"Teenage Hitchhikers" (1975) d/ Gerri Sedley

Once upon a time, before the advent of interstate serial killers, teenage girls often took to the roadside, flashed some cleavage, and flipped up a thumb to get where they were going. Of course, the unwritten hitchhiking commandment was something like, "Gas, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free.", so every excursion was a potential adventure waiting to jump off. In tonight's review, we document the madcap hijinks of a pair of hippie chicks, Sandra Peabody/Cassel, who you'll remember as the sweet young thing who gets her chest stiletto-autographed like a high school desk by Krug Stilo, in Wes Craven's seminal shocker, Last House on the Left (1972), and Chris Jordan, who broke into movies four years earlier in a production called Piss Orgy (1971), as they set out to do just that.


"Just look at that halitose halibut...and there's a fish in there, too."
We follow the misadventures of a perky pair of  hippie ride-thumbers named Bird (Sandra Peabody) and Mouse (Chris Jordan, as Kathie Christopher) as they hitchhike their way towards liberation, sexual freedom, and total independence, finding fleshy fun and tumbling into titillating trouble along the way. They get picked up by a camperful of  zooted dirt merchants, and when it looks like they have designs on jackrolling the girls, they sing a rancid hippie folk song instead, and proposition them to a life of groupiedom. The girls splash around in a stream, and Bird catches a trout with her panties. At a roadside diner, they get topless and embarrassingly go-go dance off beat in their drawers for food, which they don't even get, and rightfully so, they're horrible dancers.


This particular Bird (Sandra Peabody) is fogging up my spotting scope.
Before the end credits roll, these two take turns balling a bald-headed travelling salesman, interrupt a crazed, escaped rapist as he's about to force his way onto a chick in a backwoods meadow (sheesh, there was a whole lotta raping going on in movies back then) by stripping down themselves and critiquing his form(!) before okie-doking his ass and tying him to a tree. A wealthy lesbian also succeeds in sapphically seducing the hitch-sisters before the whole zany affair comes to a head at a far out hippie orgy, with thrusting bodies strewn about the pad like mad, Dad. In the end, we see them hitching a ride once again, but when a male driver stops to give them a lift, they run to their convertible, and speed off, giving him a playful bird. Oh, those teenage hitchhikers.


Though the groovy hippie orgy is semi-simulated, bouncy nipples like these will surely leave you stimulated. 
This would be the last film appearance for the sweetly sexy Sandra Peabody/Cassel, who walked away from the industry to produce children's television and teach drama, after having scored seedy credits in things like Love-In 1972 (1971), Voices of Desire (1972), and Filthiest Show in Town (1973). Getting tortured/raped/murdered by David Hess turned out to be her high water mark, cinematically speaking. Chris Jordan, who was once married to porn star Eric Edwards (who scores an uncredited cameo in the hippie orgy scene, by the way) also co-starred with Peabody in 1973's Massage Parlor Hookers, and banged out (ahem) soft and hardcore work up until the mid-seventies in movies like NY sexploitation king Joe Sarno's Confessions of a Young American Housewife (1974) and Misty (1976), before passing away in 1990. Claire Wilbur, you'll recall seeing in Radley Metzger's Score (1974). On the scale Hitchhikers thumbs it's way towards a pair of Wops, worth a look if you dig this sort of thing.


"We've got our own transportation now, so, like, down with you, maaaaaan!"

"Meatballs Part II" (1984) d/ Ken Wiederhorn

Remember everything that made Ivan Reitman's 1979 summer camp classic, Meatballs, such a good time? Forget about finding any of it here, in the first of many awful, name-only sequels, as piloted by the guy who brought you aquatic nazi zombies in 1977's Shock Waves. Soap (1977-81) co-stars Richard Mulligan and Hamilton Camp are reunited as rival head counselors, with names like John Larroquette, Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens, Misty "Hee Haw" Rowe, and Kim Richards (insert lustful eyes/wolf whistle/cat call right here) as the choicest piece of teen eye candy that this miserably unfunny mess has to offer, all vainly jockeying for laughs. The original had Bill Murray's frenetic party-based humor while he was arguably at his very best, while Part II boasts of ...well, John Mengatti levitating in a dress and the sorriest-looking alien since Badi : Turkish E.T (1983).


Notfahnuttin', but....eyyyy-yo, fahgeddabouddit, awready.
As Albert the bus driver (Paul Reubens) races a kid in a rocket wheelchair to Camp Sasquatch, his bus is stopped by police cruisers, who dump off "Flash" Carducci (John Mengatti), an Italian punk troublemaker who's forced to C.I.T. as terms of his community service. Coach Giddy (Richard Mulligan) runs the show at Sasquatch, amid forty-something counselors who can't seem to find a place secluded enough to fuck, teenage girls giggling about penis jokes, and a young alien dropped off for the summer by his Jewish-sounding parents via flying saucer. Across the lake is the aptly-named Camp Patton, a militaristic unit headed by the cartoonish Col. Hershey (Hamilton Camp) and his effeminate Lieutenant, Foxglove (John Larroquette), where the kids wear camo fatigues and stab dummies with bayonets.


My favorite moment in "Meatballs Part II", far and away.
When Hershey sells the lake property to a group of American Indians, Giddy is forced to bluff, claiming some Hare Krishnas are looking to buy his Camp, leaving both men to settle their differences through the "Champ of the Lake" boxing match between the camps. Giddy wants the street smart loner Flash to don the gloves for Sasquatch, and he's stereotypically reluctant until he notices the virginal Cheryl (Kim Richards), who's never even seen a boy's "pinkie" yet. There are midnight flashers, cockblocking grizzlies, jibber-reefing aliens, and a semi-retarded guy named Boomer gets dusted up by little kids packing brass knuckles. It all comes to a head during the fucking ridiculous boxing match between  a cross-dressing Flash (it's Larroquette's dress) and Patton's representative, the cross-eyed, raw steak-eating Mad Dog (Donald Gibb), who gets K.T.F.O.ed with the otherworldly help of little Meathead the Alien (Felix Silla) who saves the day for Camp Sasquatch, before getting picked up, you know, in the saucer. I assure you I didn't write that with a straight face.


"Elmore Tibbs! It's me, Burt Campbell! Why is Dan Fielding looking at me like that?" 
Tammy Taylor, who plays Kim Richards' girlfriend here, can also be seen in 1979's Don't Go Near the Park. Comedienne Elayne Boosler scores a brief cameo, while Flash's paisan, Ralph Seymour, you'll remember was memorably run through at the crotch by mutant hillbillies in Jeff Lieberman's Just Before Dawn (1981). Jason Hervey of Wonder Years fame turns up as one of the little rugrats, too. The delectable Kim Richards would follow this role up with Tuff Turf the following year, and we'll be looking at that one somewhere down the road, as well. The schizophrenically stupid Murray-less sequel to a Bill Murray hit movie, a teenage sex comedy without so much as a bare boob (or an honest laugh), Part II barely manages to rustle up a single Wop on the ratings scale. Less fun than getting poison sumac on your undercarriage.


"Can you use telekinesis to open the outhouse door? Paul Reubens has been locked in there all morning."

"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.

"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.

"The Last American Virgin"(1982)d/Boaz Davidson

Ah,nothing warms up a frosty December morning like heartbreaking teen angst thinly disguised as an eighties sex comedy.Here at the Wop,I've oftimes mentioned my deep admiration for films that spare audiences that sickeningly sweet happy ending at the end of the final reel.Happy endings,when not administered by Asian she-candy with a mastery of the Swedish Grip,are solely responsible for little girls wearing princess costumes throughout their childhood before they mature into three hundred and fifty pound scooter rats at WalMart at three thirty in the morning,with two screaming quadroon children pulling at her curlers.Happy endings make that star high school quarterback,voted the school's best looking guy, who went through cheerleaders' panties like a hot Ginsu through marshmallow fluff,look at their balding head and protruding beer gut with livid red stretchmarks like homemade tribal tattoos in the men's room mirror at the local hole in the wall,wondering what the fuck happened.Life ain't Disney,kiddies.The sooner we remove the sugar coated horseshit blinders,they more liable we are to get through it all without climbing a bell tower,clutching a sniper rifle and going on an apeshit bananas killing spree.
Tonight's review,is a direct remake by director Boaz Davidson of his earlier Israeli smash,Lemon Popsicle(1978),which spurred on an assload of sequels down there in the holy land,allegedly inspired by actual events in Davidson's own early life.It's no stretch that some vivacious pair of hams n' gams would give a guy named Boaz the high hard one,really is it?Boaz?Where else in the world would you even hear something like that but in a Mae West movie?Come up an' see meh sometahme,boaz...Anyway,Davidson changed the setting from Tel Aviv in the '50s to Los Angeles in the '80s,the oldies soundtrack to the very latest New Wave hits(at the time).all while keeping the storyline pretty goddamned similar.Though his American attempt,which was also designed for a string of sequels that never came about,wasn't immediately met with success,it has gone on to attain cult status,and thus,we give it the ol' look-see here at your one stop shop for the Wop.

"Remember the time all three of us got crabs from that skeevy prostitute?!!?I thought the summer would never end!"
Gary(Lawrence Monoson),Rick(Steve Antin),and David(Joe Rubbo),are three overly libidinous high schoolers with just one thing on their rapidly developing minds.I'll give you a hint,it ain't maintaining a 3.0 gpa in the coming semester.For Rick,the good looking athletic type,that's not too much of a problem.However,Gary's kind of an awkward douchebag who delivers pizzas around town in a hot pink station wagon with an Italian ethno-effigy on the roof,and David resembles any one of a hundred grossly overweight Sicilian kids I grew up around in my neighborhood.Awkwardly hilarious pursuit of the elusive vertical smile ensues.After slinging greasewheels all day in the pink nightmare,he stops into the local hot spot drive in restaurant,where he first glimpses Karen(Diane Franklin),a new pretty,little brunette in town,but with his popped collar and lower jaw scraping the floor,she's not impressed.Rick and David have managed to snare three young babes(err,two young babes and an overweight hs band dork with goggles)into going back to Gary's for a coke party.They cut shneezers of Sweet n' Low for their party guests,and the girls remark how it's the best Columbian they've ever had and how sweet it is.Dummies.Make out time.Rick gets the busty brunette sex kitten in one bedroom,David somehow lands the hot blonde in another,and Gary is left trying to cut the bo-hemoth's bra off with scissors on the couch.I just bet Gary's parents are gonna come home just in time to see bare bobblers flopping all over the place,and the fat kid in his boxers is gonna try to seduce Gary's mom in a case of mistaken identity.Ha ha ha.

Roxanne(Gerri Idol)'s bra-busting bobblers were made for motorboatin'.
After equally outrageous antics involving a streetwalker giving our high school heroes a good case of the crabs,and an oversexed Mexican housewife breaking off a mid-afternoon piece of pussy for Rick and David before her sailor husband returns in time for the fat kid in his boxers to walk out of the bedroom remarking that she's a nymphomaniac,and a good natured dick measuring contest in the boy's locker room(which the local nerd wins with inches to spare),Rick hooks up with Karen,the object of Gary's desire.When Rick asks for the keys to Gary's grandparents' cabin,Gary pouts and tries to cockblock his buddy in every way imaginable,even driving around looking for them when Rick pops her cherry on the bleachers at the football field.When Karen tests positive for pregnancy,Rick dumps her like the smelly morning bundle after a night of heavy drinking.Sensitive Gary to the rescue.He sells most of his own possessions and borrows cash from the pizza place to pay for Karen's abortion,serving up T.L.C. to his love at the aforementioned cabin afterwards.After inviting him to her birthday party and sharing affectionate kisses with her knight in popped collar,he scrapes together even MORE money for a gold bracelet to give her as a birthday present.At the party he excitedly looks around for his dream girl,until he stumbles upon Rick,making out with her,in the kitchen.They shoot him the "Eh,that's life,kid." look as he runs out of the party,and drives off,heartbroken,teary-eyed,and devastated.That's it!Hahaha,don't you love it?

Drunken 80's teen angst is more effective when you lean against a Cure poster,Gary(Lawrence Monoson).
Davidson,who also directed 80's genre slice Hospital Massacre,went on to produce all sorts of things,from Rambo and the It's Alive remake to SciFi Channel staples like Mansquito(!) and Shark in Venice(!!).Monoson regularly works in television,and looks a lot less like a total douche these days.Franklin,who acted in the twisted Amityville II:The Possession the same year,went on to score genre roles in Terror Vision,Alfred Hitchock Presents,and Freddy's Nightmares.I always dug those clearish aereolas of hers.Steve Antin,the heartbreaker,on the other hand,acted in The Goonies and The Accused,tried his hand in writing and directing,and most ironically,was the boyfriend of music mogul David Geffen in the nineties(!!!).Rubbo is a mortgage broker in Florida,apparently.The soundtrack,as is often the case in these types of flicks,is excellent,with standout tracks by Devo,Oingo Boingo,The Police,and even U2,before they drove down Pretentious Megadouchebag Boulevard and never looked back.This is probably my favorite of all the teen sex comedies,just because of that downer ending(Gerri Idol was quite a fox,too,I'll give you that),and because of such standing,it receiveth three wops on the rating scale and comes highly recommended.I'm always ready for the Sex Girls.

Hi,I'm Life.Mind if I donkey kick your balls into oblivion?