REVENGE OF THE NERDS (1984)

The story on this one’s pretty simple: college-age jocks vs. college-age nerds at a school that apparently has no actual classes nor any kind of rules of conduct.

Two best friends, Lewis and Gilbert, arrive at Adams College and are almost immediately kicked out of their dorm, along with a bunch of other “nerds”, to make room for some football players who partied so hard that they burned down their own fraternity house. The nerds join a different frat and from then on it’s just frat versus frat pranks and hijinks. Including such knee-slapping tomfoolery as sexual assault, illegally installing cameras in a female frat house and rape by deception. It’s a feel good adventure for the whole family!

Released in the summer of 1984, I was just a kid and I remember watching this movie a number of times. Mainly because it had a few tits in it, but it was also funny. Revisiting the film now for this review, it’s kind of shocking at just how caveman this movie is. That said, it does have it moments and, I guess, historically it is kind of important. At least as far as 1980’s pop culture goes.

Quick pace, solid cast that seem to be dedicated to their roles (I wish James Cromwell had a bigger role), dated humor, one clearly underage student partying with older students (and taking part in a "panty raid"), a goofy goose-like honk laugh, no teachers, zero strong female characters, zero gore, zero blood, not as much nudity as you would expect, vintage clothing fashions.

REVENGE OF THE NERDS is definitely dated and could (should) be seen as offensive to modern audiences, but hey, the 80's were all kinds of fucked up. If you're curious about it, then it's worth checking out.

[Update: This has absolutely nothing to do with the review, but while I was going through old newspapers looks for ads I noticed that on the weekend that Nerds debuted these movies were also showing (No wonder I spend so much time at the theater when I was a kid!)…GHOSTBUSTERS, GREMLINS, THE NEVERENDING STORY, THE KARATE KID, THE LAST STARFIGHTER, THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, CONAN THE DESTROYER, STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK and more. Plus, PURPLE RAIN came out the next week. Fuckin’ sick]

Part 2 - Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987)
Part 3 - Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992)
Part 4 - Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love (1994)

BODY BAGS (1993)

Made by Showtime as a test run for a "Tales from the Crypt"-style horror anthology show, BODY BAGS has horror legend John Carpenter dressed up like a corpse in a morgue.  He greets the audience and tells some fucking horrible jokes.  It's pretty bad.  Cheesy jokes are forgivable though as long as the stories are dope.  They're not...

"The Gas Station" The best thing I can say about this one is the main actress, Alex Datcher, is a good actress.  Unfortunately, the script gives her nothing to work with.  There's barely even a story.  She reports in for her first night as an overnight attendant at a secluded gas station.  Random people show up...including a serial killer.  That has the potential to be scary, but nothing here is even remotely scary.

"Hair" Stacy Keach (who's performance is the highlight of the entire movie) plays a dude who is super sad about his thinning hair.  He tries various concoctions, but none of them work.  Eventually, he goes to a hair growth doctor he saw on TV and before you know it, he's hairier than Cousin Itt's ballsack. 

"Eye" Luke Skywalker is an up and coming baseball player on his way to the big leagues.  Unfortunately, he can't drive for shit and while looking for a B-52's cassette (of all things), he wrecks his whip and ends up with piece of glass in his right eyeball.  The hospital replaces his damaged eyeball with an eye from a serial killer.  You can guess what happens next.

Book-ending the stories and sprinkled between them are more bad jokes by John Carpenter about drinking formaldehyde and stuff like that.  It's pretty easy to see why this was never made into a TV show.

BODY BAGS is more watchable now than it was in 1993, because when I watched it back then, it was just lame and the stories all drug on forever...but nowadays, it's an interesting time capsule full of 90's as fuck fashions and hair, a truly impressive cast of genre legends, Barney the Dinosaur on the cover of TV Guide, vintage electronics and so on. With a runtime of 91 minutes, there should have been four stories instead of three. Also, bump up the terror and blood. Three scary stories and one campy one. Or a mixture like in CREEPSHOW.