Nerd meets girl in the American International sex comedy from the director of LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, CALIFORNIA DREAMING on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

T.T. (Dennis Christopher, FADE TO BLACK) arrives in California from The Windy City ready to throw himself in surfing culture. His attempts to pick up the lingo and come across as easygoing flop badly wherever he goes, but diner owner Duke (Seymour Cassel, MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ) takes pity on T.T. and offers him a place to stay when the younger man reveals that his late brother was a jazz musician who loved the water which is why T.T. made the journey. Instead of helping T.T. seek closure, Duke instead tries to get him some ass; and hopefully not that of his daughter Corky (Glynnis O'Connor, ODE TO BILLY JOE) who resents an interloper during her final summer with her father before college, or his younger ex-wife Fay (Dorothy Tristan, KLUTE) who has a better relationship with Corky than Duke. As T.T. affects a West Coast attitude in trying to score, he fails to notice that the surfers and beach babes he idolizes – among them troubled Rick (John Calvin, MAKING LOVE) and Stephanie (Tanya Roberts, TOURIST TRAP) and love triangle Mike (James Van Patten, ROLLER BOOGIE), Marsha (Stacey Nelkin, HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH), and Tenner (Johnny Fain, BIKINI BEACH) – are eager to escape his newfound paradise for higher waves in Hawaii, and his growing disenchantment with fantasist Duke may push the older man to finally pursue his own dreams at too high a price.

A downbeat, seventies take on the beach picture American International had made popular in the previous decade, LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH director John Hancock's CALIFORNIA DREAMING is not so much episodic as shapeless, largely witnessed but not always seemingly understood by T.T. who seems more obsessed with preserving the balance of a new world he is discovering rather than relating to the people in it. His cringe-inducing behavior with women seems to stem like his other problems with characters from an inability to live in the moment. While there is an element of the sex comedy to the film, the soundtrack – which includes America's cover of The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreaming" and some other Casablanca Records artists – seems to go against the grain of the film's darker emotions until the climax where the song choice, Cassel's wordless performance, and the optical slow motion do stir the emotions. In spite of the film seeming at times to merely concede to expectations with T&A and zany comedy – including a subplot involving mechanic Earl (PAJAMA PARTY's Ned Wynn, who also scripted) in a bet for the affections of carhop waitress Corinne (Alice Playten, LEGEND) with flashy Jordy (future sitcom regular Todd Susman, STAR-SPANGLED GIRL) – there is a degree of nuance to some of the seemingly shallow characters that may go unnoticed, particularly jock Rick who seems to try to manipulate Stephanie by claiming to not be good enough for her whenever he screws up but actually does seem to mask a low opinion of himself beneath indifference and jerkiness. T.T. is the one to root for, but it seems as though he really does not become a real human being and "get the girl" until he actually has to help someone else deal with loss.

Released theatrically by American International, CALIFORNIA DREAMING had a VHS release from Vestron but Orion seemed to have steered clear of the title when they had the AIP library due to possible music rights issues; however, Scorpion's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray appears to have the soundtrack intact on its DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track. Thankfully, due to the film's obscurity, MGM had to strike a new HD master last year. There is a warm bias to the skintones in exteriors, but that appears to be part of the original photography as some of the saturated colors in the costumes seem undiluted even if they do not always pop. There is some softness in the beach photography and some shots of the surfing may either be stock or optically-enlarged. The only glaring fault seems to be part of the original post-production with some momentary heavy image degradation during an optical dissolve around the eighty-minute mark. Optional English SDH subtitles are included and also transcribe the song lyrics.