Student Affairs

"Student Affairs" is an unusual experience in that it is apparently NOT a teen sex comedy set in a highschool, but a movie ABOUT actors FILMING a teen sex comedy set in a highschool. It feels like a documentary about the filming of a "Porky's" rip off. But does that sound interesting to anyone at all?

I balked when I saw it was another Chuck Vincent b-movie. The last couple of movies of his I saw led me to conclude that he should have stuck to his career as a gay pornographer.

Gotta love the fact that all the promotional material associated with the movie ignores this and just treats it as a typical teen sex comedy. Apparently the people in charge of marketing it knew that no one would want to watch a mockumentary about the production of a teen sex comedy, especially when it's this dull.

The movie coughs up some nudity at the half hour mark, with a topless woman in bed, who does have beautiful breasts.

One of the characters is supposed to be the son of a famous actress, Janet Wheeler. He tries to keep it from everyone but they find out anyway. In one scene he strips to his underwear - for maximum homoeroticism - and is surprised in bed by a topless starlet who wants to screw her way to the top.

You know what is rare in a SEX comedy? "Student Affairs" actually features a SEX scene. These movies usually have bare breasts, sure. But actual (simulated) sex? That's beyond the pail, for some reason. "Student Affairs"' sex scene is so unconvincing it doesn't really matter, but I thought I'd mention it. It is shot from the waist up, and looks like two people bumping into each other. It is impossible to believe penetration could occur from that angle.

The movie does have quite a few bare breasts, so at least it delivers on that score. The trouble is staying awake during the bits where the cast is fully clothed.

At the eleventh hour, the movie supplies a villain, as one of the actors, or whatever he's supposed to be, acts mean. The movie ends in hijinks, I guess. People sticking each other's faces in cake and punch, punching each other, and picking each other up. I was just glad it was ending.

My review was written in August 1988 after watching the movie on Vestron video cassette.

The notion of doing a behind-the-scenes "Day for Night"-type treatment of high school comedies delivers very little in "Student Affairs", a 1986 production debuting on video.

Prolific filmmaker Chuck Vincent round up his usual complement of Adult film performers (Tracey Adams, Veronica Hart, billed respectively as Deborah Blaisdell, Jane Hamilton) plus mainstream thesps to portray actors and crew shooting a '50s teen pic "Oakwood High" in New Jersey.

Film-within-a-film is utterly banal, as are the tribulations of an uppity actor on set (Jim Abele), the centerfold beauty trying to prove her acting mettle (all-too-true role for Adams/Blaisdell) and a disgruntled screenwriter interfering with the shoot (Andy Nichols).

Concept of watching thesps in three separate personae (auditioning to impress, in film roles and "real life") turns out to be synthetic. Only coup is the very believable thesping by Ron Sullivan as the "Oakwood" pic director; he's the prolific Adult film helmer usually credited as Henri Pachard.

Credit Vincent for trying something different, but without many laughs it's hard to watch as a "Porky's" carbon.

STUDENT AFFAIRS is your typical badly-acted PORKY'S wannabe about (I think) a film crew shooting a badly-acted PORKY'S wannabe in a high school. This movie popped up on cable late one night, and at that hour I was transfixed by its "brilliance." The movie was awesome because at the time I believed the acting sucked because the movie inside the movie was intentionally bad, thus making the actors brilliant in their interpretation of bad acting. Their equally bad acting outside the movie-within-the-movie was insightful commentary on the art of acting, and I was cherishing the humorously ironic self-awareness and intelligence that went into this film.

At least that's what I think I was thinking then. I later bought STUDENT AFFAIRS off eBay for $1, but watching it sober revealed no hidden genius; it IS just a badly-acted PORKY'S wannabe, and the bud that night was just very kind.