This is a film that I watched for the first time on Mystery Science Theater 3000 which is not surprising as this is not something I would even try to watch without them. Usually, when I did see a movie they riffed before I saw it on their show it was a horror film or science fiction one. All the biker ones and Ed Wood ones I usually saw on that show first. This is probably due to the fact that I can watch a bad or horrible horror film, but anything else to me is just hard to stomach if it is bad. This film was pretty bad as it does not really have much to it to begin with. Starts out as a traveling type film where a group of people are on the road and trying to get to California. Then the film becomes the precursor to Showgirls. Okay, that is not fair at all...to this film! The plot is all over the place, the person they seem to frame as the hero is not and a guy who you think is going to be inconsequential ends up being the most important character. Of course, one does get to see lots of attractive girls dancing during one stretch of the film.
The story is a bit all over the place as we start out with a girl who works at a place called, Eat with her alcoholic dad. A guy named Buz comes in and changes her life forever as he means to rob the place, but never gets around to it and soon he and Michele soon are headed for California where Buz's sister is a dancer for a nightclub and he thinks Michele can be a good dancer too! He also wants to do the nasty with her and he thinks that she has lots of money. They soon team up with a guy named Critter and get him to join their group as well because Buz mistakenly thinks he is loaded too and soon the are becoming fast friends and on their way to California right after Buz has to rob a gas station to finally get enough money to get there. They end up at a nightclub called the Haunted House where the band plays the same song over and over and girls flop around on stage and Michele can easily do this so she is soon replacing Buz's sister as the main attraction, but what does Buz care as he is too busy setting up a crime that involves breaking into a prison and somehow getting out. Meanwhile, Critter just wants to get Michele out of there!
This made for a very funny episode of MST3K, but I do think there had to be a lot left on the floor with this one. Just too many jump cuts to random scenes like the guy with the dune buggy and the scene where Buz randomly pops up at the table where Michele and Critter are having a conversation. The film's run time also says there is a cut of the film that runs 102 minutes so maybe the missing footage would explain just how Buz got out of that prison and other questions. Or maybe, the missing sections featured topless dancers which would have been even better than finding out how he got out of prison! Still, not going to track down an uncut copy of the film to find out as I kind of doubt it features lots of nudity.
So a bad film, yes! Not sure it was as bad as it looked featured on MST3K as it was cut a good deal for the show. It may even be worth a couple of more points on the score card if there were some hot scenes. Then again, if the scenes involved Buz or Leo it might have gotten deducted a few points too! Even with the edits, the film still plays out like two films as it does start out more focused on Buz, Michele and Critter's journey to California and then kind of slams on the breaks as they make their way to the Haunted House where only the dancing girls makes the film watchable. Still, gotta love the name of that restaurant...Eat!
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