounded by hot sluts. His best friend Charles (teen movie regular Curtis Armstrong, who also held down the comparatively adult role of Herbert Viola on Moonlighting) is a cartoon stoner, vacuuming up Jell-O cubes in the cafeteria and falling to his knees on the slopes, exclaiming: “This is snow! It’s everywhere! Have you any idea what the street value of this mountain is!” Lane tries to revenge himself on Beth by drawing foolish caricatures of her, but the cartoon comes to life and abuses him (“You’re a spastic nerdbag!”). “I’ll show you,” he snarls at the doodle, foolishly putting the moves on Chris Kremen, the girl who dates the basketball team … the entire team.
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