Delta Pi

I usually enjoy camp/comedy films but I must say this 1984 release was not done very well. Ruth Gordon plays the Delta Phi house mom and her many talents were wasted in this low budget camp/comedy. The girls of Delta Phi are behind on their rent so they partner with a slick male entrepreneur (James Wilder) and head to Vegas as a team of inexperienced mud wrestlers to battle a team of pro female mud wrestlers who are managed by a veteran promoter who has ties with the mob, which means he always gets his way. I won't provide any spoilers but I will say that the grand finale was a bust (no pun intended).

I give it a disappointing 3 out of 10 IMDb rating.

The stand out best acting in the film was completely due to Ruth Gordon. The rest of the cast seemed, at best, amateurish in their delivery.

The story concerns a group of sorority sisters who are in debt to a loan shark. They contrive a plan to enter a mud wrestling contest, to pay off the loan shark. Ruth Gordon plays the ever "under the influence' housemother to these young women.

I do have to give the film credit in one area. It does show vintage 1980's styles to the 'max'. Enjoy it for some kitsch. But don't expect too much depth.

This film is poorly acted and has a real "home made" feel..it's about 5 steps below a "B" movie. Laura Branigan must have been convinced that this would be a good opportunity to break into films after spending 2 years in an acting school...her character is boring and her acting is quite hollow. To top it all off, she doesn't even sing in this film. Ruth Gordon shines, as always, even though there isn't much for her to do. The casting was questionable also - any film portraying college girls obviously much older than that who run to Las Vegas to save their sorority house by mud wrestling isn't worth your time. Laura Branigan even used a body double for her wrestling scenes...other antics include getting a rabbit high on marijuana, a man taping a cucumber to his leg to look like a big penis, and a party at the Sorority House where people dive into a baby pool filled with mud. Fun, fun, fun, people...

This movie was indeed "bad" when it was released back in 1985. Now, nineteen years later, it's just good IL camp. This movie is like a poster-child for "Cheesey 80's Movie". It is funny, sometimes unintentionally, and is an absolute perfect movie to watch with some friends for a good laugh. Some of the movie's highlights are; seeing pop-singer, Laura Branigan, smoke a joint. Watch Ruth Gordon eat pot brownies, smoke weed, cuss like a sailor and mud wrestle. And see how styles and fashions have changed and not changed over the last two decades. I recommend it "highly".

Mugsy's Girls (a.k.a. Delta Pi) is a fairly typical early to mid-80s Animal House rip off, with the added value of mud wrestling. Long story short, a sorority house is in hock to your typical foreign loan shark, and decides to participate in a mud wrestling contest to earn the cash they need to purchase the house and pay off the loan shark. Led by Gordon, their indomitable house mother, they head off to Las Vegas.

The plot itself is highly predictable, with many of the jokes telegraphed a mile away. The budget is very obviously low, and one suspects half of it went to getting Gordon and Branigan to appear in this schlock. (You know you're dealing with a home made affair when a significant portion of the cast is the director's family, and a C-list star like Ken Norton gets high billing for what is essentially a cameo.)

Nevertheless, the film delivers on what most of the audience is really watching for-pretty young women wallowing around in mud. The mud wrestling sequence takes up roughly the last third of the movie, and it delivers. The actresses are more than pretty enough, and most of them appear to do the wrestling themselves. (Although Branigan is very clearly replaced by a body double.)