Drop Dead Fred (1991) + The Last American Virgin (1982) – DVDs

DROP DEAD FRED
½*/**** Image C+ Sound B+
starring Phoebe Cates, Rik Mayall, Marsha Mason, Tim Matheson
screenplay by Carlos David & Anthony Fingleton
directed by Ate De Jong

THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Lawrence Mondson, Diane Franklin, Steve Antin, Joe Rubbo
written and directed by Boaz Davidson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Not all bad films are created equal. Like everything else, there are “good” examples and bad ones, the distinction resting on how much they’re willing to give. For example, a film like The Last American Virgin, while stopping well shy of being a real movie, nonetheless holds interest with its constant barrage of boorish behaviour and its curious attempts to shoehorn “touching” drama into its gross-out formula. It’s bad, but it tries things, and you admire its valiant attempts to give the people some low satisfaction. A movie like Drop Dead Fred, meanwhile, has been so ruthlessly scrutinized for anything that might resemble creativity that it has nothing to offer, and exhausts its 100-odd minute running time chasing its short stubby tail as we rush to the exits.

The latter film details the exploits of repressed court stenographer Elizabeth (Phoebe Cates), who’s lost her husband, her car, and her job in the same day. Moving back in with her overbearing mother (Marsha Mason–and why do these movies never have overbearing fathers?), she opens up the jack-in-the-box containing her old “imaginary friend” Drop Dead Fred (Rik Mayall), who proceeds to give her back the independence and “life force” she so desperately needs. This, naturally, involves tracking dog poo across newly-cleaned carpet and sinking the houseboat of a good friend (Carrie Fisher)–but when you’ve lived the cloistered existence of poor Elizabeth, you need the corrective that only chaos can give.

For a movie about cutting loose and running amuck, Drop Dead Fred is surprisingly dowdy and bland, so paranoid about looking like standard Hollywood product that it stamps out anything that might separate it from the pack. The script, by Carlos Davis and Anthony Fingleton, is cued towards Syd Field development and ersatz life lessons, failing to establish a style of its own, and Ate de Jong’s direction is similarly blank and inexpressive–it’s as if a pre-conversion Elizabeth contrived the whole enterprise as therapy and then backed out when the heat was on. Rik Mayall’s brilliantly modulated performance is the only aesthetic thing in the whole movie, but given nothing to do, he can only struggle gamely while the anesthetized Cates soaks up his energy. While the particulars sound merely mediocre, the film becomes almost impossible to watch; there is not a single funny line, nor a single interesting shot, in all of Drop Dead Fred. After a while, you want to kill not just the screenwriters for conceiving this obsequious life lesson and the director for carrying it to term, but the studio for delivering what has clearly been “developed” into something joyless and sad.

No such problem afflicts The Last American Virgin. A cross between a male coming-of-age tale and a Porky’s-style gross-out tear, it can’t tell the difference between doe-eyed sentiment and raunchy humour–and is better off for it. Though you can’t give writer-director Boaz Davidson points for guile, his valiant effort to bring the two premier male genres into one fold makes for some bizarre juxtaposition that a good movie (or a bad-bad movie) would never seize upon, in addition to serving up all of the instant-gratification that one demands of an exploitation number.

The more-or-less protagonist of this epic is Gary (Lawrence Monoson), a teenager with bad hair and a terrible knack for missing out on getting laid. Despite the efforts of his best friends (slick ladies man Rick (Steve Antin) and loud fat guy David (Joe Rubbo)), something, from parents to returning servicemen (you had to be there), always manages to get in the way. Of course, he has bigger problems than coitus interruptus: he’s fallen for girl-next-door type Karen (the incomparable Diane Franklin), only to discover that predatory Rick has snapped her up with the intention of deflowering her. Tension: will Karen realize that Rick is a jerk before or after he’s made her pregnant?

Where Drop Dead Fred was paranoid about seeming professionally prefabricated, Virgin couldn’t care less about the niceties of structure, and is subsequently way more fun. It seems as though a certain amount of exploitation interest was all that anyone cared, resulting in both a semi-picaresque structure and furtive attempts to inject drama. Thus the film ricochets from vignette to vignette, here hitting on party girls, there indulging schoolgirl crushes, here again taking advantage of a Hispanic nymphomaniac (every film should have at least one), with the audience not sure of where the hell it’s going or if it’s going anywhere at all.

And as innocent-boy romance competes with episodes of sexual profligacy, The Last American Virgin collapses in on itself, making for some hilariously fertile confusion. The film’s doltish (but common) hypocrisy about sex–idolizing the girl next door while humping the nearest prostitute–causes it to contradict itself, over and over again, often within the same scene. Not easily forgotten is the part where a girl gets an abortion: the music swells on the soundtrack, a concerned boyfriend rushes to raise funds, her face crumples with shame…while the camera seizes the opportunity to gratuitously ogle her breasts. It takes a Boaz Davidson not to know better, but then, knowing better gets you into pre-emptive drivel like Fred. Moral of the story? Better to be a virgin than to drop dead.

THE DVD
The two films are given the transfers they deserve. Drop Dead Fred‘s fullscreen image is curiously washed-out, as if someone cross-faded it with a white backdrop; definition is poor and colour is sadly muted. The Dolby Surround sound is without spark or richness, though it does the job of conveying the dialogue, such as it is. Virgin‘s double-sided disc is a great deal more satisfactory: colours are vivid and bright on both the full-frame and 1.85:1 anamorphic letterbox transfers, and definition is remarkable for a film of such limited means. The Dolby Surround track is similarly rich, serving a host of ’80s hits with remarkable clarity. The film’s trailer rounds out the disc.

• Drop Dead Fred
  103 minutes; PG-13; 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-5; Region One; Artisan
• The Last American Virgin
  93 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; MGM