Category Archives: Crude Comedy

The Wild Life (1984)

Posted on December 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

wild

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: One week before school.

The summer is winding down and the teens in suburban Los Angeles get ready to head back to school. Conrad (Eric Stoltz) has just graduated the previous year and is now planning to move into his own apartment, but finds it to be expensive and his salary working at a bowling alley doesn’t pay enough, so his buddy Tom (Chris Penn) volunteers to move in with him as his roommate and thus share the costs. The two though don’t see eye-to-eye on things particularly Tom’s penchant for wild parties, which Conrad fears will get them kicked-out. Conrad’s younger brother Jim (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) is fascinated with the Vietnam War and getting into trouble by smoking and underage drinking, which Conrad doesn’t like. Anita (Lea Thompson) is Conrad’s ex-girlfriend who’s having problems of her own as she’s still a teen, but having an affair with a cop (Hart Bochner) who is much older and also married.

The script was written by Cameron Crowe, who had great success with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and took about trying to emulate that one. Instead of being all about crude jokes and pranks like with most teen flicks of that decade Crowe centered it more on studying the individual teen characters, but unfortunately they’re all rather banal and not that interesting to follow. The first half suffers from a lot of segments that go on too long and doesn’t help the pace. It moves along so leisurely that 20-minutes in I started to wonder when it was going to get on with the story and if there might not even be one though there eventually is. The humor, while amusing at times, is too soft and subtle and could’ve been played-up more to give the thing a much needed jolt. The word ‘wild’ is in the film’s title, but what we end up getting is just the typical teen stuff that hardly lives up to its name. I also could’ve done without the cigarette swallowing, which happens a few times with different people. To me it looked dangerous and enough to make somebody sick and was surprised the characters didn’t puke it out.

Mitchell-Smith has the face of a teen heartthrob, but his squeaky voice is a distraction and I would’ve considered dubbing it though I suppose funny sounding voices at that age as they go through the ‘big change’ may just reflect the reality. His character  is a bit over-the-top with his bravado and at one point challenges a guy who’s much bigger than him to punch him and in another segment he lies down on the street in front of a moving car. This type of behavior seems too reckless and brazen and isn’t normal. Teens are known to take some unwise risks, but it usually catches up with them, but never does here, which I found annoying. Also, when someone shows extreme bravery in one instance they can, as human nature goes, be amazingly scared about something else, but we never are shown that balance and thus making the character come-off as unrealistic.

Eric Stoltz has the same issue in reverse as he’s too clean-cut and responsible. Would’ve been nice and created a more three dimensional person had he been deviant at some point. Lea Thompson, who was already 23 at the time, looked too old to be playing a teen, and in fact just a year later got cast as the mother of a teen in Back to the Future, so I felt her appearance here didn’t work, I did however enjoy Chris Penn he’s definitely a doofus, but a lovable one and all his scenes elicit a chuckle. Robert Ridgely as the slick apartment manager, Hart Bochner as the corrupt cop with a mustache, and Rick Moranis as a preppy clothing store salesmen, with a puffy hairdo, are all funny too and help to give the proceedings a needed zing.

The third act does bring in a party, which gets out-of-hand, but not as much as it could’ve. Having all these people crammed into a tiny apartment should’ve created some fist fights when a boyfriend would catch another guy touching his girlfriend by accident due to having such little space between them. Spraying beer and food fights should’ve also followed, but never do, which makes these party goers too docile and well behaved. Having the guys break down the wall and evade the apartment next door and shock the neighboring couple (Ed Berke, Jessica Rains) was inspired, but we should’ve been shown these neighbors reactions the next day when the apartment manager surveys the damage. Overall though there’s just not enough here that stands-out especially from all the other teen flicks from that era and thus it’s easily and quickly forgotten.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Art Linson

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD-R (Universal Vault Series)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies with Nudity

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Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983)

Posted on November 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

smokey1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is the Bandit?

Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) announces his retirement as sheriff after more than 30 years of service. He decides to spend his time in Florida where he expects to get some rest and relaxation. However, once he becomes a part of the senior community he doesn’t enjoy it and feels the need to get back to what he liked doing most, which was chasing after the elusive Bandit. Big Enos (Pat McCormick) and Little Enos (Paul Williams) offer him a deal to get back into the swing of things. They bet that he can’t drive his police car from Miami, Florida to Austin, Texas, a total of 1,400 miles, in two days with a stuffed fish tied to the top of the car. If he’s able to succeed at the challenge he’ll make $250,000, which Buford readily accepts. To keep him from getting there the two Enos brothers set-up traps along the way in order to stymie his progress, but Buford and his dim-witted son Junior (Mike Henry) manage to get out of each predicament that gets thrown at them, so the Enos brothers decide to call-in Snowman (Jerry Reed) to help them. Snowman is a trucker, but in this instance he gets to pretend he’s the Bandit and even dress in his get-up and drive Bandit’s fancy black and gold Pontiac Trans Am. The new Bandit, who picks-up Dusty (Colleen Camp), a disgruntled used car sales woman along the way, soon catches up with Buford and son and steals their stuffed fish, which turns-the-tables and forces Buford to go after them.

By 1982 both Hal Needham, who had directed the first two installments, and Burt Reynolds, who had played the Bandit in the first two go-arounds, were no longer interested in getting involved in the project for another time as both were already busy working together on Stroker Ace. The studio though didn’t want to give up on the idea of a third installment since the first two had made a lot of money, so they signed-on Gleason to reprise his role as Buford with the promise that he’d have full script approval, which proved difficult as he didn’t like any of the scripts that were handed to him and at one point made the glib remark “with scripts like these who needs writers?’. After going through 11 rejections the writers finally hit on the idea of letting Gleason play dual roles of both the Bandit and the sheriff. Initially Gleason didn’t like this either, but the prospect of hamming up two different characters, which he had already done in Part 2 where he played Buford’s two cousins Gaylord and Reginald, got the better of his ego, so it received the green light.

In October of 1982 the script with Gleason in both roles was shot, but with no explanation for why he was playing the Bandit and everyone else in the story playing it straight like they didn’t see the difference. Eventually upon completion it was sent to a test audience in Pittsburgh where they gave the film unanimously negative feedback convincing the studio that the experimental novelty wasn’t going to work. They then hired Jerry Reed, who wasn’t even in the project before then, and asked him to reprise his role as Snowman who would then disguise himself as the Bandit. Then every scene that originally had Gleason in the role as Bandit was reshot with Reed now doing the part, but all the rest of the scenes that had already been filmed without the Bandit remained intact. The reshot Bandit segments were filmed in April of 1983 and the film eventually got its release in August of that year where the response of audiences and critics alike remained just as negative.

For years this was considered by many to be an urban myth as no footage with Gleason as the bandit was ever seen, but then in 2010 a promo of Gleason playing Buford, but talking about becoming the Bandit, or ‘his own worst enemy’ appeared on YouTube with the title of Smokey IS the Bandit Part 3 and Jerry Reed’s name not appearing anywhere on the cast list. Then in 2016 the actual shooting script that was shot in October of 1982 was downloaded to IMDb’s message board (back when they still had them), which plainly detailed Gleason as the Bandit, but had no written dialogue for those scenes since Gleason was routinely allowed to ad-lib his lines. The lost footage of Gleason in the Bandit scenes is purportedly in the control of the Gleason estate where it’s kept under wraps never to be shown to anyone again by apparently Gleason himself who felt humiliated by the test audiences negative reaction.

As it is the movie is not funny at all and unsurprisingly did not do well at the box office. Nothing much makes sense and the humor is highly strained including a drawn-out segment featuring the Klu Klux Klan, which I found downright offensive. Having a Blu-ray release of the lost footage of Gleason in dual roles would most likely be a big money maker as through the years it’s built up a lot of curiosity. It might be confusing and weird just like the original test audiences said it was, but it couldn’t be any worse than what we ultimately get here, which is as bottom-of-the-barrel as they come.

smokey2

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: August 12, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Dick Lowry

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Sequels

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Stewardess School (1986)

Posted on September 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

stewardess

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: They become flight attendants.

Philo (Brett Cullen) and George (Don Most) are training to become airline pilots, but an unexpected calamity during the flight stimulator test causes them to flunk out. Without a job, or money they decide to enter into a school that trains people to become flight attendants. They feel this way they’ll still be able to be up in the air and can also hit-on all the hot women. They’re class is full of misfits, but somehow they all manage to graduate despite the presence of Miss Grummet (Vicki Frederick) who runs the school and tries to make each of their lives a living hell. After graduation the students get a job with Stromboli airlines, but Miss Grummet is onboard and wants to make sure things do not go as planned while a mad bomber (Alan Rosenberg) wants to blow the aircraft up.

This was another in a long line of Police Academy imitators that did nothing but make that one, which wasn’t too great to begin with, seem like a masterpiece. The film, which per later interviews with star Sandahl Bergman where she attests the cast and crew including the director were snorting cocaine during the production, is nothing but a barrage of lame jokes and uninspired storyline making it pretty much dead on arrival from the first frame in. It doesn’t even have all that much nudity and what little it does comes from gals looking well over 30. The women cast in the leads keep their clothes on even though they’re far more attractive. Judy Landers, who plays a hooker who speaks in the most annoying Flossie-like accent, in order to conform to the caricature of a NY streetwalker, I found to be the most perplexing. She’s clearly sexy and yet is never seen naked even though she goes to a Dr.’s office for a medical exam, but just as she’s set to remove her bra the camera cuts away, which will frustrate certain viewers as the only point for watching this vapid thing is to see some good-looking flesh and if it can’t even succeed with that then it’s pointless to sit through.

I found the characters to be the most irritating as everything gets approached from a 13-year-old perspective with no inkling of nuance. Star Cullen is a prime example as he plays this pilot who can’t see without his glasses even though most people who use them can still make out things when they’re not on but they’re just real fuzzy and yet here this guy doesn’t know when he’s in a shower room full of naked women. The thick coke bottle type of glasses that he does wear was severely dated as by the 80’s the technology had improved that people with bad eyesight could wear lenses that weren’t so thick and obvious.

Wendi Jo Sperber, who is slightly overweight though the film acts like she’s ‘obese’, gets stuck with a part that’s genuinely insulting as it does nothing but make fun of her few extra pounds the whole way through. At one point it even has her spotting a cheese cake in a refrigerator and going ‘oink, oink’, which I found to be quite shallow as they’re can be many reasons for why someone as a bigger body type than others that has nothing to do with overeating.

I did enjoy Mary Cadorette who’s probably best known for playing in the short-lived ‘Three’s a Company’ spin-off ‘Three’s a Crowd’. She definitely gives a likable performance of a terminal klutz. While her clumsiness does get overplayed, with none of the pratfalls ever being funny, I felt the way she overcame her problem by going through hypnosis was a cop-out. A good story should have a character grow and succeed through their own initiative versus having it all go away with the literal snap-of-a-finger.

The worst part may be the ending where the film inadvertently turns into a airplane disaster flick, which has been done better in many other parodies. The mad bomber is too obvious and everyone should’ve been eyeing him suspiciously from the get-go instead of having him being ignored until it was too late. The film should’ve played against type with this part by having the nut turn-out to being what initially seemed like a sweet old lady, or someone else you wouldn’t expect, but of course that would’ve required creativity, which filmmakers here were clearly lacking. The film does stand out in one way as it holds the record for being the most played movie on the Comedy Central cable network, which says more about their subgrade level of programming than anything else.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: August 20, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ken Blancato

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD-R, Amazon Video, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Midnight Madness (1980)

Posted on April 15, 2020 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: All night scavenger hunt.

Leon (Alan Solomon) is a geeky college student who comes up with an elaborate scavenger hunt to be played by his fellow students. The object of the game is to pick-up on certain clues hidden throughout the city of Los Angeles and each team must solve the clue given to them before they can move onto the next one. The game is played by 5 teams who have 5 members each: David Naughton heads the preppy Yellow team, Maggie Roswell plays the leader of the nerdy girls red team, Eddie Deezen leads the geeky white team, Brad Wilken leads the green team, which is made up of party animal jocks, and Stephen Furst heads the anti-social/misfit blue team.

On the surface this comes off as just another crude, sophomoric 80’s teen comedy complete with gross out humor of having to watch overweight Furst constantly stuffing his face with food, which is genuinely painful to watch when you realize that in real life he had a big issue with diabetes that made him retire from acting and he ultimately died from the illness. The film fails to have anything all that funny in it and it doesn’t even show any skin from its attractive female cast, which most likely was a result of it being financed by Disney.

The game itself though is kind of interesting and posses some legitimate logic oriented clues that force both the viewer and participants to think it through in order to solve. There is also some interesting on-location shooting done in famous landmark locations throughout Los Angeles including the Griffith Observatory, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, which helps give this otherwise low budget production a bit of a visual spark.

Even with these elements in place the film fails to take full advantage of its setting. If this is all supposed to take place during the wee hours of the night then there really shouldn’t be such large crowds present at the locations they go to including tours going on at the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer plant. It would’ve been more of a surreal ambiance had it just been the players of the game roaming around an otherwise shuttered city while everyone else was fast asleep. The final part of the game takes place in the daytime, which again ruins the nightime/midnight theme and effort should’ve been made to have the entire story take place while it was dark.

The story is also full of a ton of logic loopholes including never explaining how Leon was able to get his face painted on the side of beer cartons at the beer plant as well as a wide assortment of other issues. One also had to wonder why Leon goes to such great lengths to create such an elaborate game that doesn’t really seem to benefit him directly. If this kid is so smart to create such an intricate game then why doesn’t he put his creative energies into forming a profitable business so he doesn’t have to live in a rundown apartment that has paper thin walls and a crabby landlady screaming at him every time he makes any noise?

The cast has some familiar faces in small roles including Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman) in a bit part at a game arcade and Marvin Kaplan, an aging character actor best known for his work in Adam’s Rib and the TV-show ‘Alice’, as an overwhelmed hotel desk clerk. Kudos also go out to Irene Tedrow as an elderly and quite obnoxious landlord and Dirk Blocker, who is the son of famous ‘Bonanza’ star Dan Blocker and looks just like him, as a dim-witted party animal who just can’t get enough beer.

Naughton though is quite stale in the lead and doesn’t seem to have much acting talent at all although I did like the in-joke of seeing him drink a Dr. Pepper since he’s probably best known for singing the ‘I’m a Pepper’ jingle in TV commercials during the 70’s. This also marks Michael J. Fox’s film debut who plays the younger brother to Naughton though the subplot dealing with his anger at being taken for granted by his older sibling is misplaced and heavy-handed in a film that is otherwise super silly.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 8, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 52 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Micheal Nankin, David Wechter

Studio: Buena Vista Distribution Company

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, College Life, Crude Comedy, Cult

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Repo Man (1984)

Posted on March 16, 2020 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Alien in the trunk.

Otto (Emilio Estevez) has trouble accepting authority, which causes him to get fired from many of his jobs. He eventually gets courted into the car repossession business, which he at first resists, but then, especially with its lure of quick cash, he grows into. This then leads him in pursuit of a Chevrolet Malibu with a $20,000 bounty on it driven by a very strange man (Fox Harris) who harbors a glowing radioactive substance in its trunk that kills anyone who comes into contact with it.

The film’s best selling points is that it gives one a gritty feel of what being stuck in society’s poor underbelly is really like as it traps the viewer inside the inner-city of Los Angeles with its almost non-stop capture of its rundown buildings, which becomes like a dominant third character. The viewer then begins to share the same anxiety, anger and frustrations of the people in a place they don’t really want to be, but with no idea of how to get out of it. The only time the film shows the more vibrant area of L.A. is during a brief shot of the skyline from a distance making it come off like a far away place that’s out-of-reach.

The rebel mystique gets better explored and examined here than in other 80’s films where the term ‘rebel’ seemed to apply exclusively to mouthy suburban teens who didn’t like their parent’s rules and would wear punk attire because it was ‘trendy’. Here you get a much more authentic feeling of being an outsider and the unglamorous, desperate qualities that comes with it.

Writer/director Alex Cox also examines the thin, merging line between being a conformist and non-conformist and the ironic/contradictory results that can occur. This gets best captured with the character of Duke (played with gusto by Dick Rude) who is an in-your-face-I-don’t-like-any-rules street punk one minute only to turn around and tell his girlfriend at another moment that he wants to get married and have kids because ‘everybody else is doing it’.

Estevez gives his signature performance here though his excessive cockiness becomes a bit of strain, which fortunately gets tempered in the scene where he gets shot at and panics showing that even a streetwise brash kid like himself has  his limits, which makes it all worth it. Harry Dean Stanton as his partner is terrific and the vast 40 year age difference between the two isn’t apparent at all. Olivia Barash is quite good too without even trying. Her likable unrehearsed quality makes for a refreshing contrast to all the rest who are more compelled to put on a facade and for the this reason I wished she had been in it more.

Honorable mention should also go to Fox Harris who plays Parnell the driver of the much sought after car even though in real-life he couldn’t drive and he got the vehicle in a few accidents and even damaged other props on the set in the process. Normally this would’ve gotten him fired, but because he had been the only actor who was nice to Alex Cox when he worked as a lowly security guard at the Actor’s Studio and before he became a director, he choose to stick with him despite the problems, which shows that if your nice to everybody even those that have very little social standing it can come back in rewarding ways in the long term.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 2, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alex Cox

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Criterion Collection), Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Offbeat, Satire, Sci-Fi

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Tunnel Vision (1976)

Posted on June 12, 2019 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Lame parody of television.

The year is 1985 and due to a new Bill of Rights an uncensored television network has been created, which causes many viewers to become hooked on its content watching it for hours while neglecting their other responsibilities. The head of the network, Christian A. Broder (Phil Proctor) is brought in for a senate hearing where the network’s programs are examined by a government panel to see if it should be allowed, or if censoring it would be the better option.

What was considered ‘pushing-the-envelope’ in its day would now barely pass as a blip on the radar of the average seventh grader. I was honestly expecting much more sex and nudity here, but ultimately the film offers very little and nothing is worse than smug filmmakers thinking they’re making something ‘edgy’ when they really aren’t. I also got tired of seeing a close-up shot of a plastic eyeball popping out of a woman’s lipstick laden lips, which I suppose might be considered by some as being sort-of sexy looking, but after it gets shown over and over again it becomes annoying.

The overall tone is too inconsistent. Certain provocative bits get lumped in with a lot of goofy, mindless ones, which creates a casual chuckle every 20 minutes or so but then coupled mainly with a lot of groans in between. The film also never cuts away to show any reaction shots of the conservative committee who are supposedly watching these ‘shocking’ clips, which could’ve added in an extra layer of humor. The viewer is also required to be highly familiar with mid 70’s programs and commercials as otherwise many of the in-jokes will go completely over their heads especially to those born at a later time.

The film was written and directed by Neal Israel who managed to have one hit Bachelor Party in 1984, but overall his other output conveys the same mindless, lame comedy as this one and whose talents seem limited. Had there been some visual flair it might’ve helped, but everything looks like it was filmed inside someone’s suburban home using low-budget home movie-like production values. Also, for a film that was supposed to be a peek into the future it certainly doesn’t have much of a futuristic design and instead reeks of mid-70’s sensibilities.

Of course there’s a lot of politically incorrect bits here too, which includes a parody of ‘All in the Family’ that features a Romanian gypsy family that spouts every conceivable ethnic slur, but this segment like so many of the others are just not that funny or imaginative. The only interesting aspect about the film is that, besides showing some young up-and-coming stars at the beginning of their careers, it also features many behind-the-scenes announcers whose voices you’ll immediately recognize, but not their faces, so seeing them in front of the camera for a rare time like Donny Darko who portrays a newscaster named Steve Garvey is kind of cool, but otherwise this thing is nothing more than a dated dud.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: March 3, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 7 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Neal Israel

Studio: World Wide Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Movies with Nudity, Parody

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Class (1983)

Posted on September 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Teen fucks friend’s mother.

Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) is a new student at a prep school who rooms with Skip (Rob Lowe) and almost immediately gets mocked by the other students for being geeky. To help bolster Jonathan’s reputation Skip has him sent off to Chicago where he can meet-up with a woman, have sex with her, and then bring back her panties as a souvenir. Jonathan does that when he hooks-up with the beautiful middle-aged Ellen (Jacqueline Bisset) whom he meets at a bar and the two begin a relationship. The problem is that Ellen is also Skip’s mother.

The film was written and directed by Lewis John Carlino who had done several highly acclaimed films previously both as a writer and director so having him churn out what amounts to being just another crude ‘80s teen T&A flick is genuinely shocking. My belief is that Carlino wanted to do something that had a little more depth to it, but due to the success of movies like Porky’s the studio pressured him to incorporate raunchy humor, which creates an awkward narrative that jumps precariously from broad comedy to clumsy drama.

The film’s low point comes when Virginia Madsen, in her film debut, gets her blouse torn off and has her breast exposed that has nothing to do with the main plot and just a shameless excuse to throw in some nudity. Madsen has described her experience on this film as being unpleasant and if anything despite some ‘serious’ moments later on this scene really cements the movie as being mindless lowbrow tripe at its worst.

My biggest beef though was with Bisset’s character. It’s never explained why this sexy middle-aged woman would become attracted to a boyish guy that was young enough to be her son. Just saying she was in an unhappy marriage wasn’t enough. She could’ve attracted many eligible men that were her age, so why does she end up going to bed with a teenager that looks like he isn’t even old enough to shave?

Bisset complained in interviews that the film cut out many crucial scenes that would’ve given her character’s actions more subtext. One included having Lowe visit her after she checks herself into a hospital. This scene was needed as the film essentially has her ‘disappear’ and only mentions in passing where she’s gone while seeing a scene with Lowe visiting her would’ve given the characters and movie better closure.

I also thought it was weird that Lowe and McCarthy continue to room together even after the awful revelation of the affair comes to light. I would think that the awkwardness of the situation would have both boys clamoring to be transferred to a different dorm room. They also end up getting into a physical altercation, which gets pretty extended and one of the film’s best moments, but I sided with Lowe, which I’m not sure was the filmmaker’s intention, as I felt McCarthy deserved to get his ass kicked since he continued to have sex with Bisset even after he knew she was Lowe’s mother.

The film only works when Lowe and McCarthy are together and in fact Lowe’s engaging performance is a highlight, so a better scenario would’ve had both boys going to Chicago for a road trip and to get laid. At a bar they’d meet an attractive middle-aged woman and bring her back to a hotel room for a threesome. Afterwards both boys would compete for her affections only to later realize that she was the wife of the principal of their school. This situation would’ve allowed for more consistent comedy while not seeming like a poor rip-off of Summer of ’42 and The Graduate, which is essentially what this movie becomes.

The plot, as dumb as it is, can’t even sustain the film’s entire runtime as the third act consists of Stuart Margolin  investigating students cheating on their SAT’s that goes nowhere and put in solely as filler. Overall the film is a pointless excursion and worth seeing only if you’re into Bisset or for catching John Cusack, Lolita Davidovich, or Virginia Madsen in their film debuts.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 22, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated R

Director: Lewis John Carlino

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Comedy/Drama, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Chicago, Movies with Nudity

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Animal House (1978)

Posted on March 11, 2018 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: They like to party!

In 1962 the Dean of Faber College, Vernon Wormer, (John Vernon) wants to rid the campus of the Delta Fraternity as he considers their rundown house and partying ways to be a blight to the University. He works with the clean-cut Omega President (James Daughton) to establish a kangaroo court which has Delta’s charter revoked. The Delta members then seek revenge by creating havoc at the homecoming parade of which both Wormer and his wife Marion (Verna Bloom) are attending.

The film, which was a huge box office hit at the time of its release, succeeds by wisely balancing the farcical humor with a believable setting where many of the scenarios shown were based off of real-life experiences of the film’s writer Harold Ramis and producer Ivan Reitman during their own fraternity years. While the film does devolve at the end to being just a procession of slapstick gags it also manages to provide diverse characters and a genuine college atmosphere, which was filmed on-location at the University of Oregon.

The inspired casting helps especially John Belushi who mostly improvised his part. Although he’s best remembered for his pimple gag I actually laughed more when he cries out like he’s lost some prized possession after witnessing a crate of alcohol go crashing to the ground. His ability to chug an entire bottle of whiskey in one take is impressive and I liked how his character, as crude as he is, was able to convey a sympathetic side in his attempts to ‘cheer-up’ a despondent Flounder (Stephen Furst) after his car gets wrecked.

Tim Matheson is equally engaging as the cool and collected fraternity leader whose dry delivery doesn’t initially hit you as being funny until you go back and actually think about what he has just said. Kevin Bacon is hilarious in his film debut as a member of the snotty Omega Theta Pi who tries to quell a panicked crowd only to get quite literally flattened by them.

It’s also great seeing Verna Bloom, an actress relegated to mostly plain Jane roles, wearing a snazzy brunette wig and playing a sexually frustrated woman who has an amusingly drunken ad-libbed segment. Karen Allen is gorgeous as always playing a ‘good-girl’, but who isn’t afraid to flip someone the finger if she has to. You also get a nice glimpse of her bare ass as well as Donald Sutherland’s, apparently Allen only agreed to show hers if he bared his, and for the record Matheson’s crack gets exposed briefly too.

However, what I took away from this movie the most were the politically incorrect segments. The most extreme one is when Larry (Tom Hulce) contemplates having sex with Clorette (Sarah Holcomb) after she passes out drunk, which would be considered date rape now, but treated merely as throwaway bit here. Then in a later scene Larry tries to have sex with her again only for her divulge to him that she is just 13. Although the actress looks much older and was actually 19 when it was filmed it still gets implied that they went ahead and had sex anyways despite the character’s age issue.

I was alive when this film was released and although there was criticism pertaining to the film’s overall raunchiness these specific segments, which would create shockwaves now, were never brought up. Whether things are better now, or we’ve become too sensitive about stuff that was merely considered ‘tasteless’ back then is a whole other argument. Yet when they say things shown in the ‘70s could never be done now it’s all true, which makes watching this movie and others like it feel almost like you’ve slipped into a different universe.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 27, 1978

Runtime: 1Hour 49Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Landis

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

2 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Crude Comedy, Cult, Farce, Movies with Nudity

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Polyester (1981)

Posted on December 27, 2017 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Suburban housewife has problems.

Francine Fishpaw’s (Divine) world is crumbling. Not only must she endure constant protests in front of her suburban Baltimore home dealing with people upset with her husband (David Samson) running an adult theater, but she must also deal with his affair with his sexy secretary (Mink Stole) as well. Her teenage son (Ken King) is terrorizing the city by intentionally stomping on the feet of every woman he sees and her daughter Lu-Lu (Mary Garlington) wants an abortion. She then meets the dashing Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter) and the two immediately fall-in-love only to find that he too has a dark-side.

This was John Waters’ first studio backed film and the first to garner an R-rating while the others had been X. While the budget is an improvement and its technicallys more polished the edginess is lost. The humor and satirical potshots don’t have the same zing and are lacking in originality and outrageousness. The gimmick of passing out a scratch-and-sniff cards where audiences could sniff the scents being smelled by the film’s main character seems excessively juvenile and the film begins with a campy scientist (Rick Breitenfeld) talking about it, which sets the tone too much on a silly/cartoonish level.

Divine’s presence helps, but she isn’t as made-up or as flashy as she was in her past films and looking much more like just some fat guy wearing a lady’s wig. I liked that her character was consistently normal for the most part as in the other films she behaved more erratically although what she goes through here is so unrelentingly traumatic that it borders on being almost cruel to laugh at. It’s also not completely easy to sympathize with her quandary as her kid’s behavior is so outrageous you have to question her parenting skills and whether she’s partially to blame for the bad things that they do.

Edith Massey is funny as a poor woman who wins the lottery and now acts a bit nouveau riche about it. It’s also fun seeing the two teens go through a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, but Tab’s appearance adds little although he does sing a decent opening title tune.

The broad humor for the most part is dumb, but I still found myself laughing-out-loud at some of it, which I suppose is a part of Waters’ ‘charm’ at getting you to laugh at things you otherwise wouldn’t. Some of the moments that had me chuckling were: a ‘nice’ picnic that gets ruined by ants and a skunk. Pregnant young women forced to go on a ‘happy hayride’ in the cold rain by two fascist nuns and the pet dog who commits suicide by hanging himself along with leaving a note saying ‘Goodbye cruel world’.  The part where overweight Jean Hill hijacks a bus and chases down a group of teens who assaulted her on the street and then bites into their car tires to disable their vehicle is pretty wacked-out too.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 29, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Waters

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat, Satire

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D.C. Cab (1983)

Posted on April 15, 2017 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Loser cab drivers unite.

In a long ago and far away time before there was Uber or Lyft and taxi cabs where the only service there’s a story of Albert (Adam Baldwin) a young man who comes to Washington D.C. looking to start up his own cab company, but finds it to be more difficult than he thought. He gets a job with Harold (Max Gail) who runs a cab company that is sinking fast and could get shut down. Albert motivates the other drivers to work together to help save the company and in return they help save him when he gets kidnapped.

The idea of having a story set in the nation’s capital and not having it centered around politics is probably the only novel thing about this film that is otherwise crude and obnoxious with characters that are embarrassingly moronic. Writer/director Joel Schumacher seems to want to sink to the lowest common denominator with each and every shot and in that regard he succeeds brilliantly.

The film’s grimy look helps accentuate the low class farce especially the incredibly tattered shape of the cabs that Harold’s employees drive around in. I realize this was for comic effect, but it goes overboard. There is absolutely no way anyone, no matter how desperate would want to take a ride in one of those things that look like they are ready to fall apart at any second. The viewer can’t have much empathy for someone, even as likable as Harold is, who takes such little pride in his company’s product or dumb enough to expect people would consider his business with the vehicles looking the way they do when they’re clearly other better competitors to choose from. In reality the vehicles would’ve been considered an obvious road hazard and impounded by the cops almost immediately anyways.

The film tried to feed off of Mr. T’s then popularity by billing him as the star during its promotion, but his screen time is limited. Baldwin is the actual star even though he is incredibly dull and says or does nothing that is funny or amusing. His character arch where he goes from quiet, passive schmuck to inspiring speaker, as he tries to motivate the other drivers, is too extreme. Jim Carrey had auditioned for the role and wanted the part, but Schumacher turned him down because he felt he was too talented to be a part of an ensemble cast, which he probably was, but his presence could’ve helped a lot nonetheless.

Gail comes off best and should’ve been the lead, but since he was over 40 and the producers where aiming for a younger demographic he gets unfairly relegated to supporting status. His character’s relationship with his cold, bitchy wife, played by Anne De Salvo, offers a few chuckles particularly the scene where she locks herself in her house and wards off everyone else from entering by aiming a blow torch out of her bedroom window.

Seeing Bill Maher or Jill Schoelen in their film debuts might pique the interest of some, but the plot itself is too unfocused and goes off on too many different tangents with loosely connected story threads put in simply to pad the running time. The only really funny moment comes when a car crashes through a drive-in movie screen as it shows another movie dealing with a completely different car chase. I also liked the scene with Timothy Carey that comes after the credits are over, but otherwise this is one cab ride that’s not worth its fare.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: December 16, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Rated R

Director: Joel Schumacher

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Crude Comedy, Kidnapping Movies

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