Writer/director Clark shifts the American Graffiti formula to a '50s Florida high school to mount a runaway farce fuelled by the agonies of adolescent sexual frustration. The resulting American box-office bonanza made it the Animal House of 1982, and Clark convincingly captures a tone of masochistic agony as his randy kids are derided, exploited and generally humiliated by the adults around them. There are plenty of sexual gags, but the basic plot is as innocently Oedipal as Jack the Giant Killer as the gang desperately attempt to defeat nightclub owners, parents, and policemen armed with glistening truncheons in their quest for sexual experience. Despite its thinly liberal veneer, it's as reactionary as a smash-and-grab raid, but it's vulgar enough to be fascinating even while you hate it, and it's certainly the most revealing American success since Taps.
Cast and crew