"Can We See Her Naked?" & Other Class Reunion Wishes

Got a 40th high school class reunion approaching, just around the corner. Looking forward to it. Looking back, ten-year reunions seem perfunctory exercises in manufactured nostalgia. For most, nearly half of the transpired decade has been devoted to continued schooling at colleges. At a ten-year reunion, just enough time has passed for alumni to reacquaint with classmates, but even then, little has changed to shift the parameters of high school hierarchy, and many social cliques are still intact.

Probably more so than any comedic situation, high school reunions have remained a staple of situation comedies, from "The Andy Griffith Show" and "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia" to "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy." What is the appeal of school reunions that continually attracts not just television writers but filmmakers as well? A class reunion is a crucible of repressed emotions and renewed friendships, of long-harbored regrets and fond memories, of unrealized dreams and new opportunities.

It will be interesting to see what unfolds at our 40th, but until then, we’re invited to these class reunions in the moviehouse…

The first invitation comes from "Class of ’63," a 1973 made-for-TV film that, despite its obscurity for home viewing, resonates in our memory as engrossing and moving, worthy of dramas from the Golden Age of Television of the 1950s. The ABC network’s "Movie of the Week," presenting 77-minute films to fill 90 minutes of primetime, remained must-see TV from 1969 to 1975, fulfilling the network’s lofty goal of offering high-quality original films to a demanding audience. The intelligent teleplays sidestepped exploitation in groundbreaking depictions of homosexuality ("That Certain Summer," starring Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen), drug abuse ("Go Ask Alice") and teenage alienation ("Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring," with Sally Field), and scared the bejesus out of us at home ("Trilogy of Terror," featuring Karen Black) and on the road ("Duel," starring Dennis Weaver, directed by a young Steven Spieberg). The weekly event also debuted pilot episodes of successful TV series, including "The Night Stalker," starring Darren McGavin.

And then there is "Class of ’63." Attending a ten-year college reunion, Joan Hackett and Cliff Gorman portray a troubled married couple. "But Gorman," author Michael Karol wrote in his 2008 book The ABC Movie of the Week Companion, "has more than catching up on his mind, setting a deadly trap for James Brolin, his former rival for Hackett’s affections. A well-written teleplay and good acting, especially by Hackett, make this worth watching."

With her angular features, expressive eyes and distinctive voice (all reminiscent of Jean Arthur, star of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Shane"), Joan Hackett provided a refreshing alternative to the Hollywood assembly line of cookie-cutter glamour. Her feisty presence brightened a number of motion pictures, including "Will Penny," "Support Your Local Sheriff," "The Last of Sheila" and "The Terminal Man," before she succumbed to ovarian cancer at the age of 49 in 1983.

Cliff Gorman seemed to brand every role in his brief career with a searing New York City-intensity. He won an Obie Award for his role in the stage production of "The Boys in the Band," which he reprised in the 1970 film version. He later garnered a Tony Award for playing controversial standup comedian Lenny Bruce in the Broadway play "Lenny." Although the movie version of "Lenny," directed by Bob Fosse, starred Dustin Hoffman, Fosse later cast Gorman as the Hoffman-based character portraying Bruce in "All That Jazz." Gorman’s other film work included memorable roles in "Cops and Robbers," costarring fellow New Yorker Joseph Bologna, "Night and the City," starring Robert De Niro, and "Hoffa," starring Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito.

Interestingly, seven years after "Class of ’63," Cliff Gorman and James Brolin were reunited as deadly antagonists in "Night of the Juggler" (1980), a lurid, chase-packed crime thriller which cast Gorman (above) as a sociopathic misfit who mistakenly abducts ex-cop Brolin’s young daughter. (Critic Leonard Maltin commented, "Fast-paced but wildly implausible movie paints a notably ugly portrait of N.Y.C. and its people.") Cliff Gorman died from leukemia in September 2002. He was 65.

Ed Lauter in a typical Ed Lauter pose

"Class of ‘63" also features an early performance by popular character actor Ed Lauter in, if memory serves us, a poignant role as a college jock whose glory days are sadly long past. The movie, filmed mainly at USC with additional scenes shot at Princeton University, was directed by John Korty, a filmmaker known for his unpretentious sincerity. In 1974, he directed the TV movie "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," which preceded "Roots" by three years and earned star Cicely Tyson an Emmy Award. In 1977, Korty made the feature-length documentary "Who are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?" narrated by executive producer Henry Winkler, which won an Academy Award.

In the 1980s, when the blood-gates opened to unleash a torrent of gory slasher flicks depicting twenty-something actors miscast as horny teens destined for wholesale slaughter at the hands of an indestructible butcher in one "Halloween"-"Friday the 13th"-"Nightmare on Elm Street" clone after another, it seemed inevitable that the nostalgic rite of passage that is the high school reunion would be terrorized by a bloodthirsty killer - in the case of "Slaughter High" (1986) a pathetic nerd who was the hapless victim of a double-whammy of humiliation: embarrassed sexually in the girls restroom, then horribly disfigured in a chemistry lab prank.

Ten years later, the ten graduates responsible for the horrible accident are invited to a high school reunion. Reviewing the film on the DVD Verdict website, Tom Becker observed, "No one bats an eye that the reunion is scheduled for April Fool’s Day or that it’s taking place at the now-shuttered school," or, for that matter, we might add, why only the ten former students are invited. (The movie’s original title was "April Fool’s Day" but was changed to avoid confusion with the like titled Paramount thriller released that same year.)

Sticking out like a sore thumb among the over-aged alumni is voluptuous British actress Caroline Munro (above) as the high school siren who initially lures the class wimp into the girls restroom. Munro, a former model, was cast in scantily-clothed roles in such Hammer Films productions as "Dracula A.D. 1972" and "Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter" before landing breakthrough roles as slave-girl Margiana in "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (below) and as Naomi, the helicopter assassin in the 1977 James Bond adventure "The Spy Who Loved Me." It’s a jagged pill to swallow in accepting the 36-year-old Munro as a high school temptress.

Munro, not coincidentally, portrays a screen scream queen in "Slaughter High" who opts to attend the dubious reunion over a role in a cheesy exploitation film. Appropriately, Munro’s sleazy manager, Manny, is played by "Slaughter High’s" producer, Dick Randall. The International Movie Database biography for Randall described him as "a jolly and colorful film producer who specialized in blithely trashy low-budget exploitation pictures." He started his show business career as a gag writer for Milton Berle and later wrote for 1950s quiz shows before producing such grade-Z cinema as "The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield," "King of Kong Island," "The Mad Butcher," "Pieces" and "The Daughter of Emanuelle."

Producer Dick Randall with his wife Corliss

Like Munro, the rest of the cast in "Slaughter High" (filmed in England) are British actors whose faux American dialects seem to fade as the film progresses. This was the sole screen role for Simon Scuddamore (below), who portrays the scarred, vengeful nerd, masquerading as a murderous court jester. Scuddamore, who worked at a London school for deprived children, committed suicide with an intentional drug overdose shortly after "Slaughter High" was released.

What the hell kind of high school is this? The DVD Verdict’s Tom Becker pointed out "an incongruously placed tub in an abandoned high school" which serves as the impromptu site of a caustic acid bath, as well as a conveniently discovered brass bed upon which "a couple of paunchy former classmates will get horny in the face of annihilation" before being electrocuted and reduced to smoldering slabs of bacon. The long-deserted high school itself has all the cob-webbed atmosphere of a haunted house.

Featuring a chintzy electronic keyboard music score by Harry Manfredini, who would become noted for his scores for the series of "Friday the 13th" films, "Slaughter High" was the result of three writer-directors, George Dugdale, Mark Ezra and Peter Mackenzie Litten. The three later collaborated on "Living Doll" (1990), a nasty dark comedy about necrophilia, noteworthy as the last movie produced by the aforementioned Dick Randall.

Actually, the notion of a high school reunion terrorized by a psychopathic alumnus was previously depicted,  for laughs, in 1982’s "National Lampoon’s Class Reunion," notable as the first credited screenplay for the late John Hughes, the future auteur of adolescent angst as the writer-director of "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off" and "Some Kind of Wonderful."

After dropping out of Arizona State University, Hughes began selling jokes to such standup comics as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers, which led to employment as an advertising copywriter in Chicago in 1970. While working on an advertising account for tobacco giant Philip Morris in New York City, he started contributing to National Lampoon magazine, initially submitting a story called "Vacation ’58," based on his childhood family trips, which became the inspiration for his breakout screenplay for "National Lampoon’s Vacation" (1983), starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo and Randy Quaid.

From the 1970s into the early 1980s, a number of films were produced as tie-ins to National Lampoon magazine, often utilizing the publication’s creative staff. The first and unquestionably most successful offering was 1978’s "National Lampoon’s Animal House," showcasing the shameless mugging of The Second City-"Saturday Night Live" icon John Belushi in what became the highest-grossing comedy of all time.

In recent years, several movies with "National Lampoon" in the title - more often than not released directly to home video - were unrelated, but the name "National Lampoon" could be easily licensed by any production company for a fee. In 2006, an Associated Press writer noted, "The National Lampoon, once a brand name above nearly all the others in comedy, has become shorthand for pathetic frat boy humor."

National Lampoon’s immediate big-screen follow-up to "Animal House" was "National Lampoon Goes to the Movies" (also known as "National Lampoon’s Movie Madness"), a hodgepodge of film parodies featuring Peter Riegert, Diane Lane, Candy Clark, Robert Culp, Fred Willard, Joe Spinell, Mary Woronov, Dick Miller, Robby Benson, Christopher Lloyd , Elisha Cook, Julie Kavner, Henny Youngman and Richard Widmark. The comic misfire tested so poorly in advance screenings that it was preemptively shelved in the musty archives of obscurity.

John Hughes (who also contributed to teleplays for "Delta House," the less-than-a-single-season 1979 sitcom spinoff of "Animal House") wrote the screenplay for "National Lampoon’s Class Reunion" while still on staff at the magazine.

In the shadow of the embarrassment of "Movie Madness," the National Lampoon had high hopes for "Class Reunion," proclaiming in ads, "From the People Who Brought You ‘Animal House’!" No doubt, a number of moviegoers probably assumed this would be a spin-off of National Lampoon’s enormously popular high school yearbook parody (above), originally published in 1973. What they got instead was a feverishly uneven spoof of slasher flicks. You know you’re setting off on the wrong foot when Stephen Furst, who played the luckless schlemiel Flounder in "Animal House," finds himself cast in "Class Reunion" as an ersatz John Belushi in the role of the school’s sexist lout.

The motley graduates of the class of 1972 from Lizzie Borden High School (in comparison to the sly wit of the motto for Faber College in "Animal House" - "Knowledge is Good" - the heavy-handed credo at Lizzie Borden High is "A Cut Above the Rest") reunite ten years later at their long-closed school (an incongruous facsimile of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion), where they are stalked by a former classmate who was sexually embarrassed in a senior-year prank.

The cast boasts the normally reliable comedic talents of Gerritt Graham (memorable as Kurt Russell’s superstitious coworker in "Used Cars") as the snobbish class president, Zane Buzby (from Cheech and Chong’s "Up in Smoke") as a former cripple who sold her soul to the Devil, Marya Small (known for her roles in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" and "Sleeper") in a genuinely inspired albeit hilariously non-p.c. role of a blind alumna with a scene-stealing guide dog, and Jim Staahl (an improvisational comedian from The Second City who appeared frequently with Robin Williams on "Mork & Mindy") as an exchange student from Transylvania.

Blackie Dammett threatens class beauty Shelley Smith

Hamming it up down to the bone as the vengeance-wreaking class wimp is Blackie Dammett. The father of Anthony Kiedis, the lead singer of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, he legally changed his name from John Kiedis as a tribute to his favorite author, Dashiell Hammett. Nicknamed "Spider," the elder Kiedis purportedly dealt drugs to drummer Keith Moon of The Who and members of Led Zeppelin, so it should come as no surprise that he portrayed drug dealers in "52 Pick-Up" and "Lethal Weapon."

The Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis poses with dad Blackie Dammett

There are funny bits in "Class Reunion" by the late Fred McCarren as the graduate nobody remembers and by the late Anne Ramsey ("Throw Momma from the Train") as the hellish, cigarette-smoking cafeteria lady. Veteran character actor Michael Lerner (Oscar nominee for his supporting performance as producer Jack Lipnick in the Coen brothers’ "Barton Fink") pops up in a red-herring role of a criminal psychiatrist.

Marya Small and Fred McCarren

With an appropriately cheesy music score by Peter Bernstein (son of venerable film composer Elmer Bernstein, who scored "National Lampoon’s Animal House"), most attempts at genuine laughter in "Class Reunion" are sabotaged by director Michael Miller, whose earlier films "Jackson County Jail" (1976), starring Tommy Lee Jones, and "Silent Rage" (1982), with Chuck Norris, hardly laid the groundwork for comedy timing. Miller even botches a cameo by Chuck Berry, who does a brief, uninspired medley of three songs before duck-walking off-camera to collect his paycheck, an all too sad reminder of the show-stopping performances by the fictional Otis Day and the Knights in "Animal House."

And yet, we can’t help but laugh out loud when Stephen Furst utters, "Can we see her naked before you kill her?"