Where Are They Now? The 80's Skin Flicks
What happened to the 80's Skin Flick?
A group of guys, maybe in college or maybe older, set out to take a vacation on the beach or head to the mountains to do some tanning/skiing. Someone has a kick-ass beach-front house/cabin at the foot of a mountain or has a friend who owns a kick-ass beach-front house/cabin at the foot of a mountain. The babes flow like wine and they have names like Candy and Sunny. Wet t-shirt contests are the criteria for which all women are judged. The beer bongs go on for miles. No ethnic stereotype goes unexploited. No illegal drug goes unused. The hair is big the breasts are bigger. And most importantly, the skin is on parade for all to see.
What happened to this lost art?
I'm talking specifically about Spring Break, Hardbodies and Hot Dog The Movie. Every childhood male fantasy projected against a big screen in full-glorious technicolor. Simple plots where the biggest conflict is whether a guy can win the big splash contest and nail the hot lead singer of the all girl band within the same day. Man, those were the days. And why can't we have more of them? With the amount of shit that goes straight to DVD, why can't we still have a few gems such as these? Give me back the thongs and the roller skates and the hot tubs and the skinny dipping and the sex in public places.
Am I asking too much? It's not like you would have to tap Paul Haggis to write. Just grab a dude. Any dude. Give him a sixer or a twelver, a couple of pencils, a simple plot line like Uncle Jerry has owned a Ski Lodge/Beach Hotel for 35 years but a local land shark threatens to tear it down for a shopping mall if Uncle Jerry can't make his payments. Nephew Jeff and his two buddies Fish and Scooter come to help Uncle Jerry save the Lodge/Hotel. Lock the dude in a hotel room for about a day to write and voila, you have your next Bunny Season or Sunny Tails or Thongs and Beer Bongs (you have my permission to use any of those).
It is time for the pendulum to swing back. For all of us to lower our standards just a bit, to regress a pinch and remember what got us through our tumultuous teens. It is time again to expect that if a woman is wearing a white t-shirt, it's going to get drenched. It is time again for bunnies to have long blond hair, big gorgeous racks and to hop from bed to bed. It is time again for the 80's Skin Flicks. We have waited long enough.
A group of guys, maybe in college or maybe older, set out to take a vacation on the beach or head to the mountains to do some tanning/skiing. Someone has a kick-ass beach-front house/cabin at the foot of a mountain or has a friend who owns a kick-ass beach-front house/cabin at the foot of a mountain. The babes flow like wine and they have names like Candy and Sunny. Wet t-shirt contests are the criteria for which all women are judged. The beer bongs go on for miles. No ethnic stereotype goes unexploited. No illegal drug goes unused. The hair is big the breasts are bigger. And most importantly, the skin is on parade for all to see.What happened to this lost art?
I'm talking specifically about Spring Break, Hardbodies and Hot Dog The Movie. Every childhood male fantasy projected against a big screen in full-glorious technicolor. Simple plots where the biggest conflict is whether a guy can win the big splash contest and nail the hot lead singer of the all girl band within the same day. Man, those were the days. And why can't we have more of them? With the amount of shit that goes straight to DVD, why can't we still have a few gems such as these? Give me back the thongs and the roller skates and the hot tubs and the skinny dipping and the sex in public places.
Am I asking too much? It's not like you would have to tap Paul Haggis to write. Just grab a dude. Any dude. Give him a sixer or a twelver, a couple of pencils, a simple plot line like Uncle Jerry has owned a Ski Lodge/Beach Hotel for 35 years but a local land shark threatens to tear it down for a shopping mall if Uncle Jerry can't make his payments. Nephew Jeff and his two buddies Fish and Scooter come to help Uncle Jerry save the Lodge/Hotel. Lock the dude in a hotel room for about a day to write and voila, you have your next Bunny Season or Sunny Tails or Thongs and Beer Bongs (you have my permission to use any of those).
It is time for the pendulum to swing back. For all of us to lower our standards just a bit, to regress a pinch and remember what got us through our tumultuous teens. It is time again to expect that if a woman is wearing a white t-shirt, it's going to get drenched. It is time again for bunnies to have long blond hair, big gorgeous racks and to hop from bed to bed. It is time again for the 80's Skin Flicks. We have waited long enough.
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6 comments:
Piper,
Adversarial relationship….Geesh! If I wanted to make our relationship adversarial I would say something to the extent of Taxi Driver was a piece of garbage, the only thing Fandango is good for is wiping your ass and Goodfellas is second rate attempt to cash in on the mob movie scene! I wouldn’t call our relationship adversarial, I would call it open.
As for the 80’s skin flicks, I couldn’t agree more. How many teenage boys “rubbed one out” thinking of Phoebe Cates in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High?” Does anyone not remember “Porky’s?” The problem, my dear Piper, is simple. The problem is two fold. The first is the hypocrisy of Hollywood itself! Without trying to make this a “political” issue the problem is those screaming for “freedom of expression” and “movies are art” when it serves their needs are the same people screaming about a movie because it “degrades” women. The problem is Hollywood is a business. IF a movie cannot make money, it most likely will not get made. (Gigli and Catwoman excluded) Forget the fact that good old fashioned teenaged smut is fun; a right of passage if you will. Oh, it has been tried. “American Pie” is about as close as they have come, but even that had to be ruined. They had to put a heartfelt message in it. Damn! What were they thinking?
Second, when we were teenagers in the 80’s we had to search to see skin! You remember…getting to know the person at the local video store so you could rent “R” rated movies without your parents knowing. HBO and the Emmanuelle series. Tons of work for 30 seconds in the bathroom! Oh the glory days. Now, we can thank Al Gore for his invention of the internet and the steady stream of porn at our finger tips. Half the fun of seeing those 80’s skin flicks was the excitement of finding them and knowing our parents would kick our ass if they knew we were watching them. The other half was we didn’t get to see women’s tits that easily and it was a novelty. Not so anymore. Thanks to IM’s, chat rooms, web cams and My Space skin is too easy to see.
So Piper, my cyber-Newman, I am afraid 80’s skin flicks have gone the way of rotary dial phones, evening news papers, and 8 track tapes….remembered fondly by those of an older generation, never to be relived by today’s youth!
I'm trying to imagine a movie like this without it being a spoof of an 80's skin flick.
Broken Lizard kind of did this with Club Dread, it was kind of the cheesy 80's skin / horor flick and I thought it was well done. A bunch of spring breakers on the beach showing a lot of skin, jugs, etc.
Club Dread was a spoof but not a good one. I love Broken Lizard and kept on waiting for the funny. Never found it.
Forgot about EuroTrip. That's a good example and not really a bad movie.
Good topic. A similar question I've had is that since we're still in the midst of this revival of 80s-style slasher movies, what has happened to nudity in today's horror movies? We have more blood now in horror than in the 80s, but none of the T&A ... which at one time was a prerequisite. Strange.
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