The choice of movie to review today on the blog will no doubt have more than a few readers scratching their heads and wondering if all those occasions when I was forced to beat my head against the wall during my hotel night auditing days might have contributed to some long term cerebral damage. (Though I’m guessing they already concluded this a long time ago, to be honest.) Fast Food (1989), a teen sex comedy directed by the auteur (Michael A. Simpson) responsible for Sleepaway Camp II:
Here’s the stupid plot: professional students August “Auggie” Hamilton (Clark Brandon) and Drew Taylor (Randal Patrick) are resident con men at fictional Hopkins University; their moneymaking schemes come to a halt when the University’s dean (J. Don Ferguson) decides to rid himself of our heroes by turning them loose in the real world (via forced graduation). Jobless, they decide to turn a struggling gas station run by Drew’s cousin
Wrangler Bob’s burger sales start to stumble, and so he has
sexy industrial spy Dixie Love (Traci Lords) infiltrate the Burger Station by securing
employment…and she soon learns about the secret sauce from the mentally
challenged Bud. Armed with this
knowledge, Bundy alerts the FDA about the restaurant and Pop’s is soon hauled
into court; Samantha stands to lose everything because Auggie put up the
station as collateral for a business loan.
Fortunately, our hero comes clean at the trial and admits that it was he
who dosed the sauce with the equivalent of Spanish fly and that he’s really,
really sorry and won’t ever do it again.
The judge (Kevin McCarthy) takes pity on this young fool and rules that
no harm was really done (of course not—lacing food stuff with powerful drugs
and threatening the public’s health by cooking that food in an unsanitary
service station…that’s just wacky college hi-jinks!). When Wrangler Bob
complains that he faces financial ruin because of Pop’s better burger sauce, he
tries to obtain the remaining doctored concoction…but the last remaining jar is smashed,
and Auggie and Sam presumably live happily ever after when the movie audience
wakes up from its 90-minute nap and demands its money back.
With the coming of the DVD revolution, a movie like Fast Food would probably bypass
theaters today and go directly to disc…this is a curio from a time when you
actually forked over six bucks to see nonsense like this in a theater (or more
than likely, drive-in) before being stuck with it a second time at the video
store when all the good releases were out on a Friday or Saturday night. Fast Food is a terrible movie, good people. The only explanation for Leonard Maltin
giving it two-and-a-half stars in his Movie Guide is that he was either watching it while stoned or had money invested in the film.
Still, despite it being a ridiculous movie (bad acting, bad dialogue—it’s
all bad, really), Food is not
without a modicum of talent: you have Jim Varney, known to a generation of
couch potatoes as Ernest P. Worrell (“KnowhutImean, Vern?”) from commercials, a TV series and a movie franchise, and Kevin McCarthy, character actor
extraordinaire whose films include Death
of a Salesman and Invasion of the
Body Snatchers. Granted, Varney’s
shtick appeals mostly to folks who find Mayberry R.F.D. amusing (ahem) but
he does generate a chuckle or two considering the paucity of his material. McCarthy, on the other hand, took the money
and ran on this one…though it’s kind of hard to completely dislike someone whose
character is named “Judge Reinholte.”
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A man must get laughs where he can find them. Jim Varney is brave enough to elicit chuckles riding a coin-operated pony. |
That’s about as sophisticated as it gets for this movie—I’m
certainly not averse to puns, mind you, or otherwise I would have stopped
watching Rocky & Bullwinkle eons ago (The Ruby Yacht of Omar Kayahm,
Wynchatakea Peak, etc.)—courtesy of a script written by actors Brandon
and Horn (from a story by Scott B. Sowers & Jim Basile). Brandon, a teen heartthrob who graced many a Tiger Beat cover in the 70s/80s, was
probably best known as Nancy McKeon’s boyfriend on several episodes of The
Facts of Life even though he had regular roles on short-lived series
such as Out of the Blue and Mr. Merlin (this last one wasting
the talents of character great Barnard Hughes).
According to the always reliable IMDb, Fast Food was Brandon’s last major acting role—he later turned his
talents behind the camera and directed a few films, one of which I have seen
entitled Skeeter (about a giant mosquito)
that features Food alumni Griffith
and Pollard. Assisting Brandon
as a writer on Skeeter was the ubiquitous Mr. Horn, who also started out as a
child actor and has since become a writer for Disney Channel sitcoms like That’s
So Raven and Sonny with a Chance.
So how did this teen sex comedy end up in the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives,
you’re no doubt wondering? Part of the
film was lensed on the campus of Atlanta ’s
Oglethorpe University ,
which among its studentry at the time numbered my sister Debbie and her future
husband Craige. Several of the students
were asked, in Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney style, “Hey—do you kids wanna be in a
movie?” And so my sister and bro-in-law
volunteered. They earned not a nickel
for their extra work (although they did get some free grub out of the deal—which
Deb later informed me wasn’t very good) and to be honest, Craige kinda got the
fuzzy end of the lollypop…
…one of those guys playing soccer is Craige, but because I don’t have the sophisticated technology to zoom in on each player to find out which one, we will instead take solace in the fact…
…that the girl in pink sweater and matching bitchface is good ol’ sister Debbie herownself. She would later tell me that this movie played in the
I was toiling at a Savannah Ballbuster Blockbuster Video
store at the time this odious piece of fromage was out in theaters and then to
video in five-point-two seconds…and I lobbied the store manager to get a copy,
which wasn’t all that hard because the movie does feature Lords—who at that
time was making the move into “mainstream” features after a successful career
in the porn industry. (The video rented like hotcakes.) I toyed briefly
with the idea of playing up the presence of Fast Food in our store with a display reading “Featuring Ivan’s
sister!” but then I realized that it would be hard to do my customer service
representative duties in a full body cast.
It later turned up briefly on HBO, where I was able to score a recording
of it…and I lent that to a mutual friend of mine and Deb’s, never getting it
back. It wasn’t until I happened to be
glancing through some clearance items at Columbia House’s Video Club when I
stumbled across the DVD for a buck-ninety-nine.
This disc was released in 2005 by a small company in St. Clair Vision
who, despite telling consumers on the box that it was “carefully remastered for
best picture quality,” really meant “we recorded this direct from a VHS copy.”
And thus we bring the saga of Fast Food to a close. The
DVD is OOP, but you can find some used copies at Amazon (though why you would
entertain thoughts of doing so is up for saner minds to decide). Some of the reviews over there are hysterical
(apparently a few people confused this one with a similarly-titled flick that
was out in 1998); my favorite is from a person identified as S. Rasmussen: “I'll
probably sell it in my next garage sale.”
(Come on…my sister wasn’t that
bad.)
7 comments:
Ivan, it should as no surprise that I've seen this film. Indeed, I think I've seen all of the teen comedies made in the 1980s. While this doesn't rank with "classics" like BIKINI CARWASH (what could?), it does have Ernest, Melanie Griffith's sister, and Little Fauss to Robert Redford's Big Halsey! That's pretty darn impressive. And to know you had a sibling that appeared in it...well, that only causes me to admire you even more!
I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't object to you writing about Z-list 70s/80s schlock films like this every once in awhile... especially if you mock them mercilessly!
I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't object to you writing about Z-list 70s/80s schlock films like this every once in awhile... especially if you mock them mercilessly!
Rich, one the entries I contributed to Stacia's Camp & Cult Blogathon back in September 2012 came from a series of VCI schlocky horror releases called "Scream Theater." I've got a buttload of them, so I will try not to disappoint you by featuring some of them from time to time.
Like Rich, I hope you do more of these! There are so many lousy movies to choose from! Too cool that your sister got a real almost full-body shot in the movie -- she looks cute. But it's not fair that they didn't get paid. I did when I sat in the Indy 500 bleachers for 10 hours in the broiling sun to be an extra for "Winning." And I got to shake arms with Paul Newman (well, that's how he did it!) However, I've never been able to distinguish the 14 or 15-year old me from the crowd! (I can't remember now the year it came out.)
I have waited so long for this. So long. And it was worth it!
Now that I've seen some screencaps, I have to tell ya, I'm pretty sure I saw this on HBO. I doubt that I actually watched it, but it was probably on in the background. My memory tells me this was one of about a million teen sex comedies I saw that had basically no sex to speak of. That's a genre I do not understand.
Your sister is going to have words with you, if she hasn't already.
Becko, the forgotten Marx sister, spoke up:
I can't remember now the year it came out.
Winning was released in 1969, but I'm skeptical that you were 14 or 15 at the time. Maybe you're confusing it with The Crowd Roars (1932)?
Oh! ... Oh! ... you ... you ... you're absolutely right! (You are still a CAD to point it out.) I couldn't remember, honest! I turned 17 in July, 1969, OK? OK! I should have looked it up first to avoid being involuntarily outed!
As for The Crowd Roars ... you bounder, you boor! You, sir, are no gentleman!
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