This poster for Private School (1983) really tells it all. Preppie guy and preppie girl are just about to fall in love when they are rudely interrupted by a trio of horny, crossdressing, wolf-whistling teen boys while a small army of private school girls moon them disrespectfully from below.
Isn't that how we all fell in love the first time? Plus, please check out the GIANT books the boy is sitting on - he must have the world's best collection of world atlases.
Private School is a quirky and totally memorable T&A teen movie from the early '80. "T&A" movies (tits and ass) have always been with us, but really blew up into a whole genre of money-making juggernauts with the enormous and unexpected success of director Bob Clark's infamous movie Porky's (1982).
Porky's opened the floodgates: Malibu Bikini Shop, Hot Dog, Hollywood Hot Tubs, Bikini Summer, Amazon Women on the Moon, and so many, many more ... including Private School.
In this iteration, a very young Matthew Modine falls for a very young Phoebe Cates, and she for him, but a laundry list of raunchy events conspire to foil their budding romance. Modine is by far the most popular and most clean cut boy in his group of ultra-preps... so naturally all the girls want him, especially the impossibly busty Betsy Russell, who flashes him repeatedly. And he is distracted, let me tell you. So distracted that Phoebe Cates despairs of the whole thing working out after all.
Meanwhile, Modine's three friends (including my favorite, Bubba, played by the inimitable Michael Zorek) decide that there is only one true goal in life: the rapid and repeated acquisition of tits and the accompanying ass.
To accomplish this, however, their hormone-addled brains really generate some insane plots - most infamously involving a lengthy and absurd cross-dressing sequence. I have no idea why screenwriters continually go for the old trope that men who want to get in the women's locker room or dressing room or bedroom or what have you can easily just throw on a skirt and a hat and BAM, incognito.
The ONLY time this idea has EVER worked is, of course, Some Like It Hot. And come on, nobody REALLY thinks Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon would have gotten away with that in real life. This movie has a little bit of fun with that idea - when one of the girls discovers her new girl friend is really the guy she's interested in (!), she teases him mercilessly until he is sweating profusely and I was sincerely worried he would stroke out on camera.
But paired alongside his horny prep friends are, naturally enough, horney private school girls. Unlike many T&A movies where the girls are just there to be ogled, they actually have personalities and character here. Now, we're not talking Meryl-Streep-in-The-Deer-Hunter level personae... but it's thicker and richer character than 9/10 of other movies like this. Usually the women exist only to giggle and decide that bras are for the birds... and panties too!!!! HEE HEE HEE. That pillow fight made me sweaty, let's shower!!! HEE HEE HEE.
But here, interestingly, the girls are just as interested in getting laid as the guys are - but mostly on their terms, which is refreshing and a surprisingly egalitarian turn. In fact, I would argue the girls really get the upper hand throughout the whole movie. They may show off the goods more, and are certainly subjected to the dreaded Objectifying Male Gaze a lot more, but are smarter, more aware, and just as fun.
There is also an interesting subplot that features not boy vs. girl, but old vs. young - even the teachers and parents in this movie are terminally sex-crazed!
The director, Noel Black, also made some movies I've never seen but have fantastic titles: The Electric Grandmother; Quarterback Princess; The Hollow Boy. I'm curious! The first two were in the '80s, so they'll appear here whenever I can dig them up. Interestingly, this movie apparently launched Phoebe Cates and Betsy Russell directly into their roles in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Meanwhile, Touched (1983) seems to be a really rare movie. I couldn't even find a single picture of the poster on Google to use for the blog! It plays on another successful movie trope that was big in the '80s - the mental patient coping with the real world.
Although the most famous variant of this plot is actually its polar reverse in The Cuckoo's Nest where we see normal guy Jack Nicholson coping with the wild mental ward, the '80s featured a few takes on the general idea. Rain Man is probably the most well-known, but The Dream Team and The Wizard and Frances all come to mind.
In Touched, a mental patient played by Robert Hays, really really wants to get out and just express himself in the real world. As always, the doctors and orderlies think this is a terrible idea, but he gets out anyway. In my favorite scene in the whole movie, he takes a job as a carnival performer, as the guy in the dunking tank who insults everyone. Watching him come alive with his insults and discovering that he's now allowed to do whatever he wants is a lot of fun.
Eventually he goes back to the asylum in secret to break out the girl he had some nice chemistry with, played by Kathleen Beller. They then begin to hash things out both between them and with the world at large.
The movie is very realistic in that it attempts to honestly and frankly portray to real people struggling with mental illness but who can also basically get along on their own in the world if they try really hard. Nobody overacts (except Ned Beatty in an odd-yet-somehow-fitting role as a carnival barker), all the emotions are sincere and believable, and the movie is touching in several spots.
However, it does have some problems. It's too slow, for one. Maybe it's TOO real in that sense - life doesn't always move fast enough as it is, and mimicking it might go a little far. It also can't really decide whether it's a quirky drama or a quirky comedy or what. The moods shift so rapidly it leaves the viewer behind. One moment you're in the middle of a tender love scene, only to have a scary fit a moment later, and a crazy laughing jag the scene right after that.
All in all, this is a nice little movie about realistic people struggling hard to make things work. I don't feel compelled to ever watch it again, but I don't regret the time I spent either.
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