Girls in
Preppies (1984)

Phoebe Cates’s other great ’80s teen sex comedy also

features Saw babe Betsy Russell, scream queen Brinke Stevens, and loads of sexy surprises.

If summertime 1982 served as cherry-popping Ground Zero for the decade’s teen sex comedy phenomenon—and seeing as it contained the premieres of Porky's, The Last American Virgin, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, it did—then the subsequent swelter season’s Private School (1983) was the first direct fallout. And what a gloriously radiant after-effect it is.

To be sure, a spate of raunchy teen farces did rush into theaters during the ’82-’83 school year—among them: The Beach Girls, Homework, Joysticks, Losin’ It, Goin’ All the Way, My Tutor, Pink Motel, Spring Break, (the mighty) Screwballs, and (the also mighty) Zapped!

But Private School represented Hollywood’s first full-scale attempt to concoct an all-out teen sex comedy blockbuster, calculatedly combining familiar genre tropes (nerds, jocks, nudity-producing pranks, cross-dressing one’s way into the girls’ shower room, etc.), and then adding Phoebe Cates—the naked girl from Fast Times—up on top like a beautiful, brown-nippled bow.

Filmmaker Chuck Vincent began his career in hardcore pornography, where he quickly ascended to being one of the most acclaimed directors in the Golden Age of theatrical X-rated movies.

Along with early Gerard Damiano and Henry Paris (the full-penetration nom-de-poon of Radley Metzger), Chuck Vincent earned a place for his name above a film’s title. Vincent’s Roommates even played arthouses and was praised by mainstream critic Judith Crist.

But it is for his R-rated sex romps that most fans remember Chuck Vincent, especially his singularly lunatic comedies on the order of Preppies, Hollywood Hot Tubs, C.O.D., and New York’s Finest. Aside from his laff-fests, Vincent also helmed Warrior Queen, Deranged, and Bedroom Eyes II.

Vincent’s muse, in both the hard-and-soft-core arenas, was XXX legend Veronica Hart.

Despite his adoration of the naked female form, Chuck Vincent was homosexual and, tragically, we lost him to AIDS on this date in 1991. Long may his movies turn the world on.