Hollywood High Part II

My review was written in May 1984 after a Times Square screening.

Filmed in Spring of 1981, "Hollywood High Part II" is an embarrassingly bad teen exploitation film. Instead of including frequent dull stretches to allow the target drive-in audience to trek to the refreshment stand, pic is an 85-minute forced break during which patrons will hide out waiting for the next feature to begin.

"Part II" has little in common with Patrick Wright's 1976 original "Hollywood High" film, which features four young couples frolicking in surf and sand and having unfunny adventures featuring a Henry Winkler imitator called "The Fenz" and a Mae West imitator named "June East". Sequel is a plotless wonder featuring three unattractive couples making out, horsing around in class and waging a running battle with a local cop.

Sole story detail has the six leads snapping incriminating photos of the cop on the beach having sex with the class prude Chessie (Alisa Ann Hull), with the cop later blackmailing them in turn when he catches the boys cheating on their girlfriends by servicing a pair of man-hungry femme teachers. Film's cynical moral is that one has to go to bed with one's teachers in order to graduate.

Consisting 100% of padding and filler, "Part II"'s best use would be as anti-American propaganda if exported to the Eastern bloc nations, where its portrayal of U. S. education could be taken as documentary evidence.

This film essentially centers around 3 high school couples who enjoy hanging out together after class. Most of the time they prefer to cavort on the beach but lately they've become the target of an overzealous motorcycle "Cop" (played by Con Covert) who hassles them every chance he gets. However, upon obtaining incriminating pictures of him in a compromising position with another high school student named "Chessie Beacham" (Alisa Ann Hull) things take an interesting turn for everyone involved after that. Now, rather than reveal any more I will just say that, although the title might indicate a relationship to a previous movie, it really doesn't have much in common with "Hollywood High." So, the viewer doesn't have to waste their time on the first film to understand what's going on here. But then, why anybody would want to watch this particular movie is beyond me as well as it basically relies upon an extremely simplistic plot, a weak script, bad acting and awful music. Not only that, but some of the actors looked much too old to be in high school as well. To add insult to injury, except for possibly Donna Lynn (as "Kiki"), I didn't think that any of the young ladies were all that attractive either. Be that as it may, while this may not be the worst "beach movie" I have ever seen, it was certainly bad enough and I have rated it accordingly.

Although it was made in 1981 (as a sequel to an earlier movie I haven't seen), this movie fits into the strange category of 1970's "teen sexploitation" flicks. These kind of films really came into their own in the 1980's with stuff like "Porky's" and "Fast Times at Ridegemont High" after they finally figured out who their audience should be--i.e. horny teenagers (of all ages). With the earlier 70's films though it's hard to tell who they were aimed at. Teenagers is the obvious answer. But while rutting adolescents at 1970's drive-ins may not have been the most discriminating audience, when they did occasionally come up for air, it seems doubtful they'd relate too much to the idiotic caricatures of themselves in movies like this one, or "The Cheerleaders", "Jailbait Babysitter","Cherry Hills High", etc. Perusing some of these titles suggests that many of these flicks might have been aimed more at the dirty old men in what used to be called the "raincoat crowd". But most of these guys had moved elsewhere by the late the 1970's after the legalization of hardcore porn, and this movie despite abundant female nudity is pretty tame even compared to what these, uh, gentlemen were enjoying ten years earlier. (Nor are the girls in this movie too likely to have appealed to your serious perverts--they seem about twenty-five on average and have that ridden-hard-and-put-away-wet look of Hollywood casting couch vets).

But getting to the plot--well,there really isn't one. It's mostly just a group of stupid guys and their slutty girlfriends driving around engaging in allegedly hilarious teen hijinx with frequent interludes of topless softcore sex. In a strange way this like several other of these films ("The Pom Pom Girls", "Maibu Beach") kind of resembles the more recent, seminal film about 1970's teens "Dazed and Confused", but without the nostalgia, the self-conscious irony, the remotely likable (or believable) characters, or the even halfway competent film-making. They DO have a lot of obscure but oft topless actresses with real breasts (one thing about the 1970's that should make any guy wax nostalgic), but this eventually becomes a poor substitute for genuine entertainment.

This film is really little more than a curiosity, probably not worth wasting precious minutes of your life on.