This movie is a destructive force that still leaves hurt feelings decades after it’s been viewed. Sure, it’s a remake of director Boaz Davidson’s Lemon Popsicle and that movie ends the same way, but that movie came back with plenty of sequels. Once The Last American Virgin drops its bomb on you, it lets you watch everything burn and then that’s it. There’s no happiness, no hope, just the song “Just Once” and the destruction of the film’s hero in a way that there’s no coming back from.

When a movie has a title like Lemon Popsicle, you don’t know what to expect. It’s a foreign movie released in 1978 that could be about anything. But when the title is The Last American Virgin and the movie comes out in the middle of the teen sex comedy craze, you don’t expect things to go this way.

Gary (Lawrence Monsoon, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) is a pizza delivery boy with two friends, the cool ladies man Rick (Steve Antin, Jessie in the “Jessie’s Girl” video) and David (Joe Rubbo). Most of their hijinks revolve around trying to have sex, like telling girls they have cocaine — it’s really Sweet’n Low — or sleeping with a prostitute or Carmello, a Spanish woman who Gary meets while delivering pizza. Everyone gets their turn except for Gary, who is the titular character.

Yet he has better plans for his first time. He’s in love with Karen (Diane Franklin!), but she’s in love with Rick, who plans on sleeping with her once and dumping her. He does exactly that, getting her pregnant. She turns to Gary, who sells almost everything he owns and borrows money to pay for her abortion, then nurses her during the lowest moment in her life. They share a kiss and she invites him to her 18th birthday party.

That’s when the pain hits hard.

This film takes what Lemon Popsicle did on its soundtrack and transports it to the 80s, which is an incredibly smart move. The music is vital to this film’s success, featuring heavy hitters like The Cars, Devo, The Police, Journey, REO Speedwagon, U2, Blondie and the Human League. I mean, how do you think Bono felt when he saw this and his song “I Will Follow,” which is about his mom who died when he was only 14, is used over an abortion montage?

So much of this movie is very Cannon Films and that’s also the joy of it. It also leaves me with so many questions. Why does Gary bring Karen a bag of oranges when she’s lying in the hospital? Why would they make this seem like a teen movie and give it that ending, when if it was a date movie it’s filled with way too much raunchy sex? And how about the fact that the actors who played Gary and Rick, who come to blows in the movie over the girl who got between their friendship, have come out? How does Gary not realize that Karen’s friend Rose, who he gets set up with, is geeky hot (maybe this makes more sense in 2021 than 1982)? And how did cinematographer Adam Greenberg (who also filmed Terminator 2, 10 to Midnight, Near Dark and many more) feel about recreating so many of the same shots that he’d made in Lemon Popsicle?

Director Davidson also made Hospital Massacre, Salsa and American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, movies that would not even hint at the art that he would make with this movie. If you’ve ever seen the poster for this and laughed it off as a simple teen comedy, I want you to take a chance on this movie. But be prepared for the final moments.

Somehow, watching teen movies means watching so much of the Coreys. This time, Haim is Les Anderson and Feldman is Dean, with Haim’s character trying to get his driver’s license to that he can impress Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham).

He fails the test multiple times, but still takes his grandfather’s 1972 Cadillac Sedan de Ville out for a spin and dings it up, trying to get Feldman’s character to fix it. Ah, the days when you were counting the days to get your license and then getting in trouble as soon as you got it.

On the day of Corey Haim’s death (March 10, 2010), Feldman revealed that he and Haim had been developing a sequel that was to be called License to Fly that would be followed by another movie called License to Dive. Yes, these guys were planning a License to universe.

Greg Beeman, this movie’s director, also made Mom and Dad Save the World, which is a pretty decent effort.

Neither Corey Feldman nor Corey Haim had a driver’s license when they started making this movie. So there you go.

Welcome to yet another movie that got me in trouble when Becca came down and saw a scene out of context, 1978’s Israeli coming of age movie Lemon Popsicle/Eskimo Limon.

This takes place in the Israel in the 1950s, a time when most of this film’s budget is spent on the music. The poster claims it has 24 different artists, including Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and Chuck Berry. Producer Menahem Golan — one of the saints of scummy cinema who ran Cannon — claimed that the music rights cost more than making the rest of the movie.

Nili or Niki in the American edit is the new girl at school who meets three boys whose whole lives revolve around sex. They are Benzi/Benji, Momo/Bobby iand Yudale/Huey. Of course, nice guy Benzi falls for her, but she’s into the bad boy Momo, who tells his friends that he plans on taking her virginity and will soon get rid of her. Benzi is such a nice guy — we’d call him an incel today — that he doesn’t warn her or tell his friend to maybe not treat her so poorly. And before we know it, she’s pregnant. He becomes her emotional friend and even takes her to get her abotion, which should lead to them as a couple yet just means that she gets back with Momo.

If you’re reading this and saying, “Sam, are you describing The Last American Virgin?” Congratulations. Writer and director Boaz Davidson remade this movie four years later in the United States, destroying minds and reaping souls.

Unlike that movie, there’s no scene where all the boys line up to measure one another’s members or all sleep with the same older woman one after the other. For all the very foreign feeling in The Last American Virgin that don’t really translate, those moments would really stick out.

Since the release of Lemon Popsicle, there have been seven official sequels: Going Steady, Hot Bubblegum, Private Popsicle, Baby Love, Up Your Anchor, Young Love and Summertime Blues. There was also a spin-off, 1983’s Private Maneuvers, and the 2001 reboot, The Party Goes On. That’s because this series was huge in Germany and Japan.

If you had basic cable at any time in the 80s and 90s, there’s a good chance you’ve seen this movie, which strangely enough is based on the Bard’s Twelfth Night. It was written by Dennis Feldman, who went on to write The Golden Child and the first two Species movies, and Jeff Franklin, who wrote Summer School, Love Stinks and then created Full House.

Pretty much any kid who grew up in the 80s can tell you the story of Terri Griffith (Joyce Hyser), who becomes Terry Griffith as another school, all to write a story that proves that men get better treatment than women. She takes on Rick Morehouse (Clayton Rohner, April Fools Day and I, Madman) as her project, transforming him from geek into someone girls are interested in before falling for him herself.

She already has a boyfriend — it’s Leigh McCloskey from Inferno! — and gets fixed up with Sherilyn Fenn, which is pretty much the best fix-up of all time, and runs afoul of perennial bad teen Billy Zapka. Seriously, Zapka was the ultimate 80s heel between The Karate Kid, Back to School and this movie.

I’m not sure that this movie could come out today. The idea of a girl being a guy for comedic value would have to rub someone the wrong way. But maybe people could watch it and think, “My parents sure liked some silly films,” to which point they’d get the reply, “That was on Comedy Central all the time.”

Washington DC was a center of American punk rock in the late 1970’s. Punk the Capital explores that era and gives voice to those who were part of it, celebrating musicians such as Bad Brains, Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye and Jello Biafra.

These bands, the music they created and the influence they still exert are powerful. James June Schneider (co-director, editor), Paul Bishow (co-director) and Sam Lavine (associate producer, co-editor) have assembled a document that feels alive and vital, one that makes you want to experience this movie no matter if you’re a punk fan or have never heard this music before.

How was a punk scene created in one of the most conservative cities in the world? How did the young punks work with older hippies to get places for their shows? And how did the sound of DC from 1976 to 1983 change the world of music?

Beyond rare performances by Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Teen Idles, The Slickee Boys, Faith, The Nurses, Enzymes and Chalk Circle, more than a hundred interviews with those who lived this time were conducted.

It all comes together to be a document that music fans should seek out.

Punk the Capital will be released on Blu-ray and DVD in the US for Record Store Day on June 12 via Passion River and in the UK for Record Store Day on July 12 via Wienerworld. A portion of all DVDs and blu rays sold through Dischord Records will go to the DC based charity We Are Family.

You can learn more at the official site.

You know, I always thought that this movie had Joan Collins in it. And yeah, it does. But it also doesn’t. That’s because the day before the film’s premiere, Collins — along with Betty Thomas, Carrie Snodgress and Lee Purcell who said they made the movie under false pretenses, not knowing it was going to be a sex comedy — took legal action to get their names removed from this movie.

Collins claimed that the film’s advertising was misleading and she was right. That’s because she had only performed in a minor supporting role shot two whole years earlier in the time before Dynasty made her a big star. Homework now had her in a sex scene with an obvious body double and that image was featured in all of the advertising until a federal court ordered those ads to stop.

Jensen Farley Pictures, you did it again.

This may be the only movie that James Beshears ever directed, but he also edited Luigi Cozzi’s Hercules and The Incredible Melting Man. Recently, he’s served as the editorial and post-production executive on animated movies like The Boss Baby, Trolls and the Shrek films.

The fact that a movie called The Swinging Cheerleaders (AKA Locker Room Girls and H.O.T.S. II) is so good rests on the fortune that this was co-written and directed by Jack Hill. It’s a movie that promises cheerleaders and sex. Sure, it delivers that. It also gives you a crime story, a tale of journalism and a wife so enraged by her husband’s infidelity that the one scene she shows up for is volcanic, ending with her screaming that she plans on carving her name into a girl’s anatomy.

Kate (Jo Johnston in her one-and-done role) is writing an article for the college newspaper about how cheerleading demeans women, so she joins the squad. Yet she soon finds herself bonding with the girls.

There’s Mary Ann (Colleen Camp), who wants her boyfriend Buck to stop sleeping around and marry her. Lisa (Rosanne Katon) is the one having an affair with a married professor. And Andrea (Rainbeaux Smith!) just can’t go all the way.

But there are bigger problems. All of the adults are betting on the football games, including the dean, the coach and Mary Ann’s dad, a local businessman. They’re willing to do anything it takes to keep their scam going, too.

Strangely enough, when this movie and The Student Body played a Dallas drive-in, Randall Adams and David Harris were in attendance and used the film as an alibi when they were investigated in the murder of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood. When Adams said that he had to leave as he didn’t feel comfortable with the content, it led to his conviction. You can learn more in the documentary The Thin Blue Line.

I saw someone on Letterboxd say that “If Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was about college cheerleading, this would be that movie.” What a great way to explain this.

It’s totally not the teen sex romp you think it is, yet it has a scene where multiple people in a row all punch a security guard in the face, which should be a moment in every film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Joey (Mariska Hargitay, daughter of Mickey and Jayne Mansfield, who is probably on your TV right now on one of many episodes of Law and Order), Lindsey (Courtney Thorne-Smith) and Robin (Lindsey JoAnn Willette) are three high school graduates out to have fun for their last summer, which leads to a job at a dude ranch and then a casino and then, well, a night in jail.

If there’s one thing you can learn from this movie, it’s that you can have cocaine in jail and use it as makeup and none of the guards will know the difference.

This is the only movie Terry Carr ever directed. Carr usually worked as a production manager (King Kong, Bad Ronald) or a producer (Predator 2, Double Impact). Sadly, he died in 2005 when he had a heart attack. Even worse, his 9-year-old daughter Ariekla’s body was found under his in the back of his car a day after he left his wife behind in a grocery store. He’d been acting strangely in the days before his death, including dumping all of his important paperwork and photos in a field.