As a funny fat guy in his teens obsessed with sex and movies at the orgasmic tipping point of funny fat guys in teen sex movies, the horny high-school farces released between 1982 and 1986 were, and remain, personal touchstones for me, in the very most personal and most touching (of one’s own stone-like apparatus) sense.
And as ’80s-era Funny Fat Guy teen sex comedy icons go, Michael Zorek stands tall (and moons and farts and pukes hard) among the Hawaiian shirts and valentine-patterned boxer shorts of the genre’s giants.
The whole FFG phenomenon stems, of course, from John Belushi as Bluto in Animal House. Zorek sports enough physical reminders of The Origin of His Species (the black curls, the cocked eyebrow, the energetically hoisted girth) to make an instant connection.
But Zorek powerfully taps the swagger and the joy of recklessness that truly makes The Animal party, and he also boasts an affable schmuckiness that is all his own, and which makes him immediately recognizable. (See also: Joe Rubbo in The Last American Virgin and Hot Chili; Dan Schneider in Hot Resort).
Consider Zorek’s signature performance in what proved to be all kinds of a breakthrough film: He played Bubba Beauregard in the Phoebe Cates-Betsy Russell adolescent intercourse favorite Private School (1983).
As Bubba Beauregard, Zorek enlists his hormone-harangued pals to don drag and infiltrate the titular higher learning academy, in search of “the promised land” -- the girls’ shower room. The invaders land in high style, and Private School lives up to the claims made by the omnipresent TV spots that accompanied the movie’s release: “Bubba Beauregard is the Ultimate Party Animal!”
(An ass-ide: Two years later, the great Fraternity Vacation aped the coining of a trademark character in its ad campaigns, with posters declaring: “Meet Wendell Tvedt. Would you believe he's about to become America's # 1 Hunk? What happens to him, could happen to you!” Mr. Tvedt was portrayed by Stephen Geoffreys, who’s even better known as Evil Ed from Fright Night and who, in the 1990s, turned up -- literally -- as one of gay porn’s preeminent power-bottoms. Indeed: What happens to him, could happen to you!).
Zorek followed Private School in Fall 1983 as Chucky Dipple on the popular NBC movie High School USA with Michael J. Fox and the most outward-bound Facts of Lifedyke, and the next summer he co-starred opposite Gene Wilder and Kelly LeBrock’s amazing PG-13 pubic hair in The Woman in Red (1984). And then -- nothing! Zorek was gone for decades prior to creating the website Who Is That With Jeremy?
But before he vamoosed, Zorek also appeared in Hot Moves (1984), a well-remembered ’80s Teen Sex Comedies that somehow became weirdly elusive.
Even I -- Me! Mr. Teen Sex! Mr. William Michael Christopher Selwyn Harris Mickey St. Pee McBeardo McPadden! -- had not seen Hot Moves. And this is a rare achievement for T&A farces from my own high-school years, one that may only still be held by the ever-slippery Pink Motel (anybody got a copy? Email me: mcbeardo@mrskin.com).
I vividly remember the giant-ass Hot Moves poster cropping up in NYC subways in May 1985, but I didn’t get to see the movie during its single-week theatrical run. And it was playing at the Fortway, too, which was the best Brooklyn bet for no-hassle admittance to R-rated titles (I even once caught a double feature of C.H.U.D. and Bolero there!).
Bizarrely, my female cousin and one of her particularly non-libertine pals were dragged to Hot Moves (at the Fortway, naturally) on a double date. She described it as a film I would probably enjoy, and we left it at that.
Missing Hot Moves on the big screen seemed no big deal, though, as I figured I would just catch up with it on tape, where I could also, let us say, interact with all the nude boobs in the privacy of my parents’ basement.
The only issue was that none of the four video stores I frequented ever added Hot Moves to their inventory -- not even the one with the giant blow-up of the owner hob-knobbing with Traci Lords (who was my age) hovering over its adult section.
Plus cable TV did not reach the outer boroughs of the alleged Greatest City in the World until 1986, and even then it wasn’t at the McBeardo residence until summer 1987 (when I worked a janitor job to pay for it).
And so a quarter-century marched by, and I never unearthed Hot Moves anywhere -- not in the VHS blowout sales of the late ’90s when all the mom-and-pop shops closed, and not even on collector sites like Shocking Videos (who are the best. Go there!).
Bless the souls at Code Red DVD, then, for their special edition DVD of Hot Moves, which not only delivers the movie itself in pristine form -- and the movie is great -- but also provides commentary and on-camera interviews with director Jim Sotos (Sweet 16), writer Peter Foldy (Tryst), co-star Adam Silbar and, yes, even Michael Zorek.
Much is made on the DVD of parallels between Hot Moves and American Pie. A quartet of friends opens each movie with a vow to lose their virginities, and all manner of mayhem thereafter busts loose in the course of their pursuits. There is also, for all of Hot Moves impossible slapstick, a well-concocted air of camaraderie in each movie. We root for these bozos.
Needless to say, for all the pleasures of American Pie, it does not have a wigged-out smut-shop sequence like Hot Moves does (featuring a highly-touted Virgil Frye as The Porno Man) nor a female impersonator encounter (starring David Christopher, then of rough-stuff SM porn flicks and later the creator, fittingly enough, of the Pussyman adult-video series), let alone a trip to a nude beach in which we see literally dozens of naturally sumptuous, lusciously unshaven and implant-free female bodies. And, again, only Hot Moves can claim Michael Zorek.
In fact, Hot Moves hails from the surrealistic Teen Sex Comedy school of Screwballs, Loose Screws, Surf II, King Frat, and even Zapped! These were singular achievements that could only have emerged from their time, never to be recreated. Suck it, Superbad.
And whereas, in total, the American Pie theatrical series showcased a mere handful of nudes, too many of whom were mutilated by breast implants, Hot Moves not only takes us to that bare beach, we also see bosomy young Monique Gabrielle (taking Zorek’s virginity twice), Deborah Richter, and Gayle Gannes, plus Jill Schoelen looking fantastically flat in a series of bikinis (don't miss her a few year's hence in The Stepfather, where Jill glows as the naked centerpiece of The Single Most Gratuitous Shower Scene of All Time).
Hot Moves is uproariously funny and legitimately outrageous. Code Red DVD, I plead with you to provide similar salvation to the aforementioned Pink Motel, Surf II, King Frat, and others.
And, hey, also reinstate the monumental Nekromistress as the official Code Red DVD girl. Just go catch up with her at the Military Fetish Show at L.A.’s UltraStar Studio on Saturday, November 22.
Nekro will be featured as an art object in the Girls of the SS display, and to this Ilsa-phile, that means a lot (as do these photographs, taken by Chad Michael Ward of Digital Apocalypse).
*
On, now, to other noteworthy DVD events.
The Insatiable IronBabe is Seduction Cinema’s first big-ticket Hollywood softcore parody of the studio’s post-Misty Mundae era.
The people who gave us Play-Mate of the Apes, Lord of the G-Strings, SpiderBabe, Dr. Jekyll Mistress Hyde, and The Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing built their empire on the backside (and full-frontal) of Misty who, from her first role (and roll) exuded superstar radiance on par with drive-in movie legends such as Claudia Jennings, Candice Rialson, and Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith (also, Misty Mundae once hurt my feelings in my heart as a person).
For IronBabe, Seduction Cinema bypassed Darian Caine, its long-standing number #2 go-to siren, in favor of casting slinky Jackie Stevens in the lead as Horny Fark (and it’s fun to imagine a Nomi Malone vs. Crystal Connors struggle for that first position).
Darian devotees should relax, though, as here she plays the hot head of Fark Industries. They make super-powered sex toys.
The plot echoes Iron Man, peppered with techno-scored nude body-rubbing scenes (you can’t really describe what these ladies do as “sex”) and below-the-belt yuks which, as always with Seduction Cinema, are more inventive than anyone watching a movie like this has a right to expect.
What matters, though, are the ladies and in particular the one in, and out of, the IronBabe costume.
Just to state the obvious, there is but one Misty Mundae. To expect Jackie Stevens, or anyone, to simply replace exactly whatever it was that Misty brought to Seduction Cinema is unfair. However, Jackie Stevensis terrifically sexy with a lithe, tight, little body infused with a supple rump and delectably demure tittables tipped with incredibly long, thick, and deeply pink nipples.
In fact, Jackie’s mouth-wateringly meaty milk-spigots rival Seduction’s all-time knockout nipple champ, Andrea Davis, and I even liken them, bump-for-bump, to the doorknob-sized dairy-dispensers of my personal favorite, Meg McCarville.
Jackie’s super-sized suck-sack gumdrops alone make IronBabe worth the ride. Plus there's especially nifty nude work from curly-maned vixen Sativa Verte. And don't miss the classy cameo by 42nd Street Pete.
*
Although its erotic focus is on half-nude males -- as it should be -- Return to Sleepaway Camp makes maniacally good on the promise of its 25-year gestation ... which is to say that it is wrong, very wrong, all kinds of fantastically wrong.
The movie opens with shirtless pubescent boys amusing themselves with their anuses and gets only more sexually berserk, fatalistic, and gruelingly painful from there, rendering this a true Return indeed.
Coincidentally hitting the public at the same time as Guns N Roses’ equally constipated-in-coming Chinese Democracy, Return to Sleepaway Camp is the first follow-up from Robert Hiltzik, creator of the world-changing 1983 original, and focus of ongoing fascination to fans in his caginess and willful obscurity in a manner very similar to W. Axl Rose.
Factor in schlock-maven Albert Pyun’s bizarro Streets of Fire semi-sequel Road to Hell, and we seem to be in the midst of some weird Big Cult ’80s renaissance.
Here’s hoping that Richard Elfman (Forbidden Zone), Rinse Dream (Caf Flesh), and Gore Gazette publisher Rick Sullivan get swept up in the zeitgeist and delivered back to us, to boot(y).
And one last time: Oh, how I love women in uniform. And out of uniform, too.
