Posts tagged 1978

By Dan Kinem



It’s been way too long since the last sex comedy review, and what better way to kick it off then with the radical, racy, and reckless, Summer School! The whole three R’s thing doesn’t actually work for me. I would much rather go with my own list (which you need to learn, ‘cause there’ll be a test on it), “The Five B’s”… Babes, boobs, butts, bikinis, and beaches! All of which this movie is loaded with.



You know you’re off to a good start when a bunch of teens pull up in a van and go sprinting onto the beach and bust into a free-for-all frisbee match. No holds barred. Teens are diving, ripping off bikini tops in that fun, free-spirited sexual harassment kind of way, and getting mouthfuls of sand in the process. That’s how you know it’s intense. They even cut high school to do it. Our two leads are Steve (John Laughlin’s first role) and Anita (Shelly Horner’s only role). They don’t know each other, but fall in love instantly while at the beach. It’s no surprise why Steve likes her… she has huge boobs. You know who else has boobs, though? Steve’s girlfriend, who doesn’t take kindly to this new bitch’s flirtatious ways. She vows to ruin Anita’s life. And pretty much succeeds.



Now I should get this out of the way. I will never understand the whole 70s van culture, especially after seeing this movie. Correct me if I’m wrong, but, according to this movie, there were gangs of girls who were obsessed with pickup trucks and gangs of guys who were obsessed with vans, and they often would get in violent altercations because of it? This seems highly unlikely and completely ridiculous, which is why I like it so much.

Anita has it really hard, and I mean really, really hard. In her first week at her new job she gets raped by the sleazeball boss because she asks for her check, then Steve’s girlfriend and her friends chase Anita with their van and try to kill her by running her off the road, then she gets home and her dad flips out on her and won’t believe anything she tells him. Don’t worry, it gets worse. Her and Steve are hitting it off, despite the fact Steve still has a girlfriend. They go to a creek to make out and, of course, Steve tries to feel her up. She stops him, but he keeps forcing it. She says she doesn’t want to do it, so he “romantically” throws her into the creek and forces her to have sex.



Steve is as sexist and sleazy as they come. He not only basically forced Anita to have sex with him while he still is dating someone, he also delivered this brilliant exchange of ideas:

Steve: Chicks aren’t supposed to be tough!
Random girl: Why not?!
Steve: ‘Cause guys won’t like ‘em.
Random girl: I get laid once in a while.
Steve: If chicks were supposed to be tough, God would have given them muscles.
Random girl: We got muscles where it counts!

Did the head writer for Hustler magazine pen this movie?!



Steve’s idiotic girlfriend finds out they had sex, so she lies to the cops and says Steve is selling coke. When the cops bust Steve, she blames it on Anita. Instead of asking Anita if it’s true or confronting her, he and all of his friends RAPE HER. They literally have a high speed chase which involves jumping between the vans and pickups and crossing ropes, then they throw Anita to the ground and rip all of her clothes off and rape her.

In school the next day they happen to be discussing rape, which makes all of the people involved start arguing and results in a huge cat fight between Steve’s girlfriend and Anita, which Anita gets blamed and expelled for. Then, the pickup girls decide to have a “drag out” with the guys, which apparently is a tug o’ war between cars across a giant pit. The loser fucking dies. Yeah, this movie got even more fucking insane, but it doesn’t stop there. Anita still has feelings for Steve and in order to stop the rival gangs from killing one another, she drives her fucking car into the pit to commit suicide. Steve runs down there to see if she’s okay and finds out she’s still barely alive. Everyone jumps in the air because she is still breathing, and the movie ends. Yep, you heard me right. This is one of the most insane and fucked-up movies I’ve ever seen. I could not believe my eyes when I saw this suicide attempt or when I found out Anita still liked Steve after he raped her twice and almost killed all of her friends. I applaud this movie for being so ridiculous and highly recommend it to anyone into cult/exploitation cinema.



Summer School is also known as Mag Wheels (terrible title), and was the last movie from one of my favorite directors, Bethel Buckalew, and with a name like that it’s no surprise he got his start in the 70s directing hixploitation sex comedies like Midnight Plowboy, Country Cuzzins, and The Pigkeeper’s Daughter. In all of his movies he comes across as one of the most misogynistic, sexist, sleazeballs ever, but damn does he make entertaining films.

The movie is actually fairly rare on VHS and hard to come by. It was released in a big box through Active Home Video and has that fantastic cover art. Active tried to promote this like a straight-up hilarious comedy and even compared it to Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. This movie is nothing like either of those. It’s in a category all by itself and honestly no one should try to compare it to anything. The movie was released on DVD in a Drive-In Grindhouse four-movie pack, with The Farmer’s Other Daughter, Psychedelic Fever, and Up Yours. I’d go with this VHS, though, because you not only get the great cover, you also get an excellent trailer reel from Active (linked at the bottom).

This movie literally has everything: rape, car chases, an original rock soundtrack by the band The Word, a nerdy pledge who gets paddled, pinball, skateboarding, and of course, The Five B’s. What were those again? You were supposed to fucking learn them! Babes, boobs, butts, bikinis, and beaches! What’s so hard to understand?! Go see this movie.

(The trailer features some great nudity!)

(Source: vhshitfest.com)

by Tim May

Happy Halloween, VHShit-heads! During this, perhaps the greatest of all festive seasons, I love to watch films that take place on Halloween. There’s something about movies that happen the day of that really gets me in the spirit. So, this year, I thought it’d be fun to check out the shot-in-fucking-Utah-of-all-places 1978 oddity known as TeenAlien.

TeenAlien begins in 1957 with some hillbilly talking to his dog, baking some beans, and listening to the radio. His night of peaceful bliss is interrupted when he sees a giant UFO (which looks more like an Imperial Star Destroyer than your typical flying saucer) over the old mill across the street. After glowing green and red, the hillbilly’s beer boils over, but this doesn’t really bother him. After the UFO disappears, he just shrugs and takes a sip of his (surely) scalding hot beer.

Then the film moves forward 20 years where we’re introduced to Carl and his older pal Mr. Cranston, who set up through clunky exposition that the mill has long been considered haunted, even before the UFO sighting 20 years earlier. Then the movie flashes back to an event which supposedly took place 100 years before, in which two miners and their dog went into the old mill and came out without the dog (presumably eaten). This movie moves forward and backward in time more than Back to the Future Part II or a season five episode of LOST.

When we move back to the present, Carl tells Mr. Cranston about the “spook alley” contest he’s participating in for Halloween (a “spook alley” is a haunted house, for all of you non-Mormons). Carl decides the old mill is the perfect spot for his spook alley. All of his friends are terrified, but Carl just calls them pussies until they cave. There’s apparently some jackass named Tony who Carl is determined to beat in the contest.

The kids spend the next couple days getting the old mill ready. They dress up as Dracula, King Kong, a knight in shining armor, you name it. They also discover more and more mysteries about the old place. First they find weird skin suits, then bones, and finally, a secret tunnel which leads to a room with this strange rocket shaped chamber.

Meanwhile, some of the kids are beginning to be picked off by “monsters in black capes” (the knight’s words, not mine). While searching for one of the missing kids, Carl instead runs into one of Tony’s cronies, who reveals himself to be an evil alien, or a Varrow (“a word from his galaxy meaning ‘traveler’”), in a hysterical sequence with some of the funniest acting I’ve seen since the final scene in Beasties.

From there on, TeenAlien becomes almost incomprehensible. The alien chases Carl for a little while, until he decides to phone home or something. The police show up and say some cryptic shit to make the viewer think that they might be covering up the alien like the Cigarette Smoking Man, but the filmmakers don’t make it very clear.

The film was released in a Prism slipcase. I love the cover art, since it reminds me of the 1989 young readers’ novel My Teacher is an Alien.

TeenAlien is an incredibly amateur production. Most of the teen actors got their parts through winning a local radio contest. If this IMDb user is to be trusted, the kid who played Ray was drunk through the entire shoot and was eventually arrested for marijuana possession. It’s not as Halloween themed as you’d hope (for the ultimate Halloween related fun, check out The Midnight Hour), but it’s a relatively brisk sci-fi/horror mash-up with a couple absolutely hilarious moments.

(Source: vhshitfest)