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SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960).

What a wonderful title for a shit awful movie! Of course, after the opening song "Sexpot Goes to College." what else could you expect outta this low-rent, dim-witted romp from Albert Zugsmith, who previously gave us such drive-in wonders as HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, GIRLS TOWN and CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER. This stinker makes all his other pics look like Cannes Palm D'Or winners, but (on a sadistic note) it's fun to watch the large cast of familiar faces struggling with its sitcom-level humor... It begins when Thinko, the world's greatest electronic brain (a bank of flashing lights and a robot who looks like the 3rd cousin to Gort), picks the new head of the science department at the university. The winner is the ever-pneumatic Mamie Van Doren as Dr. Mathilda West, who comes complete with a 293 I.Q., a bagful of diplomas and a blouseful of charisma -- with this busty blonde sending the entire campus into spasms of groanable double entendres. Mamie wears glasses to make herself look bright (but still can't manage a simple line reading), and the shit hits the fan when it's discovered that her last job was stripping under the nickname the "Tallahassee Tassel Tosser." Sprinkled throughout the tedium we get Martin Milner (post SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS... man, what a career nosedive!) as the college P.R. rep; Louis Nye as the computer geek in charge of Thinko; John Carradine as a horny biology professor who dances the Charleston with Van Doren; Vampira as a nurse; a cowboy-hatted Jackie Coogan parachuting onto campus; Conway Twitty onstage at the college hang-out, The Passion Pit; and Mijanou Bardot (riding on sister Brigitte's appeal) as a flirtatious French student. But my personal fave is drop-dead gorgeous, 17-year-old Tuesday Weld as a marching band member who can even make playing the triangle look sexy. Subplots involve Tuesday flirting with football neanderthal "Woo Woo" Grabowski, a pair of bumbling gangsters, race track scams, and a chimpanzee assistant who wears glasses and types. And though the ads tried to make this dreck seem risque, it's totally limp. The only surprise is the Thinko Sex Fantasy episode at the end, which has the Metal Man and the chimp enjoying the work of several strippers. I certainly didn't expect this topless finale, and it's the only part of the film with any balls -- especially when the dames pretend to dry hump Thinko (but from what I can calculate from this print's 102-minute running time, this sequence was only for its 'European' release). This is one of the worst examples of Zugsmith underestimating the intelligence of the teenage public. And though loaded with admittedly bizarre cameos, nobody on-camera is given anything to do. It's the pits.

© 1994 by Steven Puchalski.