Last American Virgin, The (1982)

Can a weak final act sink an otherwise terrific film? I pondered this question after my viewing of “The Last American Virgin.” After some thought, I came to the conclusion that no, a weak final act can’t sink a great film. It may hold it back from its full potential, but it won’t tarnish the journey toward the breaking point.

“The Last American Virgin” is a raunchy teen sex comedy in the tradition of “Porky’s.” What sets it apart from that film is its frank honesty. While “Porky’s” may be a funnier film, it’s not as poignant and in touch with the teenage spirit. It’s more a fantasy built from real parts than a pure representation of its subject matter. “The Last American Virgin” is the opposite: an honest look into the lives of teenagers in love and lust with fantastical scenarios sprinkled in throughout.

The film follows the travails of three friends: Gary (Lawrence Monoson), David (Joe Rubbo), and Rick (Steve Antin). The three are at that dangerous crossroads of life, where raging hormones and bad decisions collide. All three long for sex, with Rick the only truly successful one. He’s rugged, good-looking, and a ladies man at heart. David may be overweight, but that never plays into his predicament. He’s rather confident in himself, which wins over the hearts of some, but his anxiety gets the better of him in certain situations. And then there’s Gary, the main protagonist of the film. He’s the prototypical nice guy; the friend who will loan Rick the keys to his grandmother’s house so he can get laid. He too lets his anxiety get in the way, but for a different reason.

Gary wants love. He doesn’t know it until he meets Karen (Diane Franklin), the new girl in school. It’s love at first sight, which only exists in movies and with teenagers. I’m guilty of believing in it and I’m sure you are too. I’m sure you’re also guilty of concocting a plan in which to talk to your newfound crush, one much more complicated than simply saying hello. Gary pops the tires on Karen’s bike and conveniently drives by in his pizza delivery van to give her a lift to school. It’s cheesy, innocent, and completely true of the teenage persuasion.

Wouldn’t you know it, Karen falls for Rick instead. And thus begins Gary’s descent into self-loathing. Opportunities arise for him to lose his virginity, his initial goal in life, but he rejects them because they’re not Karen. He doesn’t quite know this is why, as he still tries valiantly to have sex. Karen’s friend, Rose (Kimmy Robertson), shows interest in him, but he rejects her initially. He only accepts her due to lust, and even then he struggles to go all the way. He almost loses it to a promiscuous older woman he delivers pizza to, but he lets both Rick and Gary get an opportunity. When his time arrives, her squeeze comes home to cock-block him. Subconsciously, he cock-blocked himself as he voluntarily lets his friends go first. Then there’s the prostitute, who he does actually lose his virginity to, but it goes so quick and is incredibly awkward that it’s unfair to truly count it. He does contract crabs, though, which is shoehorned in for some cheap gags, but they all elicit laughter, so it’s all good.

The title actually refers to Karen and not Gary, as Rick’s conquest is to be with whom he views as the last American virgin. Metaphorically, it refers to every teenager going through puberty, most specifically the males. Both genders long for sex; it’s only natural. Women want it to be special and rightfully so. Most men, however, view it as a burden. A burning desire that weighs them down. They hear of their friends and classmates losing their virginities and feel left out. They don’t care how they get it, just that they get it.

Truth be told, most men lie about losing their virginities. While some do in fact lose it in loveless fashion, most still pine for their first time to be special, even if they don’t know it. That’s what makes Gary so endearing and this film so honest. Writer/director Boaz Davidson observes teenage lust and puppy love from an adult perspective. He’s looking back on his own self and coming to realize what directed him. He’s smart enough to not allow Gary to realize why and even allows him to have his heart broken.

Then comes the final act. It goes against the honesty and innocent tone of the film, despite Davidson’s best intentions. I won’t reveal the twist that the film crumbles underneath, but I will state that it’s reminiscent of an after-school special. It’s of a real situation certain teenagers face, but isn’t handled seriously. Peppy hits from the time still croon over the soundtrack and a cheeky montage contains an otherwise heartbreaking scenario. To call it sickening would be wrong, as it’s not meant to be. Davidson is truly approaching it with heart, but it isn’t befitting of the situation. It almost sinks the film. Almost.

The actual final shot of the film, which has also drawn the ire of many, is actually quite good. If it weren’t for the after-school special that preceded it, I’d go so far to call it excellent. It’s depressingly honest and, while a complete one-eighty of the film’s tone, complements the story. It just doesn’t resonate as much as it should because the final act as a whole doesn’t complement the story.

It’d be wrong of me to say “The Last American Virgin” was tanked because of its final act because it most certainly wasn’t. Three-fourths of the film is clever, charming, and very funny! Davidson is able to incorporate the standard sex romp humor in with his ingenuous direction. A scene in which the three friends substitute Sweet’n Low in for cocaine to please potential partners is in line with raunchy comedies, but truthful in how the teenage mind thinks. It’s both funny and genuine, which is what most of the film is built upon.

MVT: Boaz Davidson. His script and direction, outside of the final act, is as intelligent as the film is raunchy. He’s not content with churning out a simple teenage sex romp, but determined to showcase the innocence and reality of it all. He may get in over his head, but his intentions are in the right place.

Make or Break: I can’t quite pinpoint what made the film, as it’s the combination of sequences that reflect the true beauty of the film. If I had to choose, it’d be when Gary first discovers that Karen is with Rick, as it sets in motion the true moral of the story: sex is better when in love and love is what most truly desire.

Final Score: 8.5/10

TerrorVision (1986)

Plato's Retreat was a Manhattan swinger's club started in the late 1970s by Larry Levenson. It basically gave people who want to have unfettered, heterosexual (and this was stressed by the management, though lesbianism was okay) intercourse a place to do so. The club and its owner(s) espoused the sort of hedonism that the era was known for before the rise of HIV/AIDS called attention to the perils of promiscuous, unprotected sex. Reportedly, Levenson structured the rules to ensure that the women outnumbered the men, and he provided multiple amenities for its members, including a sauna and pool. If you've ever seen the type of people who frequented discos (or were one yourself), then you know that they had a sort of primitivistic quality that seemed to produce a fine coating of…something with which they were perpetually glazed. I can only hope that Plato's Retreat had the overwhelming smell of chlorine permeating every square inch, at least some indication that the proprietors attempted to keep the premises and its (very) public conveniences somewhat hygienic. Unfortunately, I'd be willing to gamble that this was not the case, and the pool alone probably looked like the chunder-filled pool of Ted Nicolaou's TerrorVision. Now I don't know (nor do I care to know) what your particular bent is, but the mere thought of fuzzy, chunky, possibly-living things crawling all over my nethers is simply unromantic, my son.

Over a marvelously cheapjack alien world establishing shot, we are informed that we are on the planet Pluton looking at the Mutant Creature Disposal Unit section of the planetary Sanitation Department. Alien Pluthar (William Paulson) wrestles a mutant into the disposal and zaps the being off into space (via a cleverly undisguised USS Enterprise [the interstellar one, not the nautical one] model). After bouncing (replete with "funny" sound effects) off multiple planets as if they were pinball bumpers, the signal carrying the mutant winds up hitting (you guessed it) Earth. Meanwhile, jumpsuited, ascot-sporting dullard, Stanley Putterman (Gerrit Graham), finishes up installing his new satellite dish, while wife, Raquel (Mary Woronov), aerobicizes. Son, Sherman (Chad Allen), runs war games with military- and absent-minded Grampa (Bert Remsen), and punk daughter, Suzy (Diane Franklin), leaves to go on a date with metalhead boyfriend, O.D. (Jonathan Gries). I'll give you three guesses where the monster from the prologue lands.

Nicolaou's film (produced by the Brothers Band under the Empire Pictures banner) is first and foremost a satire of the "Me Generation" and their progeny. The screenplay (also written by Nicolaou) divides the characters up into three distinct subsets, each a broad stereotype. So, Stanley and Raquel are hedonistic swingers solely focused on their own pleasures. Suzy and O.D. are dimwitted, heavy metal enthusiasts. Sherman (as in the tank, get it?) and Grampa are warmongers who want to shoot first, ask questions later. When MAD Magazine does a satire (or at least when they used to), they very cleverly highlighted the most egregious faults of a movie, show, and/or genre in the short space they were provided. It helped that they were drawn in a caricatured style by such greats as Mort Drucker, Angelo Torres, Jack Davis, and others. They played, because they were already removed from reality by their medium, but to do the same in a live-action feature film is not nearly so easy. For starters, there's a lot of time to fill, and if you repeatedly crack the audience over the head with the same joke, they will tire of it quickly. Further, you have to overcome the hurdle of dealing with actors rather than drawings. Viewers instinctually want to connect with actors they see on screen (this is, after all, one of the primary reasons they go to the movies in the first place). But when they see a live-action cartoon peopled with one-dimensional parodies, there is a disconnect. 

Naturally, a film can still be effective and even enjoyable despite these things, but they are obstacles that require a deft hand behind the camera. Nicolau tries by filming the movie primarily on soundstages, thus granting himself a large degree of control (in theory). His lighting is garish and unnatural, similar to Bava's, and even the sky in the distance is purple and pink. The Putterman's are art consumers ("I know a place where you can get all this stuff real cheap") of the tackiest sort. Every painting on their walls has at least one bare nipple, and several depict light bondage. The Roman-style statue in the foyer has breasts that act as fountains. Every character is self-centered in one way or another, and their immobility in this regard makes them unappetizing (to the viewer, perhaps, but not to the monster). As I said, though, since the characters are only skin-deep in every conceivable way, you not only don't care what happens to them, but you want it to hurry up and happen faster. It's possible that this dearth of character was intended by Nicolaou as part of the lampoon, but it comes off mostly as lazy writing.

The filmmakers also use the film as a mild critique of television culture. The monster enters the house through the televisions. The characters think that Pluthar is a character in a movie when they see him pleading for us humans to render our TV sets inoperable for the next two hundred years. Grampa believes that only war stories and horror movies are educational, because they focus on survival (that's actually pretty sound reasoning). Horror host, Medusa (Jennifer Richards), dresses like a monster and puts on a performance while on air, but off air, she's just another egocentric phony. The concept of television being both alluring and dangerous is nothing new. Cronenberg's Videodrome covered the bases on the subject thoroughly. It's a subject that is ripe for investigation, but TerrorVision only gives it cursory attention (except in its background/symbolic context). The filmmakers also use real B-movie footage, rather than taking the time and (more importantly) money to come up with their own mini-parodies. And this leads to one of the film's biggest weaknesses. It is never consistent enough or fully committed enough to come together at the end. The characters flip-flop from likable to unlikable, reasonable to unreasonable and back for no other reason than that's how the director needs them to act for that scene. While there are some interesting notions in the film and it's worth a perfunctory glance (and it must be said, Graham and Woronov are excellent, as always), it's as if Nicolaou were channel-surfing in his mind as he wrote the screenplay. And that can be really annoying when you're not in control of the remote.

MVT: Buechler's monster is slimy and interesting to look at (and you get to see a lot of it), and best of all, it's huge. You have to give the man credit for being able to pull off a creature creation like that for a low budget film. You get the feeling that everyone was so impressed with it that they included it in more of the picture and rightfully so.

Make Or Break: The moment that Grampa shows up in military dress with toy fighter jets glued to his hat, the viewer suddenly realizes that they can erase all hope for any attempt at subtlety from their minds. From that point on, whether you enjoy the film or not depends completely and utterly on how easy you are to please. I admit I can be a little more difficult in this regard than some.

Score: 5.5/10

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