khanbaliq2 Review of The Last American Virgin

The Last American Virgin (1982)

The Last American Virgin is an odd product of its time.

[3/10 · 20 August 2015]

This is not an easy film to review. On the one hand, The Last American Virgin is an obvious cash grab. It's a teen comedy with plenty of female nudity, something that was seemingly popular with audiences back in the early-1980s. This not only speaks about the ongoing degeneration of Western culture but also about what people generally enjoy watching now - mainly nudity, horror and fantasy. So, The Last American Virgin sort of follows the Porky's (1981) formula, but with considerably less style and imagination. I'm thinking that the title too was chosen simply to attract male viewers. And don't forget about those jeans with an open zipper on the film's poster. On the other hand, the two leading actors, Lawrence Monoson and Diane Franklin, deliver good performances, especially in scenes dealing with love and heartbreak. The coming-of-age drama featuring their characters is like a different film within this film. The cast is made up mostly of Jewish-American actors, and director Boaz Davidson is from Israel. The Last American Virgin is a remake of Davidson's 1978 film Lemon Popsicle. Davidson teamed up with Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of Cannon Films to get The Last American Virgin made and released in the USA. By the way, Cannon Films is best known for releasing several cheesy patriotic action flicks starring Chuck Norris in the 1980s. And so, if you're an adult like me (I'm a young adult) and you get to watch The Last American Virgin, you'll notice that something isn't quite right with this film. And I'm not talking about the not-so-good direction by Davidson. I'm talking about the behavior of the characters and the situations they get into. These characters just don't behave like American teens. This is made clear by the fact that Davidson also wrote the screenplay. What might have looked familiar to an Israeli audience, looks odd to me (I'm Canadian by the way). And I kept thinking that the behavior of these supposedly American teens is intense or strange. It's no wonder that film critic Geoff Andrews called this film "sickening junk." But when this film isn't showing us a group of young men desperately trying to get into the pants of young women or a prostitute, it's showing us one of those young men longing for a beautiful transfer student. How about that? Also, I couldn't believe it when I saw Diane Franklin. I kept thinking that she is too good-looking to be in this film. She has little to say, but her performance is clearly one of the best. When talking about The Last American Virgin, people often mention the soundtrack. The decision to include popular new wave rock songs from that time period was clearly made to appeal to an American teen audience. But these songs aren't used to good effect in the film. Some of them don't even fit the scene. So, given all this, is The Last American Virgin worth recommending? In my opinion, it's not worth recommending. I'd say that it's one of the worst teen movies of the 1980s. It's entertaining, but that's one of the few good things that I can say about it. It's not worth watching even if you're interested in American '80s culture because only the setting and the actors are American.