Thursdays are, for me, somewhat problematic.
The main issue with Thursdays is that they are extremely short, given my penchant for getting as much sleep as possible on work nights.
However, Thursdays also represent my last chance to accomplish anything before going back to work for three days, so generally it’s my intention to accomplish as much as I can before my early bedtime.
At least, that’s usually my intention on Wednesday night.
Come Thursday morning, though, when I recognize that it’s my last chance to be indolent before getting back into the grind, I find it nearly impossible to roll my lazy ass out of bed.
Once I do accomplish that much the enthusiasm of the previous evening has pretty much been used up, and I find myself just basically running out the clock.
Oh well; it’s not as though anything I’d be likely to accomplish would be especially significant.
Perhaps it’s the fact that I grew up so close to Wisconsin, but whatever the reason, I have an appreciation for cheese.
I’m not talking gouda or muenster, or really any kind of dairy product, I’m talking about cheese as in, things that are cheesy.
Specifically, I’m talking about cheesy movies. In fact the cheesier the…well, not better, certainly, but the more likely I am to be drawn in to watch.
It’s actually something of a misnomer to call it an appreciation. It’s more like a morbid attraction. I don’t really enjoy cheesy movies so much as I endure them.
I can’t really tell you why I subject myself to some of the painful cinematic endeavors of the chronically cheesy, but the fact remains that I am drawn to them.
(It’s hardly surprising that I’ve seen as much soft-core porn as I have, given that it tends to combine two things that I’m drawn to: cheesiness and hot naked chicks)
Many cheesy movies are considered to be “cult classics.”
The term “cult classic” can mean many different things. For example, it can have subject matter that is so esoteric that it will only appeal to a very specific group of people.
Alternatively, might just be so bizarre that the majority of people just can’t look away, finding themselves mesmerized by the sheer randomness of it.
More often than not, I think, a movie achieves cult classic because it’s just so incredibly cheesy and bad that people can’t help but be taken in by it.
Such is the case with 1986’s Reform School Girls, which I noticed posted in a newsgroup the other night and found myself powerless to resist.
The title alone tells you that the movie will be cheesy and exploitative, which are often key ingredients in the making of a cult classic.
Add to that the fact that the movie featured the late Wendy O. Williams of The Plasmatics, as well as B movie queen Sybil Danning, and you’ve got yourself a guaranteed box office bomb (most “cult classics” make very little money) that is destined to find its audience on video and late-night airings on Cinemax.
There were other elements besides the title, the iconic figures starring in it, and the gratuitous nudity, that helped make it a classic. Williams herself amped up the randomly bizarre aspects of the movie not only with her gravelly voice, or the fact that she was seldom seen wearing anything other than leather underwear, but by the simple fact that, while she was ostensibly portraying a teenager, she was, at the time of filming 36 years old.
The female lead, though, was, according to IMDb, only 16 at the time, which would actually make her as old now as Williams was then, and which also leads me to wonder about the legality of all of her nude scenes.
In any case, it had been at least 16 years since I last saw this celluloid cheesefest, but it was pretty much exactly as formulaic as I remembered it.
The story is a familiar one to anyone who’s ever watched a movie late at night on Cinemax.
Jenny is a good(ish) girl who makes a foolish decision that lands her in hot water.
Once she’s behind bars she faces the sadistically Sapphic guards who delight in hosing down their charges and engaging in cavity searches, the fat, cruel bitch in charge, and the tough chick fellow inmate (Williams) who runs the show on the inside with the tacit approval – or at least willful blindness – of the guards and the head matron.
Luckily our Jenny is a tough cookie and can take whatever they dish out, all the while taking the weaker, more vulnerable Lisa under her wing, just as the sweetly Sapphic guidance counselor (who hopes to reform the reform school) has taken Jenny under her wing.
(Randomly bizarre note: Sherri Stoner, who played weakling Lisa, went on to provide the voice of Slappy Squirrel on Animaniacs)
Lisa serves as a sort of trophy in the battle of wills between Jenny and Williams’ Charlie, and Jenny finds that she can’t turn her back for a second, leading to Lisa’s eventual torture (and ass-branding) by Charlie.
This happens because Jenny is too busy making some more of her patented foolish decisions by giving her virtue to the slick delivery driver who promises to sneak her out in his truck. It’s after he sells her out that she, inevitably, ends up in the hole.
Ultimately Jenny, stronger and wiser for her suffering, leads a revolt that results in an inquiry into the way things are run at the school spearheaded by the “nice” lesbian counselor, and Jenny is free to make her way in the world, a little wiser and a lot tougher. She’s going to make it!
That is, until she either gets hooked on junk and ends up peddling her ass on street corners or gets knocked up by the first guys who’s nice to her and whose greasy charm makes her forget the valuable lessons she learned bout trusting these hipsters and she gets knocked up and ends her days living in a trailer somewhere after having learned how to milk the welfare system for all it’s worth.
But that’s another story.
Pepper this with some gratuitous shower scenes, some vaguely homoerotic imagery, and you’ve got yourself a cult classic cheesefest, or pretty much any women’s prison movie ever made.
Of course, since 1986 women’s prison movies have changed a bit, mostly in terms of the lesbian content. In the old movies, the lesbians were almost without exception (except for the kindly counselor/social worker/nurse) evil predators, and the execution of any actual lesbian content was limited to a rape scene, though there were, on occasion, the scene in which our heroine politely demurs as her cellmate makes a gentle pass at her.
Now it’s hot girl on girl action everywhere, with even the heroine getting in on the action.
I’m not complaining, obviously, merely commenting on the change that’s taken place in the otherwise static field of women in prison moviemaking.
In any case, Reform School Girls does have one major flaw as a cheesy cult classic: it was intended to be cheesy.
The movie was itself an homage of sorts to the cheesetacular exploitation epics of the 1970’s such as Cell Block Sisters (nobody does cheese or exploitation the way they did it in the 70s), and so is derivative in its cheesiness.
Derivativeness can often be a “good” thing in this area, but in this case, the fact that the filmmakers did not set out to make something better than the end result, but rather decided to make a cheesy exploitation movie without any noble pretensions, ultimately it falls short on the Ed Wood scale of cheesiness.
Still, if you have a high threshold of cheese, Reform School Girls is worth checking out, or, as was the case with me, giving a second look.
Between starting this post and the point at which I’m writing this I had to head in to work for a meeting.
On the way home I decided to stop somewhere for lunch, though I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go. I had semi-decided on Quizno’s, but on the way there I spotted the Ruby Tuesday and thought, “Why not?”
The answer to that question is typically, “Because I feel uncomfortable going into a sit-down restaurant by myself,” but I decided, foolishly, to pretend that I didn’t know the answer. After all, what’s the big deal?
(To avoid being there by myself I thought about giving Brian a call, but I figured he’d probably had lunch already, having found some way to gain sustenance from his FIOS connection, the rat bastard)
Given that it was after two on a Thursday afternoon, I was a bit puzzled by the number of people there and the fact that I had to wait a few minutes to be seated. I just don’t understand why there are so many people out and about on weekday afternoons. Don’t people have jobs?
Once I was seated I looked through the menu and decided what I want before anyone came to ask me what I wanted to drink. This isn’t because I was unusually decisive, it was because I was being totally ignored by the wait staff.
It was, admittedly, somewhat busy in there, but it wasn’t exactly crazy, and there was plenty of time for someone to stop by my table, but the three girls working that section just kept whizzing past me.
(As an aside, one of the waitresses looked rather a lot like I imagine Pamela Anderson would look if she’d never been “discovered” and had all of the “enhancements.” She actually made a show of deliberately ignoring me as she went past.)
Finally, when I was about to say something as she went past, one of the girls – cute-ish pregnant blonde – noticed me drumming my fingers on the closed menu and took pity on me.
She didn’t make any attempt at friendly conversation, and pretty much fled from my table as soon as I’d made my order.
After she brought me my order, which, I realized as I was halfway through it, wasn’t what I’d actually ordered – I’d ordered a Bacon Jack Burger and she brought me a Bacon Burger minus the Jack – I pretty much didn’t see her again until I was done and she brought me the check. No, “How is everything?” or “You doing all right?” or any of the standard mid-meal interruptions.
Given that she – and the other girls – did do all of those things at other tables, it wasn’t’ a matter of her not engaging in that sort of behavior at all.
Bad as the service was, though, it never really got to the point of being something to complain about to the waitress or the manager or anything, it was just bad enough to make me feel, I don’t know, unwelcome, I guess.
I’m not sure what the problem was. Maybe the fact that I was a guy there by himself had them worried that I was going to hit on them or something and they just wanted to preemptively give me the cold shoulder.
(And no, it wasn’t just my imagination)
Whatever the case, I had decided that I was going to stiff her as far as the tip went, but then I felt bad because she was knocked up, so I decided that I at least had to give her a minimal one.
Still, the whole experience was kind of off-putting.
Leave it to me to have a simple late lunch turn into a major blow to my self-esteem.
*Sigh*
In any case, as stated at the start of this entry, it is Thursday, so I have to start preparing for my work week.
Update:
Earlier in this post I erroneously stated that the heroine of Reform School Girls, Jenny, a sensitive, tough cookie, gave her virtue away in an escape attempt.
It should be noted that, as part of her tragic backstory, as confessed to the kindly lesbian counselor, Jenny’s virtue had already been stolen by her daddy when she was younger.
This probably goes a long way towards explaining the series of foolish decisions she would subsequently make, as it would give her even more daddy issues than the average girl, but in any case, she was not a virgin when she got underneath that sleazy delivery guy, so there’s no greater significance to the scene than the fact that she was just straight-up whoring herself out in order to get a favor, and undoubtedly not for the first – or last – time.
Just thought I should set the record straight.
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