Incoming Freshmen

I know several people who worked on Incoming Freshman and recently had an opportunity to view a black and white work print of the original edit. Not only was the film re-edited, but additional scenes were shot by the distributor which accounts for the much of gratuitous sex and nudity. This was done, obviously, to make the film more marketable. The original film was intelligent, well conceived and and not at all badly done considering the production budget was less than $50,000. It many ways, it was a much better film than Animal House which is often credited with being THE ground breaking film that started a new genre of movies. It was never intended to be a "soft porn" film, an unfortunate and undeserved characterization. The film was shot on location in Knoxville Tennessee by two University of Tennessee Graduate students. Many of the scenes were shot on and around campus and on the Cumberland Avenue strip. It would be worthwhile to somehow release a "restored" version of this film. If I'm not mistaken one or both of the directors did go on to have careers in Hollywood. My good friend Tommy Gibbons worked on Incoming Freshman as an assistant camera operator and is a great source of information on the film.

I didn't think I would find another movie that ranks worse..even "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is better! I purchased Brentwood's Toga Party 10-movie 5-disc set last year but only viewed "Incoming Freshmen" yesterday. I purchased the set mainly because of Dennis Quaid in "Seniors". Doing research finds most of the cast of "Incoming Freshmen" never "acting" in another movie plus Leslie Blacock (Vivian Marie Roberson) died in a road accident in 1978 - a year before the movie was released. If this was theatrically released to play as a drive-in double feature, I certainly hope the other title was good enough to keep customers from driving off!

Well, partly based on the other comments here I bought Brentwood's "Toga Party" DVD set, which includes this among other fine films for a bargain price. We should all be thankful that this movie has been preserved on DVD, regardless of quality. This appears to have been shot on videotape, then transferred to film. My jaw dropped in several parts of this movie as I could not believe that it had actually been made. But that's OK, because I was expecting a bad movie, I just had no idea how bad! Anyone who thinks they have seen the worst movie ever made owes it to themself to see this- it's definitely in the top 50. (Those who think "Gigli" was bad haven't seen anything!)

Actually, I typed this title just to see how thorough this database is. I was a bit surprised to see it here, but not that it hadn't been commented on. It played here in the early eighties with the far superior GAS PUMP GIRLS. It was a T'n'A ANIMAL HOUSE type of deal with a particularly cheap look. Stuff like this just doesn't make it into theatres anymore. There was a party scene where everybody wore goat masks. That's about all I remember. If I had seen this film by itself, I would have felt ripped off, but its companion film made the trip worthwhile.

It's Boobapalooza '79 when the kids of Incoming Freshmen spend their golden college years partying hard and shunning bras. This aggressively shameless soft core T'n'A crowd pleaser treats us to everything from a lecture by a naked ROTC instructor to a frat party being entertained by a blues-rock band wearing goat masks. The movie advances on two parallel tracks: the main story of innocent small-town coed Jane (Ashley Vaughn) being gradually corrupted by her slutty roommate Viv (Leslie Blalock) and that of the tribulations of neurotic, sexually repressed history professor L.P. Bilbo (B.M. Culpepper). Jane starts out dedicated to her long-distance high school sweetheart, only to have her heart broken when her best friend back home hooks up with Mr. Perfect the first week of college, leaving an opening for roommate Viv to introduce her to her own boyfriend's best friend, Randy (Richard Harriman, looking very much like a young Dave Barry). At the same time Prof. Bilbo has trouble keeping his attention on his teaching as he spend more of every class mentally undressing his female students.

Events come to a head the weekend of the big football game when Viv persuades Jane that they should ditch their respective boyfriends and hit a swingin' frat party by themselves. Everybody has fun, lots of tits are shown, and morbidly obese Prof. Bilbo shows up dressed in a white suit and announces his newfound goal of getting "funky." Uber-slut character Maxine "The Machine" (Georgia Harrell), clad only in an extremely revealing gold lame one-piece looks down the pants of a delighted nerd and announces "What, all that meat and no potatoes?" before dragging him back to the nearest bedroom. The film ends with what is essentially a take-a-number gang bang in which the walrus-like history professor takes on one svelte college girl after another, culminating, in the last few seconds, with plain Jane herself. Not too worry, though - Dave Barry Jr. has managed to meet the tube top-wearing girl he had fantasized about earlier in the movie. So everybody ends up happy, in one way or another.

Incoming Freshmen has a couple of good aspects - the comedy value of the extremely dated apparel (tight jeans, bellbottoms, tall white tube socks with brightly colored rings at the top) and the thick southern accents sported by virtually every cast member, except for Jane's Dave Barry-like boyfriend. These people make The Dukes of Hazzard sound like Masterpiece Theater. The poorly-aging trashiness of the era is palpable; the scene where roommates Jane and Viv go on a double date to the local disco is so intensely 70s it could power a time machine. Recommended to fans of That 70s Show and long-term freebase addicts. Oh yeah, and to people who like tits.