Hollywood High (1976)

"If I blow grass, I’ll be riding more than your board. How’re you hanging?"

The Story: 

While fuelling up at Big Dick’s garage, four fun-loving sluts (I’m not just saying that to be crass) help out a broke silent film legend, June East (Marla Winters), who has a penchant for outliving her numerous late husbands. Turns out these whores are aspiring actresses (no kiddin’?) and they inquire about some lessons from the old pro. Still horny after all these years, June informs the girls she wouldn’t be interested in coaching actresses… unless they can bring her some young studs to snack on. Tired of banging in bowling alleys, vans and pup tents, the girls haul their apprehensive boyfriends to June’s old mansion, only to be shocked to find out what happens in June’s bedroom is anything but silent!

The Review:

Hollywood High is art imitating life in the shallowest teen sex comedy I’ve seen in a long time; believe it or not, I’ve spoiled the entire plot for you in the previous paragraph. The opening 20 minutes features nothing but four hot bikini babes spouting off sexual innuendo in rapid-fire succession before splashing about in the ocean for a few minutes and then groping some druggie watching on from the shores of the beach's package. All the while being very careful their boyfriends don’t show up, of course. With these girls being so lusciously skanky, I pondered what kind of guys would be proud to have them on their arms (ones like me, I supposed) and sure enough, the movie’s airhead, Fonzie rip-off, fat guy and some other goofball hit the beach and it all makes perfect sense. And my supposition was correct. Women who ride midgets on rising car hoists aren’t hard to predict.

The titular Hollywood High is rarely seen and one has to wonder if it refers to the high of grass rather than a place of teaching, because the chicks sure love their hoot. And our girls are always dry, with one pounding a sixer of Coors at a time and letting the beer (which is obviously water in Coors cans; if it wasn’t for the film’s overall incompetence, I’d consider it a great burn on the official beer of date rapists) run down her face and chest. Adding a sliver of legitimacy to the film is its own catchy theme song, which in addition to the shoddy acting and annoying editing creates a cheesy, Z-grade drive-in atmosphere that is hard to ignore. This movie crosses the line in more ways than one.

Making sure the movie isn’t taken as a smutty one-trick pony, director Patrick M. Wright parodies Chaplin and quotes Marcellus’s famous line from Hamlet for no real reason except to send you into a state of shock that these characters know something. Given the fact that most of the talent have one film credit to their names yet Wright himself has dozens, perhaps he was taking a dig at the California girls who dream of seeing their names in lights despite not having one iota of talent, trying to use sex as a way to get to the top. Or perhaps being the drive-in vet, he was making an instructional video. Hollywood High is inept, but I loved it for most of the run time. The raunchy double entendres from the mouths of the four darlings had me snickering and they weren’t at all shy in the skin department. Being so shallow caused me to lose interest towards the home stretch, but it’s not much of a home stretch anyways. Something is rotten at Hollywood High and I wax desperate with imagination. (Brett H.)

Tale of the Tape:

 

4 out of a possible 10 inches.

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