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| Images courtesy of Platinum Disc Corporation |
Ever since John Landis’ 1978 hit college fraternity comedy National
Lampoon’s Animal House hit movie theaters, studios and producers have been
clamoring to cash in on the low budget teen or otherwise youth sex comedy film
in quick succession. While that film
remains a staple of modern screwball comedy overkill in the same vein as
Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, it also inadvertently perhaps
spawned a byproduct known as sexploitation.
In other words, like the regional low budget horror film, the teen sex
comedy was less about laughs and more about getting young actresses to disrobe
on camera. Most of them being about
horny fraternities or sororities and the over-the-top ‘hilarity’ that typically
ensues, like The Beach Girls, Homework or Porky’s these
films became a dime a dozen often filmed quickly and on the fly.
Also proliferating somewhat around that time was the
emergence of the video game film which saw such fare as Joysticks and
today’s Cult Cinema feature Pinball Summer (aka Pick-up Summer)
from eventual Hungarian born My Bloody Valentine director George Mihalka. Though paving the way for such fare as The
Wizard and/or Grandma’s Boy, this 1981 Canadian sexploitation comedy
loosely centered around a pinball arcade replete with a strip-poker riff on
pinball got shoved aside and even had a title change officially to Pick-up
Summer. The debut film of character
actress Joy Boushel who picked up a sizable film career in horror including Terror
Train and David Cronenberg’s The Fly, Pinball Summer also
features quite a few other horror icons including Michael Zelniker (Naked Lunch)
in the lead role as Greg and Carl Marotte (My Bloody Valentine) as his
buddy Steve as they drive about to the amusement park in and out of beach
parties and a local burger joint.
Mostly a hang-around sex comedy involving the horny dudes wooing
local ladies Donna (Karen Stephen) and her sister Suzy (Helene Udy), the film
picks up speed when Sally (Joy Boushel) the stereotypically impossibly hot waitress
at the restaurant gets involved in an outdoor pinball striptease. Meanwhile sleazy biker gang leader Bert (Tom Kovacs
also in My Bloody Valentine) proves to be pinballer Greg’s arch nemesis,
culminating in a slightly rigged pinball game finale. Much of the material in between consists of
the usual antics of this sort of Canuxploitation including a drive-in theater playing
Krakatoa, East of Java that gets crashed by a gag involving a car tailpipe
stuffed with burgers. Oh and there’s a soundtrack
album of summer pop tunes rendered by Jay Boivin and Germain Gauthier that only
amplify the scuzz factor of the whole endeavor, strangely back in print after
popular demand on vinyl record. In
fairness, the film is decently lensed by creative collaborator Rodney Gibbons
who would reunite with the director on My Bloody Valentine. And the film is co-written by renowned
Canadian director Richard Zelniker and coproducer Fred J. Fox in his only
writing credit to date.
Arriving just at the tail end of the pinball craze as video
game arcades began pushing the pinball machines out, the film was retitled Pick-up
Summer though early release prints still have the Pinball Summer title
card in place. A decent box office
returner in North American drive-ins, the film was savaged in Canada as just
another bad tax shelter flick by critics still angry over Shivers. While a piece of floating public domain
curiosity now which can keep on drifting into oblivion, it still has some
occasional moments of entertainment value including a surprisingly visually
exciting pinball challenge finale replete with custom made pinball covers for
the machinery. No its not very good or
funny but it is occasionally sexy and did help usher in what would or wouldn’t
become My Bloody Valentine. Junk
food, maybe, but not a completely empty distraction.
--Andrew Kotwicki
