Sex Kittens Go to College

"Sex Kittens Go To College" is a terrible film...with lousy writing, dumb acting and not much going for it. However, at least it isn't trying to be a good film and in fact it is trying very hard to be a stupid and terrible movie!

When the film begins, some college decides to hire the perfect professor and they use their computer to tell them the choice. It suggests Dr. West (Mamie Van Doren)--a woman with 15 degrees and with an IQ of nearly 300*! So, without even meeting her, they offer West a position at the school and are shocked when she shows because she's one hot lady...and later they discover she's a stripper! As for Dr. West, she mostly spouts a lot of pseudo- intellectual nonsense which is to supposedly indicate she's a super- genius. On hand throughout the film are a brain-dead jock with some sexual hangups, a group of gangsters, a smart chimp dressed like a student (perhaps Bonzo's cousin), a horny and somewhat dim French student (Bridget Bardot's real life sister) and a LOT of really bad acting!

This movie is much like the later Beach movies (such as "Beach Blanket Bingo")--with very broad acting and writing. It's clearly designed for younger folks who frequented drive-in theaters-- undemanding and dopey. The overall effort is a bit painful to watch and the film is amazingly stupid and just plain bad. Even a guest performance by Conway Twitty (as himself) isn't enough to save this one!

*If you care, IQ scores back in the day were VERY unreliable and lacked real meaning with the old Stanford-Binet. The IQ scores obtained today using the much more widely accepted Wechsler tests top off at about 150...so if you meet anyone claiming to have a much higher score is likely lying, took some online test (that is meaningless) or was tested decades ago.

There are no actual decapitations, cattle mutilation, desecration of houses of worship, or spurting arteries in Sex Kittens Go To College. Within those limits, this is ghastly beyond anything you can imagine.

Imagine Mamie van Doren as an ex-stripper with an IQ of 268 and twelve college degrees - no, thirteen, hired as a college professor. Imagine Jackie Coogan as a blustering oilman doing a 45-minute W.C. Fields impression. Imagine Martin Milner out-geeking Eddie Deezen, a twelve-foot robot named Thinko that handicaps horse races, a chimp in golf pants. Imagine the most credible and disciplined performance in the film being turned in by Louis Nye. Imagine Vampira so hagged out you'd flee to the arms of Nancy Kulp...Brigitte Bardot's little sister as an exchange student...Conway Twitty...fire engine...funny gangsters... Are your sides aching with laughter yet?

Terrifyingly awful. The only saving grace is that neither Woody Woodbury nor Paul Anka makes a guest appearance.

Yes, for the most part, this is a silly, harmless movie. The plot is inane and the characters are ridiculous, though Mamie Van Doren is beautiful and rather charming. The surprise comes late in the film, ostensibly when the robot is dreaming. His dreams are much like the fantasies of most heterosexual men, I imagine. It's just that you don't expect to see this when watching a silly "beach-party-type" movie. In what I suppose is the European version, four women come out individually and perform striptease, down to the tiniest triangle of coverage. I don't know what the other reviewer was talking about- I saw eight boobs without a pastie in sight. The extended dances went on for ten minutes or so, each one raunchier than the last. The last two were bumping, grinding, and literally humping the robot. Both my husband and I were quite surprised. Anyway, fair warning.

It's hard to find anything good to say about the writing or directing, though the cheap production quality might be due to a low budget.

Milner (co-producer when that meant something) plays a dim bulb "regular guy", and Van Doren plays a genius with just awful lines, but the rest of the cast (excluding perhaps Weld & Bardot) are playing hopeless buffoons.

The nudity in the robot's dream sequence is surprising, but also poorly danced, and more pathetic than erotic.

I suspect the movie was written in one night over a bottle of bad scotch, aiming at a target audience of high school or immature college frat boys.

It's hard to imagine where they got the budget for Van Doren and Weld, who were in strong phases of their careers.

Zugsmith is of course primarily responsible for the movie... But he also produced Touch of Evil (1958)...?

Oh, it's more insulting to men than women because while the women *in the movie* are treated only like sex objects, the men *in the audience* are assumed to be idiots satisfied by insipid plot, humorless jokes, and dull dialog ... or rather, by T&A.

In the opening credits, somebody sings "Sexpot Goes To College," which is an alternate title for this flick. I can think of a few more titles, but I don't want to get banned. This is one of the greatest wastes of non-talent ever conceived. Granted, you don't expect much from a Mamie Van Doren flick, but this thing is truly abysmal.

A robot/computer named THINKO selects the newest faculty member for Collins College. That would be Mamie, who has 13 degrees, can speak 18 languages, and has a sign over her bed reading "Over One Million Served." The reaction of the welcoming committee consists of astonishment (Louis Nye), disapproval (Pamela Mason), and lust (Martin Milner). Mamie tries to impress them with her knowledge of theoretical mechanics: "When I blast off, I've got an escape velocity which gets me to my aphelion point practically instantaneously." Actually, I understood that. Mamie is introduced to the science class, and gives a psychology demonstration by firing two pistols. Next, she sets her sights on helping the star football player overcome his shyness. The football player is played by Woo Woo Grabowski, whose character's name happens to be Woo Woo Grabowski. Woo Woo is being wooed by Tuesday Weld, who looks cute but does not give her performance the old college try. Elsewhere, we have Minjanou Bardot (Brigitte's sister) as a student who apparently is writing a book about sex, two moronic gangsters (Mickey Shaughnessy and Alan Drake playing characters named "Boomie" and "Legs" who think THINKO is a bookie), John Carradine as a lecherous biology professor, Jackie Coogan as Admiral Wildcat MacPherson, and Jose Gonzales-Gonzales as a Mexican.

The thin plot involves the discovery that Mamie used to be a dancer named "Tassels Monclair." So I'm not sure how she found the time to get so highly educated. Mamie does get to dance in a tight silver dress, and sings "Baby," accompanied by Conway Twitty's band. This is definitely the highlight of the film, but it quickly deteriorates as Coogan, Carradine, Nye, and some other guy prance around with her, and do a weak impersonation of a chorus line. Then everybody scatters when a monkey shoots off a machine gun. Apparently, even Cheetah can pass a background check.

There are a few subplots, but they are hardly worth mentioning. In fact, I can't even describe them. The dialogue is witless, as witnessed by this exchange between Bardot and Drake:

Bardot: "Parlez-vous francais?" Drake: "Not if I can help it baby, it gives me gas."

ROFLMGasO

This makes at least three films I've seen with the musclebound and mentally challenged Woo Woo Grabowski - "College Confidential," "The Beat Generation," and now this. I have no idea what he is doing in any of these films, and apparently neither does he. Coogan is obviously doing a W. C. Fields impersonation, and falls flat. Shaughnessy seems to be channeling Lou Costello; please, switch channels. Horny Carradine gets to do the Charleston and the tango with Mamie. Nye spends the entire film looking like he is suffering from hemorrhoids. Vampira has a bit part as Nye's assistant; I didn't even notice it was her until one of the final scenes. Bardot needs to have her libido excised. Pamela Mason is out of her league. It's no wonder a few years later she cleaned out hubby James in the divorce; she couldn't have made any money from this dreck. Milner overacts, does doubletakes, and mugs wildly for the camera. In the finale, he commandeers a fire truck (from Charlie Chaplin, Jr.), and, with Nye hanging on the ladder, sets off after Mamie to propose. The truck is pulled over by Officer Kent McCord, thus starting a long and beautiful friendship with Milner.