Riunione di classe

Dreadful spoof on '80's horror flicks isn't on the rock-bottom-level as Scary Movie 2 only because it's too dull. I have no real idea why I'm writing about this movie but I do want to say that Zane Buzby's comic timing as Doloris -the crippled girl who sold her soul to the Devil- is perfect and made me laugh like crazy. Her initial introduction at the bar, all her banter with Miriam Flynn's Bunny, and her final dance while the credits rolled are funnier than most of the teen cult movies and Saturday Night Live skits we have now! I've never seen her since but she was great here!

Also worth mentioning are the brief appearance of the late Anne Ramsey (Throw Mama from the Train) as the cigarette smoking lunch lady and a set piece involving a nervous young wife's confession to a priest about her extracurricular activities.

This is one of those bad movies you see that contain some great honest laughs but you're too ashamed to tell anyone about it.

This should be a classic--it was made during the height of both 80's slashers and sex-comedies. It had a great cast (Stephen Furst as well as two great underused, but always fascinating actresses--Zane Busby as a weirdly compassionate and helpful woman possessed by the devil, and chipmunk-voiced Mews Small as a blind nympho had a lot of potential) and the budget looked reasonable. And it's inoffensive enough--it's doesn't inspire one to seek out the director and hang him with his own celluloid strips like, say, "Up The Academy" did.

It's just not that interesting. It's like a bad 80's sitcom pilot that you forget five minutes after the credits roll. It's something you watch with a hangover in a marathon of similarly themed movies on cable, falling asleep frequently without fear of having "missed anything." It has a few chuckles here and there, and the attempt to simulate the slashers of the era is appreciated. It's probably no dumber than others of its kind. It's just bland and lifeless, like a bored jellyfish. I'm about to fall asleep writing about it. I suddenly can't even remember why I wanted to...

Gerrit Graham is a great actor....but he can not star in a movie. Much like football, Gerrit has the talent to run the ball in for a touchdown but can't. However, he is a guarantee 3 points every game. Here, Gerrit is good but does nothing as the star of the movie. The entire cast has there moments, but nothing worth keeping your attention for an entire 90 minutes. The movie at times seems too low budget to be anything great like Animal House or Chritmas Vacation. The story is pure humor, nothing but quick and sometimes witty fart jokes that only make you laugh for a second or two. Nudity is added just for pure laughs, nothing terrific. All in all, it is a quick comedy with nothing to show for it. The movie starts out good with a potential story but ends quick and corny.

Remember National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook Parody? It's a work of absolute genius, a laugh-out-loud example of the Lampoon in its glory days. Well, back in the early '80s, I read somewhere that the Lampoon was going to produce a movie based on the yearbook parody. With the hilarity of Animal House still fresh in my mind, I was beside myself with excitement--I couldn't wait for a movie based on the '64 yearbook.

Unfortunately, the next Lampoon movie to be released was Class Reunion, a witless mess that looks as if it were edited with a dull hacksaw. I remember seeing it and thinking "They made THIS instead of a movie based on the yearbook parody?"

And after that I was afraid they thought Class Reunion WAS a movie based on the yearbook parody. In any event, it's horrible.

I remember seeing this on cable a year or so after it was released - maybe in 1983, when I was 13 - and even with my mindset back then I didn't think much of it. Mind you, back then I was watching all sorts of dumb movies back then. Slasher flicks, teen sex comedies, stupid gross-out b-movies. Heck, back then I found the 1981 movie Student Bodies amusing (still do). National Lampoon's Class Reunion always struck me as, at best, mildly amusing to my 13-year-old brain.

For some reason, I bought a VHS copy of it in the 1990's and continued to watch it once in a blue moon. Several years ago, I bought the Kino Lorber dvd release because I just HAD to have it finally in widescreen. But why?

I dunno. Although a very early slasher movie spoof, Class Reunion isn't gory in the least. Although rated R, Class Reunion far as I can remember doesn't have any rough language re: the f word. Nor does it have any nudity other than a brief side-boob shot.

What it does have are a lot of dumb jokes and a sensibility carried over from the 1970's Lampoon era. The characters include a couple of Cheech & Chong wannabe stoner-types who smoke dope and can't remember anything. One of the more memorable roles features Zane Busby playing a formerly handicapped student who made a deal with Satan to become not handicapped. Steven Furst (Flounder from Animal House fame) turns up as the class slob. One of his lines is "I see London, I see France, I see so-and-so's underpants"...I mean, it's literally that type of elementary school playground humor on display throughout the flick. Chuck Berry shows up and sings 'My Ding-a-Ling'...a couple of people in the cast I've seen in other movies featuring SNL alumni, but for the most part most of the cast are people I'd never seen before nor would go on to see in much else.

All I can say is that this lowest common denominator (and now in 2023 VERY dated movie regarding the humor) flick has inexplicably grown on me over the decades. Inexplicably meaning I'm at a loss to explain as to why since I STILL don't find it particularly amusing (it's not like I enjoyed it much 40 years ago and am giving it the ranking I am for the sake of nostalgia). In point of fact, it's fairly undistinguished in nearly every way...not violent in a gory way, not revealing in a horndog sense, mildly humorous at times at best. So, like I said, it's an R-rated horror spoof that neither scares nor amuses.

Must be some reason I've seen it perhaps 40 times over the last 40 years, but darned if I can figure out what that reason is.