'SCREWBALLS' FOR CHEERLEADER VOYEURS

Notice the ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL clips in this Corman-made trailer

'SCREWBALLS' FOR CHEERLEADER VOYEURS

Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 23, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic


Screwballs, the latest attempt to capture the essence (or at least the box-office take) of Porky's, does not aim so high as My Tutor. At stake is not virginity but mere voyeurism: The boys of Taft and Adams High School (that's "T.A." on the cheerleaders' sweaters) have vowed to seduce the school's last virgin, Miss Purity Busch, but they will settle happily for just a look at her breasts. The story of this endeavor consumes 80 minutes of film.

And it's a more entertaining story than My Tutor, because it is occasionally funny. It's occasionally dumb, too, and thoroughly tasteless -- particularly when the school nerd, bowling naked, becomes entangled with his ball. Don't ask.

The formula here is joke-a-second, which means that some hit even while most are missing. This does not recommend Screwballs for grownups, though the scene in which Principal Stuckoff refers to his students as "vermin, heathens and scum" is enjoyable on virtually any level.

Too much of the material here plays off lactation and masturbation to keep any but the most repressed adult interested, though there is no denying the vitality of the production. It is, if nothing else, enthusiastic.

And because it is less bound by formula -- less stupid, if that can be comprehended -- than Porky's, Screwballs is funnier. That is not saying much, but Screwballs was not conceived as a film for scholarly inquiry. If you like naked women posing as high-school cheerleaders, your moment has arrived.

Movie Review

Screwballs (R) **

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CAST

Linda Shayne, Peter Keleghan, Lynda Speciale, Alan Daveau, Kent Deuters, Jason Warren, Jim Coburn, Raven de la Croix

CREDITS

Director: Rafal Zielinski

Producer: Maurice Smith

Screenwriters: Linda Shayne, Jim Wynorski

Cinematographer: Miklos Lente

Music: Tim McCauley

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A Millenium release

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Running time: 80 minutes

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Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations

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At Trianon, Normandy, Marina, Kendale, Movies at the Falls, Regency, Tropicaire Drive-In, Movies of Pompano, Sheridan, Movies of Plantation

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HOW BOBBY BECAME 'A' STUDENT

HOW BOBBY BECAME 'A' STUDENT

Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 23, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

The sexual double-standard endures, and in the movies has produced a peculiar subgenre of softcore-fantasy films whose most interesting aspect is that they are made at all. Beginning with Private Lessons in 1981, the business of attractive women deflowering teenage boys has drawn audiences to tedious movies at a surprising rate. My Tutor is the latest.
Plot details of these films vary within a narrow range, and My Tutor is conventional: A high-school student in Southern California has flunked French, which imperils his acceptance to Yale ("I had to pull a lot of strings to get him in," says Dad), which means in turn that the "best French tutor in the city" has been engaged for irregular-verb duty over the summer. Student is Bobby, 17. Teacher is Terry, 29. Ooo-lala.

Bobby approaches the whole project with considerable trepidation, as he and a pal had planned to use the summer, by a varity of schemes, to escape from virginity. These plans, which depend heavily on commercial transactions, keep going awry.

Happily, Terry turns out to be the kind of French teacher who takes midnight swims in the raw. She also takes aerobic dancing, and footage of her in leotards, bumping and grinding down at the spa, are used as filler whenever the action flags. This is more frequently than one might imagine at first; films such as My Tutor are straight-line affairs, frustration, frustration, frustration, despair, jackpot, and it's tough to get a full 90 minutes without the padding.

Anyway, Bobby has a wonderful summer, and so does Terry. The softcore consummation scene is a gauzy triumph, and by the end of the film Bobby is fully prepared to attend the college of his choice.

Though My Tutor contains many scenes meant to provide comic relief, there is only one that works: Hired to deflower Bobby in the early going, the local drive-in slattern is caught flagrante delicto in a well-used backseat by her fiancee, the leader of a motorcycle gang. "He hates it when I do this," she says to Bobby, and one wants to love this movie.

Otherwise, alas, My Tutor is witless. It seems to take forever for Bobby to learn to conjugate, and he's pretty slow at French, too. As for the double standard, note that simple role reversal -- older man deflowering teenage girl -- produces not a softcore sex comedy, but a crime drama. And that's a different genre altogether.

Movie Review

My Tutor (R) *

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CAST

Caren Kaye, Matt Lattanzi, Kevin McCarthy, Clark Brandon, Bruce Bauer

CREDITS

Director: George Bowers

Producer: Marilyn J. Tenser

Screenwriter: Joe Roberts

Cinematographer: Mac Ahlberg

Music: Webster Lewis

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A Crown International Pictures release

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Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex

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At Palm Springs, Miracle, Byron/Carlyle, 163rd Street, Ambassador, Cutler Ridge, Dadeland, Kendale, Gateway, Pompano, Southland (Fort Lauderdale), Plaza, Broward Mall, Coral Springs Movie Center, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.

CHAUFFEUR' SURE TO DRIVE YOU NUTS

'CHAUFFEUR' SURE TO DRIVE YOU NUTS

Miami Herald, The (FL)

March 20, 1986

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic


A genuinely weird sense of humor is at work in My Chauffeur, a comedy about a Madonna wanna-be who finds work with a Beverly Hills limousine service staffed by crusty old misogynists.

"You're deluded," says the limo boss to Casey, a flighty young woman. "Oooh. I've never had a 'lude in my life," says Casey.

That kind of thing.

My Chauffeur has moments of pure daffiness, unhinged stuff. But it is also the most ineptly made comedy in years, so badly made that it is ultimately unwatchable.

The film is such a catalog of blunders that it might well
serve as a film-school training tool. Continuity, that concept by which one shot within a scene seems logically to follow another, even though they may have been filmed at different times, is simply abandoned here. In one scene, an old driver is seen struggling hopelessly to light his pipe, which has broken apart and is in two pieces; when the camera cuts away and pulls back for a wide shot of the other drivers, there's the old man in the back, puffing contentedly and holding a cup of coffee that seems magically to have sprung into his hand. In another, a performance by a rock band, the singer's agent refers to the "stadium," when the performance is clearly taking place in a small room.

The script is similarly jumbled: In the opening scenes,
Casey arrives, desperate for the job despite the fact that the other drivers don't want her around. A scene later and she is no longer interested, and has to be persuaded to stay on. A scene later, she desperately wants the job again. The entire film is disconnected in this way; the direction is wretched.

But it is no worse than the performance by Deborah Foreman as Casey, who is by turns and for no apparent reason slatternly and sweetly innocent. Foreman grins throughout her performance, no matter what is happening, whether she is happy, menaced, confused, angry. Like the rest of the cast, which includes the strange magicians Penn and Teller as well as E.G. Marshall and Howard Hesseman, she appears to have performing skills, and even has her moments. But like the film, she is more often simply bad.

My Chauffeur (R) *

CAST: Deborah Foreman, Sam Jones, Sean McClory, Howard Hesseman, E.G. Marshall, Penn Jillette, Teller.

CREDITS: Director: David Beaird. Producer: Marilyn J. Tenser. Screenwriter: David Beaird. Cinematographer: Harry Mathias.

A Crown International Pictures release. Running time: 97 minutes. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations.

Herald movie critics rate movies from zero to four stars.

**** Excellent *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good ** 1/2 Worth Seeing ** Fair

* Poor Zero: Worthless

BRONSON AT WORST IN 'ROMPER ROOM' ROMP

BRONSON AT WORST IN 'ROMPER ROOM' ROMP
Miami Herald, The (FL)
April 22, 1986
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Charles Bronson is back, grimier than ever, in Murphy's Law, the latest in his series of low-budget action dramas. Happily, he is not a vigilante this time. Unhappily, he needs a posse anyway -- to round up his director and screenwriter and make them accountable. Where do they get these ideas, anyway?
This one begins with Bronson as a tough homicide detective who has acquired a number of enemies, any one of whom is capable of framing him for the murder of his faithless ex-wife.

One does, and we know who (though not why). What we don't know is why Bronson spends half the film handcuffed to a young car thief (Kathleen Wilhoite) whose dialogue consists almost entirely of uinspired epithets ("C'mon, weenie roast...have a hernia, motor mouth," she says in one of the few printable examples).

"What is this, Romper Room?" Bronson replies, and of course that is exactly what it is.

Once they have stolen the helicopter from the precinct house and flown off to crash-land on a drug factory, we know it's not going to be grown-up stuff, despite the quota (easily exceeded) of gratuitous bloodletting.

But it's a soiled Romper Room indeed, and further evidence, if any were needed, that Bronson ranks among the least discriminating stars in American film. He'll play anything, in anything, no matter how wretched.

Bronson makes Clint Eastwood look sensitive by comparison. He also makes him look like a giant of the cinema.

As Bronson edges into his twilight, it would be nice to know him for something more.

CAST: Charles Bronson, Carrie Snodgress, Kathleen Wilhoite, Robert F. Lyons, Richard Romanus.

CREDITS: Director: J. Lee Thompson. Producer: Pancho Kohner. Screenwriter: Gail Morgan Hickman. Cinematographer: Alex Phillips. Music: Marc Donahue, Valentine McCallum.

A Cannon Group release. Running time: 97 minutes. Considerable vulgar language, nudity, considerable violence and gore.