Sometimes our favorite B-movies are too wretched for even the coolest cult-video sections. Jerry Renshaw has discovered the joys of ordering videos from catalogues — and watching them! — Margaret Moser
Here’s a nice seamy slice
of sleaze from Something Weird Video‘s catalogue (Send $5 to: Dept. S.U.N., Box 33664, Seatle, WA 98133) of scratchy movie prints with stars and directors you’ve never heard of. Teenage Tramp (1973, D: Anton Holden; with Robin Lane, Alisha Fontaine) is the saga of pretty blonde Kim, who’s taking it on the lam with her draft-dodger boyfriend. The two are picked up by an ugly-ass older guy in a Ryder truck who’s so gross, you can damn near smell his bad breath in the close-ups — he pulls over and paws Kim while her loser boyfriend obliviously naps in back. Eventually, they arrive at Kim’s pretty-but-prudish older sister’s house, where Kim hits her up for the chunk of inheritance she’s due.
Big sis is feuding with her own boyfriend (a dead ringer for Mac Davis) and gets sorely offended by Kim swimming nekkid in the pool. Naturally, Kim seduces sister’s boyfriend. Come to find out, Kim is also fleeing the clutches of a hippie cult that’s in the sway of a not-very-charismatic Manson/Svengali type; the next thing you know, the house is overrun by a gaggle of ratty-looking weirdos smokin’ grass, playin’ bongos, and doing The Frug by the pool to some phony-baloney rock music. The Manson wannabe wants Kim to deal drugs and glom the inheritance, so he ODs sis on goofballs and booze. Kim flees with the faux-Mac Davis but gets an intuitive flash and she returns in time to save the day.
But wait a minute — wasn’t the hippie thing pretty much done by 1973? Picture a roomful of straight, confused, middle-age guys writing, blending rancid soap opera dialogue with wilted Sixties slang like “Let’s rap, baby!” and “This is my scene, dig?” Oh, and of course, throwing in enough nudity to keep things interesting. No, this movie’s message is: Hippies are worthless and amoral, but all hippie chicks are easy.
You have to hand it to the guys that made this for pulling together a cast of such remarkably unattractive, unsavory-looking people, but the high-handed moralizing is a bit much. Myself, I prefer my moralizing from some forehead-smackin’, faith-healin’, wild-eyed, scripture-spoutin’ nut thumpin’ that doggone Bible plum silly and brayin’ the praise of Gawd on the 3am preacher feature than from some obscure drive-in exploitation flick.
Oh well, pop it in your VCR anyway, if just to see Kim rolling back and forth on a waterbed mattress someone left by the pool. Or do like me, and make up your own plot about the gamey goings-on off-camera while this unbelievably seedy film was being made.
This article appears in May 23 • 1997 and May 23 • 1997 (Cover).