MVD Rewind Collection: Joysticks (1983) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of MVD Entertainment Group

Decades before Grandma’s Boy, The FP and more recently Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie popularized the satirical screwball sexploitation comedy as parody and celebration of the video gaming popular culture of the present millennia, Michigan born jack of all trades film worker Greydon Clark who tackled everything from blaxploitation to the horror comedy film with a hint of science fiction teamed up with renowned character actor Joe Don Baker (Cape Fear; GoldenEye) for the raunchy screwball comedy Joysticks. 
 
Made at the height of the video game craze based on an experience the director had watching kids in line at the theater for his movie Wacko killing time playing arcade machine games, the film originally entitled Video Madness was an attempt to marry the debauched party animal hilarities of National Lampoon’s Animal House with Atari.  While the film became a hit with filmgoers as a staple of early 1980s arcade gaming, tragically its distributor went under but somehow survived VHS tape runs over the years before landing a new director-approved remaster through Scorpion Releasing.  While that version was discontinued, the rights have reverted back to MVD who are re-releasing the film as part of their Rewind Collection replete with a custom slipcover, reversible art and a mini poster designed to look like an Atari 2600 cartridge label.
 
In a random small American town is a video game arcade managed by Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis) which attracts the usual miscreants of horny teenagers and basement dwellers who just want to party.  However, their operations are frowned upon by local businessman Joseph Rutter (Joe Don Baker in his second Clark movie following Wacko) who particularly dislikes seeing his princess daughter Patsy (Corinne Bohrer) mingling with the gamers.  With his dim-witted nephews Rutter attempts to smear the reputation of the arcade in the hopes of shutting it down.  However, Bailey and his two pals nerdy Eugene (Leif Green) and slovenly McDorfus (Jim Greenleaf doing John Belushi as a gamer) aren’t ready to lose their happy place without a fight, leading to a climactic video game duel with local punk gaming extraordinaire King Vidiot (Jon Gries from Napoleon Dynamite).

 
Somewhere between opening scenes of Wargames (released that same year), Porky’s for sheer crassness and a progenitor to Grandma’s Boy replete with its own JP played with absurd pretend punk relish by Jon Gries, the intentionally sleazy tongue-in-cheek arcade sex comedy Joysticks curiously like The Wizard after it became a launching pad for then-unreleased Super Pac-Man.  Produced and directed by Greydon Clark and penned by Al Gomez, Mickey Epps and Curtis Burch, the $300,000 indie was reportedly shot in a mere thirteen days by recurring collaborator Nicholas Von Sternberg with incidental rock tracks overseen by John Caper Jr.  

Mostly the film is memorable for Jim Greenleaf as the film’s resident gluttonous party animal gamer McDorfus, Jon Gries’ unexpected bit part as a punk gamer and the screen presence of multi-talented character actor Joe Don Baker.  An intimidating heavy usually playing in comedies with some dramatic work here and there, he’s most certainly the film’s most overqualified player and he has impish idiotic fun in this as the scheming bad guy.

 
Going on to rake in nearly $4 million in the US alone, the low budget regional sexploitation comedy playing up to the high watermarks and low bottom barrel scraping sides of what people thought they knew about the arcade gaming industry while met with mixed critical reception nevertheless became a cult item integral to Atari videogaming lore.  Initially lost to time over the years of VHS copies passed down generations, the film was briefly resurrected by Scorpion Releasing in 2015 including a director-commentary by and comprehensive video interview with Greydon Clark.  

Thanks to some changing hands and some new love injected into repackaging the film from MVD including poster art tailored to look like an Atari cartridge box, collectors who missed the boat on the Scorpion pressing now have a chance to bring this forgotten but still highly entertaining Atari 2600 era arcade arena comedy into their homes with a joystick in one hand and a beer in the other.

--Andrew Kotwicki