By Prof. Clarence G. Hilliard


The teen sex comedy, that bulwark of shower-room peeping, back-seat groping, pledge hazing, and general debauchery, had all but disappeared from mainstream American cinema before it was revived by 1999's skinstant classic American Pie, in which Shannon Elizabeth's (Picture: 1) not-to-be-believed topless masturbation scene gave fans of on-screen nudity a reason to test out the pause and zoom buttons on their new DVD players.


American Pie (Picture: 1) spawned a franchise that continues today with American Pie Presents: Beta House, the series' sixth skinstallment.


While most of the Beta cast is youthful enough for the first American Pie to have been their first experience with the genre, Beta House (Picture: 1) still proudly takes up the mantle of classic teen-sex-comedy franchises of the 1970s and '80s.


I, your intrepid MrSkin.com reporter, visited the Toronto set to talk to the cast and crew, as well as to try to accidentally wander into a shower scene. I was disappointed to see that the set was decorated like a frat house after a weekend of keg parties without a shower in sight, but the cast, the crew, and scantily clad extras were on location and eager to talk to Mr. Skin about our three favorite places?”the upstairs, the downstairs, and the roomy back porch.


Beta House (Picture: 1) follows characters introduced in American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006) (Picture: 1) as they leave the timid sexual hijinks of high school and enter the wild world of fraternity life.


Writer Erik Lindsay, who also helped pen The Naked Mile, was especially excited about the new plot possibilities this offered. "We've all been to college," he explains, "fucking anything goes!"


Beta centers once again on Erik and Dwight Stifler, cousins to the horndog character played by Seann William Scott in the first film. Hard-partying pussyhound Dwight is true to the Stifler tradition and is the president of the most raucous fraternity on campus, while the more sensitive and timid Erik is out to prove that he is worthy of the Stifler name and membership in his older brother's frat.


Steve Talley, who plays Dwight Stifler, describes his character as "equal parts Jack Kennedy and John Belushi" and tells viewers to expect "lots of titties and some immature male humor."


No frat movie is complete without a fancy-pants rival organization led by a treacherous snob. In Beta House, the rival frat is Geek House, and the treacherous snob is Edgar Willis, played by Tyrone Savage.


"Weird, terrible things happen to my character," warns Tyrone, who couldn't get more specific but did mention that he will be wearing a "cock sock" in one scene. While most teen-sex-comedy viewers would just as soon leave the sock on the cock, I was informed by more than one cast member that Beta House, like The Naked Mile (Picture: 1), will feature the prominent display of some hairy bouncing man ass.


That said, even a movie about men who live together and call themselves "Greeks" can't be a complete helmet party, so lithe brunette nymphet Meghan Heffern (who frustratingly failed to externalize her feminine perks in White Coats [2004], and whom we wish had fogged up more windshields in The Fog [2005]) provides the feminine element of the cast.


Even with her clothes on, Mrs. Heffern is something to look at, and viewers might want to watch for a panty slip in the scene where Erik Stifler (played by John White) carries her around in an upside-down 69 during the Greek Games. But what attracts an amazingly hot girl like Meghan to a comedy franchise known for pastry porking and the accidental ingestion of semen?


"I loved the first America Pie," explains Ms. Heffern. "My friends and I had a sleepover and we snuck it in because we were only fourteen at the time." With the image of Meghan Heffern at a sleepover swirling around in my brain, I went to go find the man in charge of it all.


Director Andrew Waller had definite ideas about the franchise and the genre before he started work on Beta House. "The American Pie movies are about sex quests," he explains, "and so in this movie we have multiple characters with multiple wild sex quests."


The straight-to-DVD format appealed to Waller as well. "One of the things that's great about this movie," he says, "is that I get to make an unrated movie where the sexual comedy is wilder than in the theatrical versions."


As opposed to the "exploitative vibe" of the first wave of sex comedies in the '70s and '80s, the second wave, epitomized by the American Pie movies, focuses more on heart and "fleshing out the characters and the storylines but still having fun."


This doesn't mean that he isn't going for top-quality cinematic female exposure, though, and Waller's vision of a perfect nude scene is what we like to hear at MrSkin.com.


"I don't like when the movies don't have main characters who are naked, if it's only the girl up on the bar who flashes her boobs once. I like you to be engaged in the character and then have situations in which they're naked. It's like Phoebe Cates's scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Picture: 1 - 2), which is probably at the top of your list [It is]. The way you make iconic nude moments in a movie is by making sure that there's an emotional engagement with the character. I used to have crushes on every actress imaginable, and when that actress appeared nude in a movie it was like, 'Hallelujah!'"


Speaking of Hallelujahs, Waller also has an actress in mind whom he would most like to shoot a nude scene with, namely the so-far perpetually clothed Elisha Cuthbert (Picture: 1) of 24 and The Girl Next Door (2004) fame. While, unfortunately for us and Andrew Waller, there's not much chance of Elisha Cuthbert unveiling her jugs in an upcoming American Pie movie, there's still plenty of top-quality skin to be seen in American Pie Presents: Beta House (Picture: 1). "I don't think people will be disappointed," says Steve Talley, "We've definitely worked our fair share of nudity in."


American Pie Presents: Beta House (Picture: 1) will be available on DVD on December 23, 2007.



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