"Revenge of the Cheerleaders" (1976) d/Richard Lerner

Anybody that can't get a few cheap kicks out of a good vintage teenage sex comedy from the seventies is either dead inside or harbors some deep-seated resentment towards young people having a blast a la Dennis the Menace's drape neighbor, Mr. Wilson, that old fuddy-duddy. High school serves as a good diving board towards embarking on a lifetime tour as a partying wildman from Borneo if you play it the right way; my only regrets are that I didn't pull more shit back then than I did. Had dimepiece genre chicks like Rainbeaux Smith, Penthouse Pet Helen Lang, Jerii Woods, Patricia Rohmer, and Susie Elene gone to my school, I probably would have thought about dosing the coffee pot in the teacher's lounge to score some pom-pom poonany, but at my school, it wouldn't have affected most of the drug addict bastards one bit! Or so I heard...


You German readers see anything in this screen cap you like?
 At Aloha High (Cali, Hawaii, what's the difference), you can pretty much do whatever you want, maaaan. The school maintains a constant anarchy and healthy buzz thanks to it's cheerleading squad (Lang, Woods, Pohmer, Elene, and Smith in the latest stages of pregnancy possible), who spend their days getting high, fucking, and lazily executing corny choreographed disco dance numbers with the rhythmically-challenged "Boner" (Hasselhoff) and the basketball team, when they aren't infiltrating rival school Lincoln Tech, holding the students hostage with a fire extinguisher while robbing them of their narcotics and booze, leading to the inevitable altered states cafeteria food fight (I was never a big 'food fight' guy, always found that kinda gross)/ mid-day bubble bath gym shower orgy with state inspectors in attendance, no less.


So that's where the peanuts in a CMP sundae come from...
Now that you've stopped pissing yourself laughing at the care-free hijinks that would get you expelled/prosecuted/jailed (in that order) in today's era of fake tolerance, let's get to the meat of the story. Except, it's more like a pink meat paste substitute, in this case. A greedy land baron by the name of Hartlander (William Bramley) has his beady eye set on Aloha, with plans to bulldoze it and turn it into one of those awful shopping malls, and worse, his ambitions will force a school merger with the rival gearheads from Lincoln. To speed up the process, he even contracts out Aloha's evil nurse (Eddra Gale) as a spy/ kidnapper, who abducts their beloved principal, leading to the inescapable chase sequence in and out of the massive dinosaur sculpture in the Cali desert that you last saw in Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985) and some ambitious spatial reasoning leads to the consequential Bronson Caves, which just so happen to lead to Hartlander's mall HQ. Of course, they save the day in the end, and a parting shot reveals Heather is no longer pregnant, proudly holding her newborn son for the cameras (Smith's real-life son, Justin). Awwww...


"Heaven smells kinda salmon-y..."
It's become pretty trendy for everyone to get their cheap jollies by shitting on Hasselhoff for his early "work" (I say work, because his scenes are pretty much an endurance test for anyone who happens to be watching) here, as though "Knight Rider" and "Baywatch" were the equivalent of Master-fuckin'-piece Theater, ferchrissakes..."Drunk Floor-burger" is the best thing the guy's done, IMHO. Let's not forget a memorable appearance from Carl "McHale's Navy" Ballantine as the most easy going school principal ever committed to celluloid. Still, all the softcore-level promiscuity (there's a sequence between a pair of cheerleaders and a boy scout in the woods that pushes the envelope on that assessment, if you're wondering) and wanton full-frontal nudity in the world can hardly mask the technical ineptitude of tonight's cheapie, a one Wop flick if there ever was one, but then again, nobody's sitting down to this one and expecting Casablanca.


My favorite Rainbeaux in the spectrum, obviously.

"Up in Smoke"(1978) d/ Lou Adler

Examining the debut effort from counterculture comedians, Cheech and Chong(Happy belated 75th birthday, maaaaan), 1978's Up in Smoke, brings back a whole mess o' memories for me, not all of which involve hallucinogenic high-jinks, surprisingly enough. I first encountered the movie as a nine or ten year old kid who'd yet to even smoke a cigarette to that point, but I still managed to secure myself  kicks a plenty with it, regardless of what a little fucking square I was at the time. You don't have to be a hardcore doper to get most of the gags, but a few crispy bong hits later, you'll relate to the goofy absurdity of it all like never before, maaaaan, as your mother tries to talk to you, telling you how to live, with your newly sieve-like head. Along for the ride are genre regs like Tom Skerritt, Strother Martin, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, Louisa Moritz, and perhaps most memorably, Stacy Keach as a starchy drape of a narc who couldn't catch mononucleosis playing 'Spin the Bottle' with Madonna.
 
Puffing a hog's leg fulla Labrador like this while driving leads to excessive low riding.
Man (Chong) cuts out on his nagging folks (Strother Martin, Edie Adams) for greener pastures in his convertible VW Bug, and is forced to impersonate a hitch hiking chick with big chachabingos to secure himself a ride with Pedro(Cheech), the low rider nearsighted/baked/stupid enough to pick him up.After smoking a fatty bomber packed with Maui Wowie and dog shit, the duo get arrested for parking the 'Love Machine' on a traffic median, but beat the charges when Man accidentally chugs the judge's vodka(!) in court. While trying to score some smoke from Pedro's 'Nam vet cousin, Strawberry(Tom Skerritt), the place is raided by the local narc unit, led by Sgt. Stedenko(Stacy Keach), and the pair find themselves deported to Tijuana with most of Pedro's family, who called La Migra on themselves to get a free bus ride home for an upcoming wedding. Meanwhile, a chick blows shneezers of Ajax and Strawberry wigs out on one of his crazy 'Nam trips and shoots his own Mynah bird. Sounds like one of our old parties...

"I wasn't lookin' at his neck, man."
In Tijuana, the fellas pick up the wrong van for delivery back to Los Angeles, and it just so happens to be one fabricated entirely from 'fiberweed' whose leaky exhaust provides for some spirited munchies from a highway patrolman later on, after the boys pick up two hitchhiking doper chicks on their way to the Battle of the punk Bands at the Roxy later that evening. Stedenko and his associates arrest and search a carload of nuns, shoot out their own tires, and manage to set the weed van on fire after finally arresting the responsible dealers outside the venue. The hallucinogenic vapors travel into the gig through the vents, where the boys' band, Alice Bowie, is too wasted to even set up their instruments after Man gets slipped a 'lude before their set. Naturally, the once angry crowd gets the instant munchies and begins to groove on the makeshift band's immortal classic, 'Earache My Eye'. The victorious duo sets off on the highway to ponder the future and burn a frags chunk o' hash, when it drops in Pedro's lap and sets the seat on fire, as they swerve off the road, a smokestack billowing from the windows. Alright, let's all go get high.

Bathsalts?? In our day you had to blow shneezers of Ajax to trumpet like an elephant at parties. 
Ellen Burstyn(!) made an uncredited appearance here, while Harry Dean Stanton's contribution ended up on the cutting room floor. C & C would follow this one up with Next Movie(1980), Nice Dreams(1981), and Things Are Tough All Over(1982),  Still Smokin' and Yellowbeard (both 1983), not to mention 1984's massive flop, Corsican Brothers, after which the seventies icons would pursue separate interests until the late oughts saw them reconcile and reunite for a comedy tour, and innumerable cameo appearances in commercials and television thereafter. It's gotta be in Amanda Bynes' Top Ten, I'm thinking. I dunno, I'd blow some kgb with her, wouldn't you? Tonight's review is a cult comedy of the highest/lowest order, one that seemed more dated before the current advent of cannabis-related culture and late seventies style, and for that, I bestow upon it three wops; a raucous laugh-filled party blast that only drug-free wet blankets won't enjoy, and especially apt since ol' Dub's previous three attempts to tackle this one this week all went up in a massive head-cloud of the titular stuff, of which I foresee another about to be expelled any minute now. Bubblebubblebubblecoughcoughrighteous.

"I'm so bloody rich! And I only know three chords! Watch me burnnnnn!!!"

"The Pom Pom Girls"(1976)d/Joseph Ruben

 As summer approaches fast in the rearview mirror, we'll take a look at another seventies-tastic Crown International drive-in hit from Joseph Ruben, reminding us just how unforgettable those girls that turned us on really were, in another teen sex comedy starring a cast of familiar genre actors including Robert Carradine, Bill Adler, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, and Jennifer Ashley; centered around high school hijinks between rival football squads, and peppered with genre staples of the day like make out vans, dope-smoking, beer-chugging, littering, drive-in restaurant sex(never gets old, just wish they'd stop serving it up with ugly-looking fast food), tits n' asses, stolen fire engines, limp fistfights, games of 'Suicide Chicken', and a total disregard for all things education and authority in the country's bicentennial year, man.Probably the wrong flick to get into if you're looking for logic and cohesion, but a helluva good-often raunchy,  time capsule of reckless youth of the happening seventies.Let's get this started, now who's rollin' the hog's leg to pass around...

 Wood(would) times five.
 School is in for the senior class at Rosedale High, and for Johnnie(Robert Carradine), a loose wire that ain't afraid to take a piss out a classroom window,  with a cherry '55 Chevy and goofy overbite,  it's an opportunity to show off to Sally(Lisa Reeves), Duane(Bill Adler)'s sweet blonde arm decoration, and best his rival in the process in a series of chest-puffing feats of bravado and stupidity.Johnnie's pal, Jesse(Michael Mullins) has designs on getting this happening brunette named Laurie(Jennifer Ashley) onto the air mattress in the back of his love machine, but fellow promiscuous Pom Pommer, Roxanne(Rainbeaux Smith) and drive-in waitress Sue Ann(Susan Player) will do, if that frigid bitch won't put out.With "the big game" with rivals Hardin High approaching fast on the horizon, a prank war has commenced between the schools, and harmless mascot effigies hung burning from nooses and car vandalism soon escalate into sloppily choreographed Western saloon-level fistfights and hosing down rival players and pursuant officers of the law from a stolen fire truck Johnnie and Co. end up in(big deal, they didn't do it naked.).To these fun-loving young tearaways, quadratic equations are for squares.Did I just make a fucking mathematics joke?Where's that cyanide capsule...
 
 The one and only Rainbeaux I'd ever be interested in chasing, thankyouverymuch.
 Of course, we get to see lots of reckless driving, an obligatory gross cafeteria food fight, pop-top beer-chugging(Johnnie's shirt ends up drinking more beer than he does, if you're keeping score the way I was, the way grizzled veterans often do), beach frolicking, some amusing soul sistahs trying out for the cheer squad, Jesse slugging the cocky football coach in the mush, some spirited joint passing, Laurie obliviously failing to notice Jesse and Sue Ann backseat boogieing right in front of her classroom window, then giving him her own goodies under her sleeping parents' noses, followed by a chuckle-worthy breakfast table sequence in it's own right.The football game degenerates into a battle royale after a single play, and Duane channels Brando in challenging Johnnie to a dangerous game of suicide chicken near an oceanside cliff.Johnnie drives Duane's car off the edge, jumping out at the last possible moment to live and torture him about bagging his girl yet another day.All's well that ends well, I guess.
 
 Sheesh, he's outta position on the MLB blitz, and he's a jibber bogart.
 Though I was never much for cheerleaders growing up(they always seemed a bit too shallow and saccharine-flavored for my 'refined tastes', apart from one or two rare birds that really layed it on me), I could watch the drive-in movie variety all day long.Especially when one's Rainbeaux Smith, one of my all-time favorite chicks, at her sweet n' sensual peak here, despite being mostly overshadowed by her co-stars, the wholesome brunette, Jennifer Ashley, who you'll remember from stuff like Phantom of the Paradise(1974), Tintorera(1977), and Horror Planet, aka/Inseminoid(1981), and leggy blonde, Lisa Reeves, who you probably won't remember from You Light Up My Life(1977) and the 1977 San Pedro Beach Bums tv series.Robert Carradine has been in everything from the iconic cult classic, Massacre at Central High(1976) and Orca(1976), to Revenge of the Nerds(1985) and the Humanoids from the Deep made-for-tv remake(1996).Hell, he even played a skinhead in Carpenter's Escape from LA(1996).Adler, who we just saw in Van Nuys Blvd.(1976), also featured prominently in genre fare like The Van(1977), Blue Sunshine and Malibu Beach( both 1978).On the scale, Pom Pom scores an average two Wops for technical skill, which doesn't make itself very apparent here, though entertainment-wise, it would easily earn another, a cult classic, perfect for the impending hot weather and hot babes that go hand-in-hand with it.See it.
 

Stealing a fire engine for a joyride?Oh, you crazy high school kids.