Ben Adler (Gary Imhoff, Falcon Crest), Larry Bronson (Jeffrey Byron, who co-wrote The Dungeonmaster), Alan Darby (Dennis Quaid, did he do anything after this, wokka wokka) and Steve Elliot (Lou Richards) are college seniors terrified to graduate and actually work for a living. They all live together in the same house along with Sylvia (Priscilla Barnes, Three’s Company), who is their cook, cleaning lady and would-be concubine.
One of their friends, Arnold Frobisher (Rocky Flintermann), is desperate to make it with Sylvia. He tells everyone that his scientist boss, Professor Heigner (Arnold Reed, the voice of Fred Flintstone), gets more grant money than he can spend, so in exchange for getting to finally sleep with Sylvia, who regularly nearly kills him with her mattress dancing skillset, they get that grant money. It’s spent on creating a way that female co-eds can sleep with needy males for $20 an hour. Strictly research, or so they say, until they start charging old businessmen $50 for the same service.
Of course, hijinks ensue, like Heigner being seen as a stud by the person giving out the grants, Elizabeth Crayton (Lynn Cartwright, who is in The Cry Baby Killer, The Wasp Woman and was Geena Davis’ older version in A League of Their Own), one of the guys dresses as KIng Kong and makes jungle love to a college girl and Arnold eventually dying from all the balling. To die from 1978, Priscilla Barnes’ lovemaking is a good death.
Director Rodney Amateau was a titan of television, having directed and produced episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He also produced two of TV’s biggest flops, My Mother the Car and Supertrain. He also directed one of the few movies that Roger Ebert ever walked out of, The Statue, as well as Lovelines, High School U.S.A. (the movie that convinced Joel Robinson to leave Hollywood) and The Garbage Pail Kids movie. His background in sitcoms is evident in the pacing and the gag-heavy structure of the film, which feels like a bawdier, unchained version of a 60s campus comedy.
It was written by Stanley Shapiro, whose career, in better days, saw him write Pillow Talk, Operation Petticoat and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. He also wrote the play that the film Carbon Copy was based on.
You’ll also see appearances by Alan Hewitt (his last role in a career of character actor work), Edward Andrews (Sixteen Candles), Woodrow Parfrey (Maximum in Planet of the Apes), Jo McDonnell (the 1980s Marilyn Munster and she’s also in Island Claws) and a blink and you missed it Larry Drake early role.
It’s charitably not good and the songs in it, like “Sail On,” will test you.
You can watch this on YouTube.
