Assault of the Party Nerds 2: The Heavy Petting Detective (1994)
Starring Richard Gabai, Arte Johnson, Burt Ward, Michelle Bauer
Written, Produced and Directed by Richard Gabai

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“Oh, Bud, I want to swallow all your little wriggling things…”

Longtime staples of late-night cable TV, Richard Gabai’s Assault of the Party Nerds and its sequel, The Heavy Petting Detective, get the Criterion treatment from Fred Olen Ray’s Retromedia Entertainment with Party Nerds Toga Bash, a double-sided disc that features more supplemental material than you ever thought possible on these two threadbare sex comedies. Party Nerds is probably the more familiar of the two films, thanks to ceaseless airing on HBO, Showtime, and even TBS, and as its title suggests, it’s a likable take-off on Revenge of the Nerds, with a few genuinely weird touches that have clearly endeared it to the gross-out sex comedy faithful. Writer/producer/director/co-composer Gabai also stars as the fairly normal leader of a quarter of frat nerds who must throw a raging party to recruit new brothers or face extinction from Fraternity Row. The fact that none of the “nerds” seem particularly geeky, at least by movie standards, is one of the quirks that sets Party Nerds apart from the Porky’s pack – the bespectacled computer freak is unquestionably a nerd, but why Gabai, who looks relatively normal, owns a cool car and has a cute girlfriend is considered one is sorta baffling, as well as the other two brothers, an incessantly angry button-down type and a spastic, balding hippie, who seem more insane than nerdy per se. One guesses that this little quandry is less of a deliberate decision and more due to the fact that Gabai worked with what he had, and if only one dude had glasses, well, so be it.

The other bizarro touch is Gabai and Co.’s main competition, a trio of impossibly vain jocks whose preening and buddy-buddy behavior would, in any other film, suggest that Gabai is poking fun at the homosexual tendencies of overly manly men. But then the film goes one step further and actually depicts the jocks as gay lovers (amusingly enough, one of the actors playing the jocks, Kevin Glover, was a well-known male-only adult model and performer), to the extent of having their sorority girlfriends (Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quigley) discover them huddled under a blanket wearing handcuffs and leather bikini briefs. The scene is a truly odd moment – it’s not particularly offensive, since Gabai was pretty much hinting at it all the way through the film, but it’s definitely not where any other sex comedy would’ve thought to go. Again, is it a bold move by a fearless filmmaker? Not really – it’s more likely that none of the friends and family that loaned Gabai the $40,000 to make Party Nerds thought to tell him, “Gee, I don’t know about that scene.”

So when I say that Party Nerds is a likable film, it’s not because it’s particularly funny or raucous, nor is it very smutty (both Quigley and Bauer have nude scenes – unfortunately, so does Tantala Ray, a.k.a. Mistress Tantala, one of the weirdest and most unattractive performers on the fringes of the ‘80s porn scene). No, it’s likable because it’s just kinda offbeat, but in a very low-key way – it’s like going over a friend’s house and discovering that he’s built a lifesize replica of Seka out of chicken wire in his back yard, or that he’s made audio recordings of every baseball game he’s ever seen on TV. You sort of have to step back from it for a minute, size it up, discover that it’s ultimately harmless, and then move on. Same goes for Party Nerds.

Amusingly, for such a three-legged dog of a film, Retromedia’s DVD contains a staggering amount of supplemental material. There are videotaped interviews with Gabai, Quigley, and Bauer, which appear to have been recorded in 1998 or so, and the three (who interview each other) tell some funny, self-deprecating stories about the movie and themselves, and genuinely appear to like each other very much. Gabai also provides a very upbeat commentary for the film with two of the actors who played the jocks (one of whom leaves in the middle of the recording to go back to work); again, he’s very likable and honest about the film’s limitations, and clearly has a good time watching it again and pointing out the various friends and family members who pop up in the background, and revealing some interesting tidbits about the production (like the fact that the fraternity house in the film was a property that he lived in during his own college years, and that doubles for nearly all the locations in the film). There’s also a short barrage of outtakes, and yes, the 1994 sequel, Heavy Petting Detective, is included on the flipside of the disc, along with its own commentary and a bunch of music videos (Gabai also plays in a band). I actually didn’t like it as much as the first Party Nerds movie (despite the fact that it was apparently filmed very close to where I live now in West Hollywood), and for the oddest reason: it looks too professional. He clearly had a few more shekels to invest in this picture, and even rounded up a few name actors like Arte Johnson, Up All Night’s Rhonda Shear, Burt Ward, and Tane McClure (as well as Bauer and Quigley, who return to contribute, yes, more nude scenes), and the film looks slick and well-produced – but it’s missing the left-fieldness of Party Nerds. But like I said, it’s the oddest of reasons. You might want to check it out for yourself; if you do, let me know what you think.