SUN, SAND AND SWEAT (1983-1985)
4-MOVIE COLLECTION
Label: Mill Creek Entertainment
Region Code: A
Duration: 391 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Dgital Stereo 2.0
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen
Directors: James Bridges , George Bowers, Mark Griffiths, Sean S. Cunningham
Cast: Johnny Depp, Rob Morrow, John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, David Knell, Perry King, Grant Cramer, Teal Roberts
Mill Creek Entertainment have put together a four-film collection of classic '80s boner-jams guaranteed to please anyone who was a horny teen or adolescent in the '80s. This one brings together three juggernauts of heavy petting from the post-Porky's era and adds in the John Travolta - Jamie Lee Curtis aerobic drama Perfect (1985), which features some '80s hard bodies but falls short of the boner-popping awesomeness of Spring Break (1983), Hardbodies (1984) and Private Resort (1985). The '80s were a very special time, a decade oozing with cheesy comedies, among them were an arousing sub genre of cinema I fondly refer to as boner-jams, movies that often dealt with teens on spring break and were loaded with copious amounts of nudity. Late night cable was overstuffed with these back in the day, and I loved them. If I was cruising cable channels after hours and Hardbodies was airing I would watch in teen-ecstasy with no small amount of pant-swelling anticipation. In an age before the Internet and 24 hour porn these teen sex-comedies were my only source for spank-bank masturbation fuel.
Rating: R
Duration: 82 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: George Bowers
Cast: Johnny Depp, Ron Morrow, Emily Longstreth
Synopsis: Jack and Ben check in at a posh Florida resort, planning to spend every hour in hot pursuit of babes. But their plans hit a major detour when they try to bed the wife of a conniving jewel thief. They'll have to outsmart him, a nasty security guard and an obnoxious jock if they're ever going to get a moment alone with the girl of their dreams!
Private Resort stars Johnny Depp and Rob Morrow as teen dudes who prowl a local resort looking for sex, a movie littered with scene after scene of topless women. It was everything a teen could hope for from an '80s boner-comedy, plus it mixed in a goody subplot involving a inept jewel thief called The Maestro, played by Hector Elizondo, and a near nude scene from Leslie Easterbrook from Police Academy, which might be worth the price of admission alone. I am sure Johnny Depp is ashamed of this one, coming right on the heels of A Nightmare on Elm Street and a few years before his star-making turn in Oliver Stone's Platoon. Private resort is a standard teen sex comedy, perfectly throwaway and delightfully cheesy.
Rating: R
Duration:87 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Mark Griffiths
Cast: Grant Cramer, Teal Roberts, Gary Wood, Michael Rappaport, Roberta Collins
Synopsis: When three middle-aged geezers move into a swinging beach house, they hire a young stud to teach them how to score with the local beauties.'80s band Vixen and hundreds of Southern California's hottest swimsuit models co-star in the legendary cult comedy.
Hardbodies always seemed to me to be the flagship boner-jam movie, with a sort of creepy set-up of three middle-aged divorced men who enlist teen surfer dude Scotty Palmer who helps them pick-up young ladies on the beach in California. Scotty is played by Grant Cramer of Killer Klowns from Outer Space fame, and the movie paints him as a sort of con man with a way with the ladies, which the three divorced men exploit to their advantage. However, when Scotty begins to develop real feelings for a new girl in his life he tries to change his ways, but in a movie loaded with breasts and buns it will not be easy.
The movie also co-stars one Courtney Gains of Children of the Corn and The 'Burbs fame as Scotty's best mate Rags, a righteous '80s dude and one goofy looking sumbitch. Watching it again the movie has not aged well, but does well as a tawdry piece of '80s trash cinema, with an endless parade of topless young women, which is sort of what this set is all about.
Rating: R
Duration: 102 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Cast: David Knell, Perry Lang, Paul Land
Synopsis: Adam and Nelson are naive college students who have come to Fort Lauderdale to perform these rites of Spring Break. Due to a mix-up, the boys end up in the same room with a pair of experienced guys from New York who coach the boys on the finer points of seduction - with mixed results.
Spring Break (1983) comes by way of director Sean S. Cunningham who most will know brought us the Friday the 13th, this teen-sex comedy is sandwiched in-between Friday the 13th (1980) and the teen-thriller New Kids (1985), the movie is about a pair of teen-dweebs named Nelson (David Nell) and Adam (Perry Lang) who arrive in Fort Lauderale to reap the horny rewards of spring break. They find that they have to share their small hotel room with a pair of party-animals named Stu (Steve Bassette) and O.T. (Paul Land), two skilled pussy-hounds who take the nerds under their wings, learning them in the ways of bedding strange women.
Along the way the four find themselves involved in an effort to save the hotel from a buy-out scheme by the crooked brother-in-law of the owner, a plot involving the step-father of Nelson and a shady building inspector. This one is tame in the nudity department compared to Private resort and Hardbodies, dare I say even nuanced to a degree with a story with an an actual arc, it's not quite American Graffitti, but it is not too far removed from The Last American Virgin. It also features the best soundtrack of the set, with tunes from NRBQ, .38 Special and a bonafide theme song from Cheap Trick, which is not their best stuff. The movie is fun, there's a sweetness to it, a vibe that reminded me a bit of Caddyshack, with a sweet love interest, and of course the prerequisite amount of boobies.
Rating: R
Duration: 120 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: James Bridges
Cast: John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Anne De Salvo, Marilu Henner, Laraine Newman
Synopsis: Based on a series of Rolling Stone articles by Aaron Latham, this romance was set in the world of L.A.'s hip fitness scene. Rolling Stone reporter Adam Lawrence (John Travolta) comes to L.A. to write a story about a prominent businessman who's been arrested for drug dealing (shades of the John DeLorean scandal). He's also decided to research a piece on the exercise fad and how health clubs have become the "singles bars of the '80s." His boss (real-life Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner as himself) OK's the project. At a club called The Sports Connection, an incognito Adam meets the regulars, including promiscuous Linda (Laraine Newman), airhead Sally (Marilu Henner) and aerobics instructor Jessie (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former Olympic swimmer. Adam and Jessie begin a romance, but it ends when she discovers that he's there to trash her and the club in print. Conflicted, Adam wrestles with publishing the story, but the final decision isn't his.
Perfect is based on true-life story about a Rolling Stone journalist (John Tavolta) who is writing an article on how 80's L.A. fitness clubs are the new singles spot, when he falls for a aerobic instructor played by Jaime Lee Curtis (John Carpenter's Halloween). There is no nudity and no horny teens anywhere to be found, but I will say that the short-coiffed Curtis rocked the spandex and has some nice moves, with both her and Travolta turning is decent performances, but the movie just did nothing for me - this was the dud of the bunch, and it did not belong on this teen-lust collection.
The Sun, Sand and Sweat 4-movie collection from Mill Creek is a ton of boner-jam fun, three of the four movies are loaded with copious amounts of horny teen fantasies, and as a child of the '80s these were my cumming-of-age movies, and they look pretty good in HD. I wish they would have excised Perfect in favor of another trashy slice of '80s boner-comedy but the other three are top-notch '80s cheese. This can be picked-up for about $10, which is cheaper than what you can buy the now out-of-print Spring Break DVD for on Amazon or eBay. 3/5
