Party Animal (1984):

Party Animal was a low budget attempt to cash in on the early 80s craze for raunchy youthploitation films, specifically raunchy Canadian youthploitation films. Porky's, also Canadian, was made in 1982; Porky's II came out in 1983; Party Animal is dated 1984.

Although the story takes place somewhere in the northern United States, the protagonist, Pondo Sinatra, is a 26 year old college freshman from Alabama. He is such a complete hayseed that he was dropped off for school in his overalls by a turnip truck. You may be wondering how such a rube got into college in the first place, or why he thought he would enjoy life in the Ivy League. I can't answer the first question, but the answer to the second is evident. He loves him some northern poontang. He just goes crazy over those beautiful rich girls - "rich" being defined in Pondo's lexicon as meaning "with all their teeth." Pondo just dreams of nookie night and day.

As a mid-twentyish, balding college freshman with all the manners of a barnyard animal, yet without the accompanying intelligence, Pondo's chances of scoring with Ivy League women are about the same as my chances of getting the lead in a Gene Kelly biopic. His handsome BMOC roommate (named Studly) takes Pondo under his wing, but our hero is such a complete yokel that even Studly's expert ministrations can provide him no relief from virginity. He cries out in desperation that he would sell his soul to Satan for the ability to get laid.

As it turns out, Satan hangs around Pondo's campus, and is more than happy to oblige. The Dark One, in the disguise of a seriously hot babe, prompts Pondo to make an inadvertent but serendipitous flub in Chemistry class, the by-product of which is a secret love potion. Pondo uses it, and goes from never getting laid to getting laid instantly with every women he meets. (Oh, that Satan - evil, but fun!)

Pondo then realizes that always getting laid is even worse then never getting laid. As is Satan's wont, he has provided one of those twisted, overly literal, Monkey's-paw, wish-fulfillment things that he always provides instead of just providing simple customer satisfaction. Lucifer could learn a lot from Nissan. I'll bet if he would just get a reputation for holding up his end of the deal without any tricky stuff, he could double Hell's market share of souls.

How does it all end? Well, you'll just have to watch it if you must find out. I'll tell you that the ending is a genre-buster in that Pondo does NOT come to the usual happy Hollywood ending, but then again you won't really care because Pondo is a complete douchebag.

Party Animal isn't a good movie, but it could have been. The two male stars are reasonably competent. The girls are pretty, have nice bodies, and are not ashamed to show them in good light. The photography is pretty decent. The basic concept is good, several ideas are very funny, and the characters treat surreal situations as if they were perfectly normal, so the film has a sense of humor similar to Better Off Dead. The musical score features some of the best alternative album-oriented rock of the 80s, from The Fleshtones, The Buzzcocks, R.E.M. and The Untouchables.

So why didn't it work?

My theory centers around three areas: editing, identification, and anonymity.

First of all, the editing in this film is just plain confusing. About ten times during the film, I had a thought that went something like this, "WTF is this? Oh, I see, the previous scene is finished. I wasn't expecting that. Wasn't it in the middle of something? Oh, maybe not. Now what's going on here? Who the hell are these characters?"

Second, I didn't like Pondo, so I didn't care whether he ever got laid or not. A minor rewrite could have fixed this problem by making him less of an obnoxious redneck bumpkin and more of a sweet naif. By the way, this was the one and only film appearance from the guy who played Pondo, who looks like Greg Kinnear in a Steven Wright wig. He is now Dr. Matthew Causey, an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, and a guest lecturer in drama at Trinity College in Dublin. Here is a scholarly essay he wrote on Mapping the Dematerialized: Writing Postmodern Performance Theory.
 

Third, I just didn't know who anyone was. Studly and Pondo are defined, but all the girls are anonymous and interchangeable. The film could have worked if it had taken the time to establish distinct personalities for three to six girls, showed them rejecting Pondo, then showed them later as they went nuts over Pondo. As it plays out now, Pondo gets rejected by some anonymous chicks, then scores with some anonymous chicks, some of whom look like the same chicks, others ... eh, not so much.

In my opinion, those three reasons sum up why Porky's is a treasured raunchy classic and Party Animal is nothing more than a time capsule which was buried in the early 80s.

Prime Cut (1972):

I reviewed Prime Cut a couple of weeks ago. It's the whole wacky sausage factory cum human slavery thing with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman, a typically idiosyncratic 70s drama. One reader wrote in to request a movie clip of Sissy Spacek's frontal nude scene, so here ya go.

• Zipped .vob, 14 meg. (If you have a software DVD player on your computer, this is absolutely what you want. Large file, but perfect DVD quality.)

• Zipped .wmv, 2 meg. (If you can't play DVDs on your computer, then this is the alternative.)

This is book of naked women photographed by other women and assembled with a foreword by Elton John. Sir Elton conceived this as a way to make money for his foundation to combat AIDS in Africa.

A few notes:

• Lara Flynn Boyle is obviously posing specifically for Hankster.
• There are two things about Arielle Dombasle that make her special. First of all, there are no other 47 year old women who look like that - not Kim Basinger, not Mimi Rogers, not anyone. Second, she is the only woman I can name who is married to a famous philosopher. (Her husband is Bernard-Henri Lévy.)

The ol' Scarlet Spectre presents Penelope Ann Miller

Next on the docket for the Red Wraith: Madeleine Stowe showing a perfect bottom

Alien 3000 (2004)

Jenni Banerjee in a Finnish film

Sophie Broustal in a French TV drama

A Galician drama featuring Comba Campoy ...

Bail Ling, naked but revealing nothing in Sunday's episode

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

 

Pat Reeder www.comedy-wire.com

Pat's comments in yellow:

BAND DEMANDS BEAUTY QUEENS BACKSTAGE

What Garbage! - While opening for Garbage at a rock festival in Serbia, the Finnish rock group Apocalyptica had a rider put in their contract demanding that all of this year's Miss Serbia beauty pageant contestants be in their dressing room.  They also requested stamped postcards so they could write home.  A concert spokesman said they invited the girls, but couldn't guarantee they'd accept, and he didn't know why the band wanted the postcards, unless they wanted to tell their moms about the girls.

*  No...their dads.
*  It's because they're such good boys!
*  These were rock musicians: the girls planned to be in their dressing room anyway.
*  That's nothing: Van Halen used to demand 50 Miss America contestants to help remove brown M&Ms from their candy dish.

TBS TO PAY IF YOU DON'T LAUGH AT PAULY SHORE'S SHOW

Or Kill Yourself And Collect The Insurance - Pauly Shore has a new reality show called "Minding the Store" in which he'll manage his mom's famous comedy club, the Comedy Store, and TBS is offering the first money-back guarantee for a TV show.  They're advertising that if you don't laugh, they'll send you a dollar.  Claims will be on the honor system.  The offer ends on August 15 or after 250,000 dollar bills have been mailed out, whichever comes first.

*  Oh, the money will be gone by Tuesday.
*  To get your dollar, send a claim form plus $1.50 for shipping and handling.
*  Does it count as laughing if you crack up at the idea that you'll laugh at Pauly Shore?
*  Well, they finally found the perfect job for Pauly Shore: licking envelopes.

MADONNA's AUTHORSHIP QUESTIONED

The New York Post's Page Six claims that Madonna's children's books, such as "Lotsa de Casha," were actually written by Eitan Yardeni, the official ghostwriter for the Kabbalah Center

* And I thought Scientology was the only church with a resident ghostwriter
* Eitan was paid lotsa de casha to keep quiet about this
* Madonna's too busy making bad movies to write bad books.

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