Private School

PRIVATE SCHOOL
(R, Universal Pictures, 89 mins., theatrical release date: July 29, 1983)

In my review of Mischief, a passing reference was made to a movie called Private School. For some godforsaken reason, I chose to revisit it in the hopes that I didn't have to use a two-word review that could sum up whatever appeal the movie had, which in '80s teen sex comedies tend to be as flimsy as the women's garments. And now I feel safe in dispatching this one with my original blunt, no-frills description:

Privates, Cool!

Thanks for your time, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip the concierge and happy trails.

Maybe Mischief really was a passion project for Noel Black, because nothing in Privates, Cool...I'm sorry, Private School indicates a genuine filmmaking effort from all involved. Based on what I read in old newspaper clippings, this isn't even Noel Black's baby at all. Instead, you can place/blame whatever auteur tendencies are to be gleaned on the producer, Tel Aviv-born R. Ben Efraim. After making a mint on Private Lessons, this one-man Golan-Globus wannabe reportedly market-researched the hell out of his follow-up, going so far as to cater to "live teenage audiences" directly. To quote Universal Pictures' press kit, as relayed by Skip Sheffield of the Boca Raton News, Efraim deployed "the most sophisticated principles of testing and evaluation in all phases of production."

Yeah, right. Fancy terms for condescension aren't endearing to me even if I want nothing more than a 50-minute sizzle reel of T&A padded out for box-office legitimacy. Hardbodies had more of a sense of humor in its advertising blitz than this, not to mention better dialogue and direction.

For all I know, the motherfucker who produced Mitchell may as well have been influenced by his fellow Israelis when Lemon Popsicle was breaking big in Hebrew Land, which of course led to The Last American Virgin. Private School is a retread of that low landmark rather than the Sylvia Kristel-is-My Tutor antics of Efraim's previous smash, only without the clinical attention paid to the act of intercourse, not to mention the subsequent abortion and betrayal. Efraim apparently willed into being a transparent ogling party, and based on the high volume of female flesh on show, I doubt he reached out to adolescent girls one whit.

All you need to know about Efraim's legitimacy can be summed up by his three most outstanding credits which followed: Private Resort, Private Lessons 2, Private Lessons: Another Story. I'm sure a scientific cross-section of Skinemax viewers helped him fulfill that potential.

The only thing Privates...Private School has going for it is song which heralds the opening credits, Harry Nilsson's "You're Breaking My Heart." Ten years prior, the rakish iconoclast who popularized such couplets as "Everybody's talkin' at me/I don't hear a word they're sayin,'" "I can't live/If living is without you" and "You put de lime in de coconut/You drank 'em bot' up" reacted to romantic disappointment in a decidedly profane yet pithy act of subversion, with George Harrison's slide guitar egging him on. Such a gloriously rude anthem makes an ideal choice to kick off some Animal House-worthy antics, but Private School never proves as inspired as that one solitary musical cue.

(Rick Springfield, The Stray Cats, Bow Wow Wow, Trio, and Vanity 6 are the other name attractions on the soundtrack, with Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs' "Li'l Red Riding Hood" the sole oldie.)

Instead, we get a trite series of conflicts between boys and girls, young and old, all of them tedious louts. The female students of Cherryvale Academy defy their repressed headmistress, get peeped at by the male students of Freemount Academy and everyone unites for a PTA pool party where a limousine loudspeaker broadcasts some salacious distraction. Alleged scribes Dan Greenburg & Suzanne O'Malley rehash way too many exhausted clichés under the pompous notion of "fun" (the one hurdle these prurient '80s teen romps constantly trip over). The imbecilic anarchy unwittingly becomes its own form of fascism.

There's a sex education class presided over by a listless Sylvia Kristel, whose juvenile name is the only designation of any laughter, not that it delivers. There's Ray Walston making a fool of himself in ways Amy Heckerling deigned not to do. There's the unbilled Martin Mull as a jabbering drugstore clerk who complicates a routine over-the-counter request for condoms (they were available on the shelves in the early '80s, for Christ's sake!). There's lanky Matthew Modine as Jim in love with Phoebe Cates' Christine, plotting out a romantic weekend of virginal conjugation (Cates gets to play innocent and sing, but her presence is just another bust). And, of course, there's Betsy Russell as Jordan, the class exhibitionist out to wreck things for the happy couple when she's not being pestered by Jim's buddy, Bubba (Michael Zorek), who appears to be hitting it off nicely with Christine's rebellious friend Betsy (Kathleen Wilhoite) whenever he's not sating his excruciating voyeurism.

Yes, the spank-tacular sight of Betsy Russell on horseback with her blouse open is meant to be an act of sabotage, an attempt to lure Jim all for herself with those teacup nipples. But what to make of a scene later when Jordan corners loverboy himself after he turns up as part of a drag-dressing stunt with Bubba and dork Roy (Jonathan Prince)? Vamping and undressing and raising the thermostat to drive him crazy, you'd think she'd make the most of what would appear to be having Jim delivered on a silver platter. Nah, it never gets amusingly bitchy or erotic, just leery and lame. Jordan's a dim bimbo in such a constant state of undress that when she's supposed to be truly humiliated, it never registers.

Good for sales of Vaseline, though!

Porky's and Mischief sure look like perfect 10s compared to the mindless, endless, useless peek-a-boo of Privates, Cool. Flunk this shit.

Cannon Fodder: Mata Hari (1985)

MATA HARI
(R, Cannon Films, 108 mins., theatrical release date: September 1985)

"Bolero 2: Emmanuelle 4.5." That is my pet name for Mata Hari.

The last time I reviewed a shameless softcore period piece starring an over-the-hill sex symbol, I felt like giving up on The Cannon Group entirely. There's only so much idiocy and bad judgment one can take from Golan & Globus before you rue the day you decided to investigate their track record for yourself. And the next time I revisit Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, I'm going to wince from the experiences of watching Bolero, The Apple and now Mata Hari uncontrollably.

With Bo Derek no longer interested in keeping ties with Cannon, the tacky twosome turned to her Dutch doppelganger, Sylvia Kristel, to satiate their opportunism. In the wake of 1981's Lady Chatterley's Lover, which reunited her with the director who stripped her to fame back in 1974...well, that D.H. Lawrence adaptation didn't get released in America until May 1982. Preceding Lady Chatterley's Lover theatrically was Kristel's appearance in the movie which kicked down the doors for glut of teenage sex movies to come, Private Lessons.

The multilingual model with the 164 I.Q. went Hollywood as the duplicitous French servant who romances/titillates a 15-year-old rich boy. Private Lessons was a sleeper hit even with Kristel being body-doubled, thus the European embodiment of adult-minded erotica became another oversexed pawn in a more disreputable liaison. Kristel's popularity encouraged Louisa Moritz, Joan Collins and Jacqueline Bisset to also act out variations on this cougar cliché. By the time a real movie of quality, Risky Business, arrived to put its predecessors to shame, Kristel came full circle with a "special appearance" as a sex education teacher in Private School.

As I mentioned previously, Cannon thought about making a follow-up to The Last American Virgin which would've had Kristel getting conquered by the three boors. It never happened, mainly because I would imagine the idea of Lawrence Monoson finding solace in Sylvia Kristel's bosom would've been a straight-up copy of Private Lessons. And we already had that with My Tutor and They're Playing with Fire, the latter starring Eric "Philly" Brown himself opposite Cannon regular Sybil Danning.

Instead, in 1985, Hot Chili became Virgin's unofficial sequel by virtue of having Joe Rubbo and Louisa Mortiz star in it (as well as plagiarism from all of the previous Lemon Popsicle movies). Sylvia Kristel, meanwhile, found herself in a more typical refuge for aging if bankable screen sirens working under Golan-Globus: The Out-of-Costume Drama.

The legend of Mata Hari, the sensual entertainer who was tried and executed for enemy espionage during WWI, became the basis for Kristel's second Cannon vehicle. Whereas Bolero invoked and sullied the prestige of silent film star Rudolph Valentino, Mata Hari makes hash of a role which was previously handled by Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich (see Dishonored) and Jeanne Moreau. Poor Kristel may look beautiful in the buff, director Curtis Harrington pitching in a handful of titillating diversions from the mind games surrounding Lady MacLeod. But she cannot command the screen in any other manner besides undressed, and this '70s sex kitten is reduced to a dust bunny in the 1980s.

There's no tragedy in the unraveling of how Mata Hari is played by both the French and German armies at the moment their top commanders catch her eye in a museum. There's nothing to invest in the estranged friendship between these sporting rivals, Karl von Bayerling (Christopher Cazenove) and Georges Ladoux (Oliver Tobias). And any chance for engaging with the various assassinations, mutinies and counterattacks is thrown way off balance by both a sloppy script and the film's awareness of its own sexploitative sensationalism.

So when Mata Hari makes love to a solider on the train to Berlin, they are rudely interrupted by a poison blow dart landing in the stranger's back. Her interrogations lead her to cross paths with nefarious Fraulein Doktor (Gaye Brown), who specializes in psychological manipulation at the cost of Mata Hari's romantic interests with von Bayerling. The disgraced dancer is then pinballed between working for von Bayerling and Ladoux, all the while antsy viewers anticipate the latest flash of skin from Kristel, whether it be from masturbating in the bathtub (replete with keyhole-peeping imbeciles) or a topless fencing bout against a spitfire contessa.

By the time Mata Hari has been row-boated to Java by the amorous von Bayerling, learns about the magic of invisible ink and makes her way across German battlefields to rescue her mortally wounded paramour, Fraulein Doktor has constructed a time-bomb which Mata Hari races to defuse. Of course, she is captured by the French and awaits her inevitable martyrdom in the firing line. Yet the plotline is overstuffed and so portentous that it stomps all over any chances for tension or pathos. What should be a resonant conclusion turns out to be one more bogus filmmaking choice, which is nothing new in the dumpster files of Golan-Globus.

Despite his renown in independent horror circles, Curtis Harrington wound up on the opposite side of the coin compared to Tobe Hooper. Whereas the Texas Chainsaw Massacre auteur invested his trio of Cannon productions with all manner of perverse idiosyncrasies, Harrington (Queen of Blood, What's the Matter with Helen?, Ruby) fails to liven up the movie enough to distract viewers from the locked-down locations (Budapest badly doubling for all European locales) and perfunctory cinematography (by Cannon regular David Gurfinkel of The Apple and Revenge of the Ninja). Under his auspice, Harrington gives Mata Hari a chintzy look which is not helped by the unwieldy performances and the undependable plot.

I mostly concluded that Mata Hari was basically a romance novel heroine writ mythical, torn between two lovers and helpless against the dogs of war. Take out the erotica and all that's left is but a Stephenie Meyer prototype. If you want a shorter, sexier take on this material, watch the middle vignette of Second Time Lucky instead.