One thing I truly love about watching forgotten exploitation films are coming across moments where the filmmakers manage to transcend their obvious limitations (be it budget, talent or a combination of both) and create a sequence that truly stands out as something far more memorable than it has any right to be.

For the majority of its running time, Cheerleaders Wild Weekend (aka The Great American Girl Robbery) is little more than a blatant excuse to connive scenarios in which its titular characters are compelled to expose their breasts, but hidden at the end is a genuinely engaging heist sequence as breathlessly enjoyable as anything you could expect to see in a major studio film of the era.

So what I’m saying is that to get to the good part of this movie, you’ll have to sit through a lot of nudity featuring a bunch of attractive young women dressed in short skirts and very tight T-shirts. There are clearly worse ways to spend your time.

As the kidnapper/mastermind/former pro football player, co-writer Jason Williams (of Flesh Gordon fame) manages to walk the hero/villain line surprisingly well — at least enough to earn the final moment of connection he shares with the film’s nominal heroine (Kristine DeBell, a Playboy cover girl who went hardcore in the X-rated Alice in Wonderland before moving on to mainstream fare like Meatballs and The Big Brawl).

The rest of the performances are mostly abysmal, but in that amusingly porno way, that actually adds charm to a production rather than detracts from it. —Allan Mott

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Found National Lampoon’s European Vacation too mature and sophisticated? Then Eurotrip is for you. Not only is it from the producers of Road Trip, its plot seems like a discarded draft of Road Trip. After being dumped by his girlfriend on the day of his high school graduation, Scotty (Scott Mechlowicz) receives an e-mail from his German pen pal, who suggests some face-to-face consolation. Wrongly believing Mieke to be a guy, Scotty tells his online friend to “fuc off,” only to learn that Mieke (Euro pop tart Jessica Boehrs) is, in fact, a hot blonde. His hasty reply results in her blocking his e-mails, so he foregoes a summer internship to hightail it to Berlin to explain himself. (Couldn’t he just have e-mailed her from another account?)

Accompanying him is the requisite annoying/horny best pal, and because no Hollywood teen-trip movie is complete without crazy shenanigans and hee-larious misunderstandings, they also encounter enraged soccer hooligans, a robot mime, a creepy Italian guy (SNL’s Fred Armisen), lots of scraggly naked fat dudes, oft-topless hookers and, most belabored, the Pope.

Eurotrip aims for crude laughs and earns some in gags involving a cymbal-playing monkey, David Hasselhoff and the aforementioned Armisen. But much of it is just being vulgar or stupid for vulgar and stupid’s sake. I guess either you find a near-incestuous encounter between inebriated brother and sister incredibly humorous or you don’t. Ditto a kindergartener who apes noted Jew-killer Hitler, or a impoverished girl peeing while standing up on the sidewalk. I’m sure the kids will eat it up.

It’s worth noting that minute for minute, Eurotrip contains more gratuitous nudity than any movie of recent memory; the film is bustling with breast-rubbing, barely dressed prostitutes and public sexual encounters … and, unfortunately, dozens of uncircumcised Europenises in full view. Not since The Exorcist has the big screen seen such horrors. How in the hell did they get Matt Damon to cameo? —Rod Lott

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The late Blake Edwards is probably one of the last filmmakers you’d ever think would dip his toes into the murky waters of post-modernism, but it’s impossible not to notice the meta qualities of S.O.B. (we’re told it stands for “Standard Operational Bullshit”), his ode to the crass insanities of the filmmaking industry.

How else would you describe a movie about a filmmaker who attempts to create a hit by baring the breasts of his movie-star wife — a famous paragon of onscreen innocence and virtue — that just happened to be made by a filmmaker who was attempting to create a hit by baring the breasts of his movie-star wife, who just happened to be Maria Von Trapp and Mary Fucking Poppins?

Unlike the film within the film, the sight of Julie Andrews’ breasts didn’t cause anyone to rush to the box office, but that doesn’t mean S.O.B. isn’t a classic satire of early ’80s Hollywood culture. While occasionally overly broad and at least 30 minutes too long (I would have cut most of the last 20 minutes and everything to do with Loretta Swit’s gossip columnist), the movie is often laugh-out-loud funny and features an amazing cast doing what they do best.

This includes William Holden, appearing as a slightly happier version of the same character he played in the similarly themed Network; Richard Mulligan as the crazed producer who decides to transform his G-rated flop into a X-rated hit; a young Rosanna Arquette, who doesn’t say or do much, but who is braless and topless just long enough to earn a mention; and Robert Preston, who easily steals the show as the laid-back physician who’s seen it all at least twice, and done it himself at least once.

And, because you are wondering, despite the fact that Julie Andrews was 46 when the movie was made, they’re real and they’re spectacular. —Allan Mott

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A condemned nobleman sits in his jail cell, mere hours away from his appointment with a noose. The epitome of good grace, he’s seems to have accepted his fate as calmly as any man could, although he is innocent of the murder for which he has been convicted. With so little time left, he has to hurry if he is to properly jot down the tale of his rise to the nobility and all of the people he really did kill before finding himself in this somewhat ironic predicament.

Kind Hearts and Coronets is not just a black comedy; it is the black comedy by which the entire genre should be judged. It is the story of a bitter, deceitful, murderous, narcissistic sociopath whom you’ll happily root for as he purposefully kills all of the useless relatives standing between him and the noble birthright he believes was denied him by their class snobbery.

As played by Dennis Price, Louis Mazzini is so upfront and charming about his crimes and his reasons for committing them that it’s only in retrospect you realize there might be something wrong with him. It’s easy to imagine yourself in his place, doing exactly the same thing. The only reason he isn’t considered one of the greatest villains in film history is because writer/director Robert Hamer so expertly presents him as its hero, it’s impossible to think of him as anything else.

By far the best movie to come out of Britain’s estimable Ealing Studios, Kind Hearts and Coronets is one of those timeless, black-and-white films whose sensibility is so unique and perfect, it feels as if it could have been made yesterday. I think I’ve seen it at least 20 times since I first discovered it, and I’ve been shocked and surprised by its brilliance on every viewing. —Allan Mott

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Happy Hour (also known as Sour Grapes) is the very rare example of a comedy that made me sad — not because it was irredeemably terrible, but rather because it consistently made me laugh. This was especially surprising because I went into it with extremely low expectations. When a film’s biggest names include Jamie Farr, Rich Little, Eddie Deezen and Tawny Kitaen, it’s hard not to brace for the worst.

But, in this case, the worst never happens. Instead, the movie finds the same strange balance between absurdist buffoonery and prescient satire also seen in the underrated Killer Tomatoes franchise, which isn’t a coincidence since Happy Hour was writer/director John De Bello’s sophomore effort following the cult success of 1978’s infamous Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Recognizable TV character actor Richard Gilliland stars as a chemist who accidentally discovers an additive that makes Marshall Beer dangerously addictive. The promotion that results enrages his lab partner/ex-girlfriend, prompting her to steal half of the formula and take it to Marshall’s largest competitor. Little, who limits himself to just one (terrible) Cary Grant impression, is the James Bond-like spy hired to steal the formula from Marshall, while sleazy scumbag Farr and his psycho partner Kitaen (in a clear bit of typecasting) are tasked to steal the formula from Marshall’s competition.

While the movie has its share of clumsy moments (more the result of budget than anything else), Happy Hour is far funnier than it has any right to be, which makes the fact that De Bello is now working in advertising instead of still making features the cause of my post-credits melancholy. There’s no one who can’t tell me he shouldn’t have been at least as prolific as Dennis Fucking Dugan. —Allan Mott

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