Getting It On

Originally titled "American Voyeur" but released as "Getting It On", this North Carolina-lense teenage comedy nimbly pumps new life into the overdone high school hijinks genre. Though marketed as another raunchy "Porky's" followup, the William Olsen production is a well-acted, sweet and funny picture.

Filmmaker Olsen targets our consumerist and video-obsessed culture for some ribbing in this story of high school freshman Alex Carson (Martin Yost), with a crush on the girl next door, Sally (Heather Kennedy). Devising a video software business to earn money, Alex borrows his startup capital (at 15% interest) from his very businesslike dad, and with the help of his cutup classmate Nicholas (Jeff Edmond) takes the video equipment to record hidden camera footage of Heather and other pretty girts. When Nicholas is kicked out of school by mean principal White (Charles King Bibby), the heroes enlist he services of a friendly prostitute (Kim Saunders) to record footage of White in flagrante delicto.

What makes this material work is a fresh, enthusiastic cast, witty writing and direction by Olsen that bears no hint of malice. Though Alex's parents are caricatures, more interested in getting the latest satellite dish installed in the backyard than in their son's future, they are drawn as ingratiating characters, and even the practical joke directed against the principal turns out to benefit everyone, with no hard feelings. The script even includes a subplot reminiscent of the Matt Dillon-starrer "Tex", concerning Nicholas and his older brother Irving without parental supervision.

Young, attractive cast members match the teenage role requirements, though the pleasant lead player Martin Yost, an empathetic Timothy Hutton type, is of course older than the virginal 14-year-old in the script. Of special note is Bryan Elsom, very funny in a small role as a loquacious young Southern cab driver.

Tech credits for this modestly-budgeted effort are fine.

My review was written in August 1983 after a Times Square screening.

I recently watched Getting It On (1983) on Tubi. The story follows a high school peeping Tom and virgin who stumbles upon video equipment, taking his obsession to the next level. Will his new hobby deepen his fixation, or will it unexpectedly lead him to love?

Written and directed by William Olsen (Southern Belles), the film stars Terry Loughlin (Out of Time), Martin Yost, Heather Kennedy (Leprechaun), and Jeffrey Edmond (Out of the Black & Blue).

This is a by-the-numbers 80s sex comedy in the vein of Porky's, Animal House, and Hardbodies, but without the charm or impact. Everything about it is mediocre at best. While there's the expected nudity, the storyline feels like an excuse to make a movie rather than something with any real substance. The acting is average, the dialogue is uninspired, and the coming-of-age elements are watered down. There's no standout scene that makes it worth watching.

In conclusion, Getting It On is a forgettable 80s sex comedy with far better options available. I'd rate it a 3/10 and recommend skipping it.

"Getting It On" takes a seedy, repugnant premise, and then fails to go anywhere even particularly smutty with it. It's a movie about a teenager who apparently has hidden cameras in multiple areas around town filming girls taking their clothes off and having sex... and then makes you wait more than half the length of the movie before it shows you a glimpse of bare breast.

If this is confusing, it's nothing compared to the movie's "plot", which receives so little exposition that the movie makes little, if any, sense. I understood that the movie's protagonist has a flair for filming girls without them realising it, and also likes his next door neighbour. He has the typical goofy, obnoxious best friend who encourages him into emulating this behaviour when he is around the girl of his dreams, when he should just be "being himself".

I didn't really understand the point of the voyeuristic sequences, when the main character watches, for example, a group of girls having a pillow fight he has apparently filmed. This is, I guess, what sets the movie apart from other teen T'n A flicks, but in the movie itself it amounts to nothing. It could have been sleazily exploited to show more skin, and let's face it, it probably should have been! This is why people watch these movies, after all. However there is so little nudity in the movie, and the kid's voyeurism adds nothing to the story, so what was the point of it?

At one point it seems that his creepy hobby is going to save the day when his best friend is about to be sent to an all boys' school due to misbehaviour. The boys get a prostitute off the street, take her to a weird fancy dress party where both adults and teens are in attendance and the best friend dresses like a Klansman, and have the hooker seduce the kid's dad while on videotape.

They then play the film on the TV set the dad and his wife are watching, so that the wife can see her husband's adultery. What was the point of this? Revenge? Blackmail would have seemed a more obvious option. The response of the couple is even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Overall though, I enjoyed this movie. It's not as repugnant as it could have been, and I couldn't help but like the two main characters.

How can someone make a 90 minute feature and still end up with absolutely nothing? The answer lies within the confines of the tape of this (thankfully very rare) so-called "sex comedy" which jettisoned both claims to such an extent it should be prosecuted under the False Claims act. Supposedly about a high school boy who gets state of the art video equipment (for 1983) to spy on his sexy female next door neighbour getting undressed, it actually abandons this sick but promising premise about half-way through in favour of a myriad of sub-plots about five uninteresting character's love-lives. Unfortunately this plays out as all talk and no action, so skin fans will be bored out of their skulls, and everybody else will be tearing their hair out at the amateurish acting and the extreme slow pace of the movie. So to sum up then, a film for no-one. Right, back to the video store we go.. 2/10

The phrase "so bad, it's good" gets thrown around way too much. A lot of movies like this one are not really THAT bad, and they're certainly not "good" in any sense of the word. But due to their very low-budgets, independent origins, and, yes, some amount of film-making ineptitude, they manage to be kind of, uh, well, different in a kind of interesting way. Although this is called "Getting It On", for instance, the two teen protagonists never do technically get around to really "getting it on". Most of the sex here actually involves the two heroes' balding, middle-age principal who they set up with a hooker, and the principal's sexy daughter who is involved with one of the protagonist's older brother.

The main protagonist, "Alex" (Martin Yost), is a video voyeur who uses early 80's video technology to spy on all the neighbor girls, including the pretty new-girl-next-door (Heather Kennedy) , who he also openly romances at the same time, and who somehow doesn't find his voyeurism the least bit creepy at all. However, when his best friend,"Nick", an orphan who lives with his older brother is in danger of being sent to a juvenile hall (for stealing a porno magazine!), he decides to take action by using his video equipment. In perhaps the weirdest scene in this weird movie, the protagonist, his friend, and the friend's brother--in order to put their crackpot plan into action--sneak into a local community costume party all dressed as Ku Klux KLANSMAN(!) and nobody even NOTICES!! I don't know if this is wry subversive genius or complete ineptitude on the part of the filmmakers, but it sure is different.

Of course, there is a smattering of female nudity involving the principal's daughter, and some neighborhood girls who are having a slumber party that turns into a sexy topless pillow fight (as girls' slumber parties invariably do). The two protagonists also spend a lot of time watching the girls' P.E. class, who wear VERY short gym shorts and seem to do A LOT of stretching. But what I really liked about this movie was it's sheer indie weirdness. I don't mean "indie" in the pretentious modern-day sense--most modern-day "indie" films are actually backed by Hollywood--I mean these old, truly independent exploitation films made by Middle American regional filmmakers who would never come anywhere NEAR legitimate Hollywood, and really had a COMPLETELY different sensibility. Anyway, if you like this movie, also check out another very bizarro early 80's teen comedy called "Incoming Freshman".