"The Hollywood Knights" (1980)

This one used to be on HBO a lot, back in the earlier half of the '80s. I had seen it before Porky's, and thought that it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. This was one of those movies I would stick into the VCR whenever I would invite a friend or two over to watch a movie. Instead of watching Police Academy or Ghostbusters as requested, this one would be slipped in instead. There would be some grumbling at first, but once it got going, with all the mooning, pranks and naked girls going on, there were no requests to turn it off!

It takes place on Halloween night, 1965, but sure has more of a '50s look to it, due to all of the classic cars throughout it. Indeed, it's definitely eye-candy for classic-car lovers. The place where it happens is Tubby's Drive-In, a drive-in burger joint that is set to be torn down after the night is over, to make place for an office complex, much to the delight of the high-rollers in the area.

The ringleader of the whole shebang is Newbomb Turk (Robert Wuhl), the lovable and obnoxious leader of the Knights, out to prank the yuppie homeowners, the local high school pep rally, and the two local dumb cops. For some reason, a subplot involving Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer was later stitched into the movie, giving it a romantic subplot, but seems completely out of place next to Newbomb's japes. How can anyone forget his riotous (and gaseous) rendition of "Volare" during the pep rally?

Fran Drescher is also in this. I still crack up at the part where Newbomb is about to crawl into the back of the car with her, but shoots off in his pants before he can get back there, and she crows "Turk! Did you come????" in that shrill and annoying voice of hers.

And then the two hapless (and incredibly dumb) cops played by Gailard Sartain (Bimbeau) and Sandy Helberg (Clark). Their antics are a riot, especially when they're the target of the Knights' pranks.

And what would a late-night comedy be without some crude and tasteless jokes? We have the one-armed violinist, and then the "spiked" punch...both of which lead to an elderly man shouting out "Dick!!!!!!" with every sentence.

Always a long-running favorite, though there was a blackout period when it disappeared from TV, wasn't on cable, and our videotape of it broke. But it finally made it back onto home video in 2000, and has been in the collection ever since. My Dad always loved it (always having made jokey references and quotes from it for eons), and I still thought of him when I loaded it into the VCR for the first time in some years.