THE
GIRL NEXT DOOR/TEEN LUST (1979)Director: James Hong
Code Red Releasing
THE
GIRL NEXT DOOR/TEEN LUST (1979)Kristin Baker is THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, volunteering on prostitution detail for the police in two different cuts of the film included on Code Red’s DVD.
Summer
has finally arrived and best friends Carol (Kristin Baker, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART
2) and Neeley (Leslie Cederquist) have decided to join the “Explorers”
program by volunteering with the local police force rather than camping with
their boyfriends: Terry (Perry Lang, THE HEARSE) and Hotrod (Richard Singer,
AMERICAN POP), respectively. It turns out that Carol has good reasons to explore
career opportunities rather than wiling away the summer: her mother (LITTLE
DARLINGS’ screenwriter Dalene Young billed as “Dolly Carolla”)
is a drunk (who sets her bed on fire while smoking in it) who is sleeping with
the plumber (CHEERLEADER CAMP’s George “Buck” Flower, billed
as “Sherman Backus”) who wants her to marry the mentally-impaired
next door neighbor with a trust fund Dustin (Michael Sloane, SCANNER COP II),
and her boyfriend Terry can’t seem to resist the aggressive come-ons of
slutty classmate DeDe (Lee Ann Barnes). Neeley just wants to have fun with her
training officer Turner (Michael Heit, AMERICAN HOT WAX) since she likes to
make Hotrod jealous; but Carol might actually be falling for her training officer
Drury (DON’T GO NEAR THE PARK’s Robert Gribbin), and neither her
boyfriend nor her “fiancé” Dustin (and her matchmaking mother)
are happy about that.
As
a teenage sex comedy, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR aka TEEN LUST is perhaps lacking: the
story is seriously muddled, and the female protagonist – unusual in itself
in a sex comedy – is dull compared to her more adventurous best friend
(strangely, the mopey male main character with the wild friend usually works
in this genre). That said, its grab bag of story ideas (the film’s other
alternate titles include POLICE GIRLS ACADEMY, HIGH SCHOOL TEASERS and MOM NEVER
TOLD ME) is certainly not without interest thanks to a skewed view of humanity
that finds even the “confused” heroine not above hypocrisy. The
cast is attractive and generally likable, but the heroine has no clear goal;
and the usual goal of the sex comedy is to get laid (we don’t know if
she’s a virgin, but her near rape – at the hands of grade school
kids – and ensuing trauma seem more appropriate to another type of exploitation
film). IMDb lists an uncredited performance by Jewel Shepard (who may be the
performer who flashes the camera and whose erogenous zones are probed by the
camera in the opening home movie footage).
At
86 minutes and 30 seconds, the version titled TEEN LUST seems to be missing
bits of footage that might never have been shot, were lost by the lab, or were
pre-cut from this version (after Carol’s near-rape, she asks Drury to
take her to the training house which we never see – we do see Hotrod sneaking
up on Turner and Neeley in the training house but only hear of Drury’s
“behavior” with Carol there in later dialogue). The poster artwork
for TEEN LUST bears a 1982 copyright (apparently the latest release, through
Howard Willette’s Coast Films, who is listed as “technical advisor”
on the poster), so one wonders if this longer version was reassembled for release
after THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR (plural) and possibly Saturn International’s
HIGH SCHOOL TEASERS version. At 77 minutes and 6 seconds, the director’s
cut THE GIRL NEXT DOOR has tighter editing and feels more focused, but the construction
still feels like it was pieced together from what was available despite having
some bits of footage and dialogue that were not in TEEN LUST (although some
of that may have been lost to damage).
The
scoring is different – notably the addition of a couple songs (including
the title song by Garry Hyde), and some scenes are shuffled or intercut (the
scene of Carol regaling and scaring Terry with his war stories while he is visiting
Carol in TEEN LUST is now intercut with Carol and Drury trying to get into the
training house, and the shot of Carol coming in after Terry has dived out the
window has been removed). A couple scenes have also been shortened – the
scene with the flasher has had its middle cut out so we only see him being chased
away by the police dog, and the second time Carol catches Terry with DeDe cuts
off before he tries to apologize to her – while some have been removed
entirely (Carol’s near-rape is completely missing so there’s no
explanation as to why she comes home with her clothes torn up). THE GIRL NEXT
DOOR features a post-production credit for hardcore/softcore cameraman Ray Icely
(ALL THE DEVIL’S ANGELS) and a music credit for porn/exploitation composer
Richard Hieronymous (the guy who gave us the theme song for Don Jones’
THE FOREST).
Hong
appears on an amusing commentary track for the longer TEEN LUST version –
presumably because the running time gives him more time in which to speak or
the ability to comment on cut scenes – moderated by Code Red’s Bill
Olsen and Marc Edward Heuck. An enthusiastic Hong introduces himself as “also
known as Mr. Ping of KUNG-FU PANDA”, and jokingly refers to TEEN LUST
as a “wonderful, classy film” when Heuck expresses his surprise
that an actor with an august reputation would direct a film like this (although
he had previously directed the erotic film HOT CONNECTIONS and would appear
onscreen feeling up chained babes in his co-directed THE VINEYARD for New World
in the 1980s). Hong was working as an actor and in distribution for Corman during
the New World Pictures days (the film’s DP Larry Snodgrass worked as assistant
cameraman on the New World production GRAND THEFT AUTO as well as BAD GEORGIA
ROAD for Dimension Pictures whose office was in the building opposite Corman’s),
and recalls shooting without permits including Berman’s topless scene
in the park (Olsen points out that the different background in the subsequent
shot of the car interior, which was shot in a more private location because
of the length of the scene and the nudity). Heuck is around to point out the
specific differences between the two cuts, but the release history is muddled
even for them (Richard Ellman of Ellman Film Enterprises makes a cameo appearance,
but Hong does not recall if he handled the film), as well as what would become
stock characters in eighties sex comedies. Olsen mentions that the scene between
Terry and Carol’s father is missing in the negative of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR,
but it does not appear to have been reinserted from the TEEN LUST master since
the scene in the director’s cut is timed differently. Hong also mentions
that the lighting was tweaked in post-production, which goes some way in explaining
the shifting brightness and contrast from shot to shot in some scenes (as well
as short ends).
Code
Red’s progressive, anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) transfer of TEEN LUST
is riddled with scratches, splices, and missing frames; but it’s the general
choppiness of the original editing that make this battered release print look
like an unfinished workprint (presumably it was in better condition when the
master for Lightning Video’s VHS release was struck). The progressive,
anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) transfer of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, on the other
hand, is bright, clear, and colorful (making Terry’s and Hotrod’s
drag disguises during the sleepover scene even less believable). The disc also
includes a trailer for THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR version (1:44), as well as a release
called THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (2:12) with an odd choice of narrator (possibly Sloane
doing a variation of his “retarded” voice) who still uses the plural
title (and very poor dialogue synchronization). Neither trailer mentions the
film’s distributors under those titles. There is also a start-up trailer
for FAMILY HONOR. (Eric
Cotenas)