Inspired by the success of Revenge of the Nerds and Weird Science, there was a period of “nerd chic” in the films of the mid- to late 80s and a bit beyond. Nerds got the chicks and jocks got only comeuppance. I’m assuming these films were the masturbatory fantasies of nerdy writers and directors nerdwashing their own histories while nursing the scars caused by years of wedgies.
Some of those films were entertaining.
Assault of the Party Nerds … not so much.
Well, it does have two strong positives:
1) The whole mess is over in 82 minutes. Less, if you skip the credits.
2) Some of those minutes feature Linnea topless.
The Party Nerds movie was made for $40,000 in four days, a quickie from the Jim Wynorski – Fred Olen Ray school of filmmaking, as created and assembled by that school’s star pupil, their hope for the new generation, Richard Gabai.
In the sequel, Gabai is the star, director, producer, editor, songwriter, scriptwriter, casting director, cinematographer … oh, yeah, and his band recorded the music. Now THAT is a true auteur. You can’t say the guy doesn’t know how to save a buck.
The economical use of personnel didn’t stop at Gabai himself. The female lead was the bartender at his favorite watering hole, and had never worked in a film before. She did OK, but returned to private life. Other non-showbiz buddies rounded out the cast.
There were familiar faces as well. Gabai hired Burt Ward (Robin, the Boy Wonder) to be a corporate bigwig, and Ward showed up with his wife, so Ward’s wife in real life became the bigwig’s wife in the script. Actress Tane McClure also laid down some vocal tracks, and her singing is pretty decent, although nobody will mistake her voice for Whitney Houston’s. Other cast members include Rhonda “Up All Night” Shear and Arte “Verrrry Interestink” Johnson.
The shooting schedule was doubled to eight days for the sequel, so you can bet that the production values are positively lavish, as reflected in the care that went into the DVD box, which refers to the geeky lads as the “Part Nerds.” No idea what the other part is. Possibly Pekinese.
Linnea Quigley
Michelle Bauer
Once saw an interesting documentary about Wynorski trying to make a film in 3 days. As I recall I think it almost killed him. From looking at imdb I’d say it must have been Popatopolis from 2009. I seem to remember talk about how their budgets were constantly being cut in half. I assume they were getting money from places like Cinemax. I don’t think in any way they liked having to constantly cut shooting down in half, but that’s how they were being treated by the money people. Pretty much explained why these low budget movies just kept getting worse and worse as time went by.
Funny enough, there is actually a pretty decent BluRay of ‘Popatopolis’ available from Terror Vision (a boutique label). It’s a tad speedy as a blind buy, but if you’re into Wynorski (or even just modern exploitation filmmaking) at all, it’s worth it.
ObDisc: Not a plug, just a happy customer hoping to spread the word. 🙂
We used to make Movies in this country
Agreed. I maybe a film snob but I always had love for silly softcore B-movies. I have a collection of Andy Sidaris films on DVD that I need to upgrade to Blu-Ray.