One Night Only

This little straight-to-cable flick isn't The Godfather and it's not trying to be. But the combination of entry-level acting, burlesque humor, by-the-numbers 1980's pop music, too many topless lovelies to count, and a plot so implausible that it practically spits in the face of suspension-of-disbelief make this a delightfully cheesy piece of teenage-boy entertainment. The phrase "so bad it's good" doesn't even apply to this, because "bad" doesn't apply to it - it's pure escapist entertainment, and for my money, that's the best type. I saw this for the first time when I was 11 or 12 and in the habit of sneaking into my parents' den to watch Showtime Late Night on weekends (boys will be boys, right?) and this is one that always stuck in my memory. Finding a rental copy in college was a sublime moment and preserving it in digital is going to keep me young for another hundred years. Intellectual decompression at its finest.

If this film concentrated more on it's story, than it's sex and nudity in abundance, this would be a better film. This Canadian effort, of course with it's unknowns, some who look great nude, is real cheese ball, sleazy kind of fun, anyway, one strip scene, played to that trademark strip theme, duhdada duhdada... where we see a beaver shot in close up. The deal here is some girlfriends, posing as hookers, work with some real ones as well, entertain a hockey team, to make some big bucks. And when I mean, entertain, I mean really entertain. At this party there's also an indoor pool, and you know what that means. We also some incorporate some mobsters into this story, but I forget why, as seeing the movie back in the nineties. The father of one of the hockey players goes off at the son when he slips a video in the VCR to watch one of his victory games. The same dad likes kinky sex, and playing pranks on some of the girls, one of them running out nude with a live crab that was attached to her you know what. He also likes to crawl backwards underneath a posse of naked women, inspecting their you know what, while wearing a miners cap. If sleaze is your thing, you'll probably get a kick out this, minus laughs, with some hot female bods to boot.

My review was written in June 1986 after watching the film on Key video cassette.

"One Night Only" is one of four Canadian features that rolled in November 1983 with financial backing from The Playboy Channel. Of interest only to voyeurs, feature, originally titled more appropriately "New Year's Eve", is an embarrassing example of what is euphemistically called Canadian content. It is currently available on video cassette.

Girls in a Montreal sorority house suddenly decide they want to go to bed with the players on the pro hockey team (apparently the Canadiens). Led by busty young blonde Anne (Lenore Zann) they maneuver to take over the annual New Year's Eve sex party traditionally organized by gangster Winkeau (Hrant Alianak) and borrow the posh mansion of the parents of sorority sister Elizabeth (Judy Foster) for the occasion. When there aren't enough college girls to service the pucksters, Anne recruits local prostitutes to join the party, led by beautiful Louellla (Taborah Johnson), who also coaches the coeds in lovemaking techniques.

Exercise in dumb puns and vulgarity is designed mainlyu to show off some pretty girls sans clothing, okay for Playboy viewers, but a bore as a feature film. Pic's lame concept of satire is evident when team owner Mack (Jeff Braunstein) has to force his hotshot star Johnny (Martin Neufeld) to engage in drinking and sex when all the youngster wants to do is play hockey, do endorsements and appear on tv.

For a basically tame softcore outing, scripter P. Y. Haines oddly emphasizes incest, with sevral of the couples imagining they're father & daughter or mothe & son during sex, and the romantic payoff occurring when young Anne beds down with her even younger cousin Jamie (Geofrey MacKay) . Cast does a good job and is worthy of much better material.

Casual fans of the early 80's T-and-A comedies (and their close cousins the early 80's slasher horror films) probably don't realize how much the country of Canada contributed to these "all-American" genres. Well, this particular film really wears its Canadian-ness on its sleeve as a group of sexy college co-eds decide (for reasons that eluded me)to prostitute themselves out to a visiting hockey team at a wild party they put together at a rich friend's house. The results are so over-the-top raunchy, they make "Porky's" look like a "Porky Pig" cartoon.

While I can't unreservedly rave about this kind of uber-hoser stupidity, there are several things that might make this worthwhile, at least for all the slobbering perverts out there. First, if you like early 80's slasher flicks like I do, you have undoubtedly seen the female Canuck leads--Lenore Zann, Helen Udy, and Wendy Landes--many times. Well, prepare to see a whole lot MORE of them here. Second, there's the very memorable climactic scene which involves the perverted middle-age coach (who'd I swear was in at least one "Porky's" movie) living out his fantasy of the "scary cave", an infantile-Oedipal thing that you really have to see to believe. (I'd personally rank it up there with the "baby carriage scene" in "Battleship Potemkin" in terms of truly unforgettable cinematic moments). And that's not the only queasy quasi-incest on display here. This has the typical innocent male virgin "losing it" to his long-sought-after true love scene, except in this case his "true love" happens to be his sexy first cousin! And while the virgin's moralistic cop father rushes to stop his son and niece from un-forking their family tree, HE gets sidetracked by one of his niece's young friends who takes him to bed and insists on calling him "daddy" (I'm starting to suspect there might be a reason why the Canadians sometimes look a little inbred. . .).

I suppose though if you're going to make an unapologetically raunchy, socially irresponsible, dementedly perverted flick like this, you may as well do it right. And this movie, if nothing else, certainly puts the puck in the net in that department.

Skinemax-type cable staple of the late 80s, this Canadian shot flesh fest is appallingly unwatchable 25 years later. Found it on the back end of another tape recently, and decided to revisit. Loaded with flat-chested remedial actresses, cartoonish "chase-and-bop" style gags...and incest??? The two leads are boy and girl cousins who have an odd reunification after years apart. Some sort of unresolved crush goes on between them, springboarded by a near kiss at her apartment. But that ain't the half of it.

This kissing cousin is a working girl waitress at a mom-n-pop slop house who overhears of a local hockey team's upcoming stag party. Most would shrug it off and clock out. Not this chick. She luckily resides with some fellow unscrupulous bimbos who hit the phones to round up all their female friends so they may commandeer said stag party and collect the $5-grand price tag!! Ah, those moralistic 80s.

Utter vacancy ensues, as scores of people run through hallways, faint, giggle, jiggle (their pathetic A-cup breasts), and cavort about in Movie Land as only these events could provide. Don't forget the jealous boy cousin trying to thwart the girl's carnal actions in a poor attempt at romance(???) amid all the chaos. Oh, and one rather large tidbit: despite an 80 minute runtime, at least thirty of those minutes are made up of musical montages. No lie. Thirty minutes. To some poor-man's Pointer Sisters gal group.

Actually had a promising beginning, ala Hot Dog in terms of a small-town sports comedy set-up, and Zann has a cute appeal as sort of trashier Meg Ryan, but this whole thing is far beneath any of its late-night nudie rivals of the time.