Cheerleaders Beach Party(1978)

Directed by Alex E. Goitein (Cherry Hill High(1977), Fringe Benefits(1974))

Starring Lynn Hastings (Cherry Hill High), Jamie Jensen (Earthbound(1981)-Production Secretary) and Rick Gitlin (Squeeze Play(1979), Hotshot(1978))



What's a small, University's Cheering Squad to do when the school's top football players are planning on switching to an opposing college in the next semester? According to Cheerleaders Beach Party(1978), the best plan of action is to follow the boys to their summer retreat and screw up there plans. Better yet, just "screw" their plans, literally.

And that's really all there is to this film as far as a plot is concerned. Throw in a couple of boob shots, bad acting, and jokes written by a 5th grader and you have Cheerleaders Beach Party. When I say bad acting I don't mean the standards which a great deal of the cheesy movies I write about follow. I'm talking You-Will-Never-Work-In-This-Town-Again level of acting skills, or lack there of. I'm serious. If you check out the IMDB entry you'll see that many of the actors only ever acted in this film and the director's previous cinematic masterpiece Cherry Hill. If this is his sophomore film I'm kind of scared to watch Cherry Hill for fear I might never want to watch a movie again, but I'll probably do it anyway.

Beach Party might have been extremely difficult to watch, but the film did have a couple of good qualities besides top naked girls every 10 or 15 minutes, which wasn't even that gratifying. Topless shots in this movie make films like Porky's and Meatballs look like hardcore pornography. Get what I'm saying?

I would have to say the best part of this movie were a couple of one-liners. Even though they were written to appeal to the comedic sensibility of an 11 year old, there were a couple of lines that made the eternal child in me chuckle just a bit.

"As much fun as an autopsy." - This one didn't make me chuckle over the humor but more over the sheer stupidity of the line.

"Humpum for wumpum" - Best line of the entire film. Seriously it is.

There were a few more, but I really didn't have the enough of a will to actually write them down, so two is all you get. That's all, folks. I could probably write a couple more paragraphs about such inane topics as "Why are they wearing cheering uniforms all the time" or " how does a person have sex without removing the pants" but Beach Party is not even worth the number of words I've already put into it. it was that much of a piece of shit. Do I regret watching it? Not really. Will you regret it if after reading this review? Probably. Don't say I didn't warn you.

This shitbox doesn't even have an available trailer. Boo Hoo!!!

Critters(1986)

Directed by Stephen Herek(Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure,Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead)

Produced by Rupert Harvey(Android,A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child)

Starring Dee Wallace(The Stepford Wives,The Hills Have Eyes,Alligator II: The Mutation),Scott Grimes(Critters 2,Night Life) and Terrance Mann(Critters 2, Solar Babies,Big Top Pee-Wee)

"Dude, we're gonna spend the afternoon watching Critters and House."

"Critters sucks, but I think House is cool."

"What do you mean Critters sucks? It's a classic 80's horror comedy."

"Critters is nothing but a poor man's Gremlins."

...and so went the brief conversation I had with my roommate/best friend Nate as he was leaving the apartment on Sunday. I was in shock. How could one who loves schlock as much as I do have hatred for the Critters? It baffled me to no end. Whatever. I let the haterade spill and continued on with the only plans I had for Sunday...to watch two of my favorite horror-comedies from the year 1986 with my best girl. A plan which was executed perfectly. Gremlins rip-off??? Please....

Critter(1986) is one of those 80's movies I assume everybody has seen, but then I realized not everybody is a fan of goofy sci-fi, or even from the same generation as myself, so let me break it down for you. The Critters, aka The Crites, are an extraterrestrial species that can be best described as carnivorous tribbles with huge appetites. Sounds cute, right? Not so much with these toothy, little furballs. Not only do the crites eat everything in sight, edible or not, but the more they eat, the bigger they get. You could say everything they eat goes straight to their hips, and I don't believe they actually have hips. Like tribbles, the cute doesn't last long once you realize they are more of plague than possible plaything. Chances are that this is probably why several of the little, furry fuckers are being held captive on a prison by the galactic powers-that-be. Unfortunately, crites aren't as base as you would think and they actually have the ability to solve complex problems, like stealing a space vessel for escape and headed towards earth. Thankfully, the Crites are being tailed by Ug and his parner, two faceless bounty-hunting bipeds who can take on the facial features of any human they contact to better blend in on alien worlds. Unfortunately, Ug can't get to Earth fast enough to stop the Crites from tormenting a small rural community and we get to see just how destructive 8 little furballs can be.

Obviously, the movie Critters would never have existed if it wasn't for the commercial success of Gremlins, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it a rip-off. Nate's "Poor Man's Gremlins" is a more accurate description. Either way, I don't care. I first saw the movie in theaters way back when, and have probably seen it a dozen times since then, I'll probably see it a dozen or more times in the next decade. I do admit that the older I get the cheesier the movie becomes, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I live for cheese!

I realize the most of the special effects in the movie revolve around mediocre puppeteering, but that is just one of the things that makes Critters more of a comedy than the actual sci-fi horror that it was intended to be. Other things include the Johnny Steele music video and Dee Wallace's over-the-top acting ability. The screaming-in-horror that women can do kept me in tears for the latter half of the movie. Completely ridiculous! I'm actually wondering why Dee wasn't cast in every slasher movie of the 70's and 80's based on her scream alone.

We all know that New Line Cinema were never a company for the high brow, so those of you who were disappointed after the first time you watched this classic should have known better. New Line Cinema and movies like Critters, Killer Klowns, and Night of the Creeps set the bar for comedy-tinged horror and sci-fi during the 80's, and you can still see the influence such films have on movies of the same vein today. So before you, or somebody you know, rants and raves about how much movies like Critters are shit, think about the source of these films and those they might have influenced in the future.

A Free Wheelin' Feelin' with Supervan(1977)

Directed by Lamar Card(Disco Fever,The Swinging Barmaids,The Clones)

Written by John Arnoldy(Cycle Vixens,Disco Fever) and Robert Easter(The Toolbox Murders,Sworn to Justice)

Starring Mark Schneider(Burnout),Katie Saylor(Invasion of the Bee Girls,Dirty O'Neil,The Swinging Barmaids) and Morgan Woodward(Cool Hand Luke)

Since I have written incessantly about my love for the 70's drive-in spectaculars and how it pertains to my day-to-day, I decided to take the first paragraph to say something different. You may have noticed the written format of this entry is different than previous review entries. I have decided to take the first section of each review I write to highlight those that were most important in the making of each film. I do this not only to give you, the audience, the reference points, but to also highlight each of the artists other works related to the types of cinema both you and I enjoy. Frequently I find films to watch based upon the IMDB of another film I enjoyed. Instead of taking the time to look it up yourself (which you should still do) you can just link up from the entry. Let's make it easier for all the parties involved...

It was only a matter of time before I got a hold of the van fetish/culture classic Supervan(1977). Despite the fact I have never possessed a license in my life, there is just something about automobile related drive-in cinema that makes my day, especially when it's van related. Up until this day The Van was one of my favorite 70's car comedies, and then Supervan drove through my living room. I know there has to be van flicks I'm missing. If you know of any, leave a comment.

Clint is a free spirit, or rather I should say a freewheelin' spirit. Even though he has close to zero back story, it only takes seconds to realize that he can't be held down by constraints of mature society or, um, his bad ass mechanic father. With nothing but a van and a CB radio, Clint is off to Kansas for the 2nd Annual Bicentennial Van Freakout of 1976 (did I say that right?). Not far along the way he rescues Karen from a rather rapey situation involving some gnarly bikers, but not without a loss..his prized van the Sea Witch. How and the hell can Clint go the the Freakout and win $5,000 without a vehicle to do it in? Thankfully Clint and Karen are able to make a pitstop at the lab of Bob Boz, who happens to be something of a mad scientist. Bob works for Karen's Rich father T.B Trenton, and just happened to milk a shitload of money out of him to create the van of the future, the solar-powered Vandora. Unbeknown to Mr. Trenton, Boz is lending the Kit of Rolling Breadboxes to Clint so he can win the competition. When the rich windbag finds out he is not too happy, especially when he find out that our hero has been doing the deed with his estranged daughter.

After seeing the trailer, I expected Supervan to be a less funny and a little more sci-fi than my previous experience with van-culture films, The Van. What I ended up getting out of it was far more than I foresaw, yet still equally as cheesy. The humor, as well as the script, in Supervan was less juvenile and more coherent the that of The Van. I had a harder time following The Van and it's elementary-school editing, but I have stated over and over again that vulgar and sexual humor is my cup of tea, and it had plenty of it. While Supervan was much easier to follow,and the acting was a couple steps ahead, the humor stayed closer to PG-13. Even though the boob shots and fart jokes were minimal, There still is nothing like seeing the real Charles Bukowski fondling the winner of a wet t-shirt contest. That by itself made up for the lack of smut.

Even though the humor was more mature, it still only got a couple of giggles from me. I would like to think it is most likely because of the generation gap, but I'm pretty sure the writers just weren't so suited for the Funny. I look at other films of this era and laugh my ass off, so I know it can't be the time period. I wouldn't call the humor a complete flop, but for those of you out there looking for Animal House you are going to be utterly disappointed. The funniest part of the movie, as far as I'm concerned, are the subjects that are supposed to be slightly serious, like the van itself. Even today, solar-powered vehicles are incapable of reaching speeds of 90 MPH, so the idea of one existing 35 years ago is moronically hilarious to me. Maybe the writers were optimistic enough to believe such a thing was right around the corner. Nowadays we would call that type of thinking naive.

Other enjoyable points to the movie:The Hulk smoking weed with Spock,mustaches,enough bellbottoms to clothe the US Navy and motherfucking vans. Let's not forget my reason for watching this 70's cheese....the vehicles. Like The Van, there was plenty of stock footage of airbrushed exteriors and shag interiors. Seeing these one-ton works of movable art make me yearn for a time before my own coming of age. Before the Aids virus and the height of the drug war. Whatever happened to van culture? I can only assume it so strongly symbolized the carefree "me-me-me" attitude of the 70's that the angry-and-coked-up of the 80's just threw it away. Who Knows....?....