Everything 80s Sex Comedies Taught Me About Love and Life

I was surprised, and you may be too

Universal Pictures | Buena Vista Pictures | 20th Century Fox

Most of my sex education came not from first sources or official literature but via unsupervised access to 80s sex comedies. It’s not exactly my parents’ fault—these movies ran basically constantly on TBS (or was it TNT?) at the time. Even edited to eliminate language and nudity, there was no escaping the central thrust of the story, which began and ended with getting laid. A going concern in the 80s.

I thought it might be educational or at least fun to revisit these movies as a much-older person for whom the great mystery has been revealed. What rang true? What do the movies lie about? Would Booger realistically be so popular with the Omega Mus?

I hatched this idea well over a year ago. My noble quest was delayed by an inability to watch Loverboy (1989), the movie in which a young scrawny Patrick Dempsey becomes the world’s most unlikely gigolo and gives false hope to millions of young scrawny boys the world over.

You can’t find Loverboy on any streaming platform, or anywhere else for that matter. Big Streaming is dead set against this film being seen. I can only assume they’re making a stand on behalf of anchovy pizza lovers everywhere. All two of them.

How does that cautionary poem go?

First they came for Loverboy, and I did not speak out—because I was watching Netflix.

I was able to stream the movie thanks to a really shady website I found on page 4 of the Google results. Would not recommend unless you like movies buffering every 10 minutes because an Eastern European hacker is tunneling through your firewall. To whom I say: Joke’s on you, pal. My data’s been leaked so often I just delete the notifications now. It does raise a philosophical question: If someone goes about posing as me, should they also adopt my preoccupation with Timothy Olyphant? I say yes. Otherwise it’s not a good copy.

There are a handful of films that are part of my sex comedy canon. Not that these are the best examples of the form—dear reader, they are not—but because they were on TV pretty regularly when I was 12. People love Fast Times at Ridgemont High but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it; I was 4 when it came out and it wasn’t in rotation on cable TV when I was ready to receive its message. I’ve seen Porky’s but didn’t find it all that funny or memorable. Animal House is even older than Fast Times and the characters are technically adults, so it didn’t hit me where I lived. I liked Bachelor Party as an anthropological device: Ah, so this is what being a grown-up is like.

There are 4 sex comedies that were right-place, right-time.

• Loverboy: Touched on this one briefly already. It’s my least-favorite of the bunch because it’s a dumb movie, but I rewatched it religiously because Carrie Fisher plays one of the women who contracts Dempsey’s services; Princess Leia paying a dork for sex was both unthinkable and riveting.

• Can’t Buy Me Love: The least “sex comedy” of the bunch. It’s technically a rom-com, but some of the plot involves Ronald Miller (Dempsey, again) trying to get laid. So it makes the list.

• Weird Science: The fantastical entry, in which two nerds create a supermodel via their brains and some shoddy “science.” It was aspirational in a way, I guess, because the dweeb protagonists tried to do something about their miserable existence. But yeah, they create a girl to be sex bot. And never actually have sex with her, but we’ll come back to that.

• Revenge of the Nerds: My favorite of the bunch. Genuinely funny and so quotable. Not for nothing, but the fact that the protagonists were legitimately nerds went a long way with me, as by this time I’d become uncomfortably aware that if I was in a movie, I wouldn't be the jock or the comic relief—I’d be the kid getting picked on for harboring unusual interests.

I was very apprehensive about revisiting Revenge of the Nerds. Movies are a product of their time, but often that just shines a light on how backwards and wrong-headed we used to be. It can be a painful experience if you’re honest about it. Especially if you like the movie in question.

There’s a prominent sexual assault in Revenge of the Nerds that just happens and the movie laughs it off as though it’s totally inconsequential. It didn’t strike me as anything as a kid because the girl is so “lol, that was fun” about it. Likewise the sequence where our heroes raid a sorority for their undergarments and install surveillance equipment. It's justified in the film because they’re mean girls—and thus somehow have it coming, which feels like a very rapist thing to say—and further endorsed under the generalized understanding that boys will be boys.

It’s bizarre to realize consent did not exist as a concept in 1984, to the point that a mainstream movie has several scenes where girls are treated this way and nobody batted an eye. Worse, it’s treated as comedy. Perhaps most damning of all to a socially-conscious observer looking back—some of it’s still funny. I was both disquieted by the movie’s casual misogyny and delighted by Takashi’s discovery of “hair pie.” It’s an uncomfortable dichotomy.

What’s especially interesting about all of these movies is how little sex actually occurs. In my memory they were decadent odes to that most private of activities, full of random nudity and ribald jokes. And while those elements are definitely there, it’s only a small part of the equation. They’re stories in which social outcasts ascend to the rarified heights enjoyed by the Pretty People and, upon arriving, realize the climb wasn’t worth the cost of their soul. And so they descend back to their normal world, wiser for the experience.

This is Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey stuff, which is probably partly why I responded to it (Campbell’s work being the underpinning of Star Wars). Fairy tales for boys overrun with hormones.

These movies are also rather wholesome (sexual assault obviously aside). The Tri-Lambs are a collection of social misfits who become a found family. They are inclusive of all races, creeds, and sexual orientations. In 1984, people who were even marginally different were ostracized and vilified; here it becomes a superpower. And though Revenge of the Nerds clearly wants us to laugh at the nerds, it’s not mean-spirited. (I feel I can speak for all the nerds in this instance.)

The two boys in Weird Science think they want a hottie to have all the sex with, but can’t even shower with her without wearing clothes (or without each other also in said shower). There’s an enormous chasm between thinking you want something and actually doing it. I probably didn’t understand that at the time. I can imagine feeling disappointed the boys never sleep with Kelly LeBrock. That seems to be what the movie promises. As an adult, I appreciate that Weird Science didn’t lean into the fantasy of a supermodel beholden to two teenagers, and instead told the truth.

As the Joker says, “I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one.” So it is with teenage boys. Or was, anyway—I imagine the prevalence of pornography has ruined sex’s mystique for today’s youth. Other than a few random Playboys—my friends and I once discovered a porn stash in the woods; yes, that stuff really happened—movies like these were my first exposure to sex. I’m alright with that. In fact, I’m glad for it.

Flawed and ugly as some of it might be, these films harken back to my own youth. To a remembrance of trying to unearth secret knowledge while being unsure what I was looking for, or even why. There is innocence in ignorance that cannot survive contact with the knowledge we pursue. It’s been this way since Eden.

I promised I’d share the things revealed to me after rewatching these movies.

True things

• Being present and empathetic trumps most other things.

• It’s better to be true to yourself than pretend to be someone you’re not.

• It’s easy to lose track of yourself if you’re pursuing the approval of others.

• After 2000, plenty of people happily call themselves nerds. Like me!

• Find the people who are nerdy about the things you like; they’ll become some of your best friends.

• Popularity is fleeting.

• People will use you to get what they want.

• You should listen to your parents more often.

• Bullies aren’t just a High School problem.

• Who you are is more important than how you look.

False things

• How you look is sadly still pretty important.

• The popular girl probably won’t fall in love with you because you help her.

• She definitely won’t fall in love with you after you sexually assault her.

• Before 2000, “nerd” is a moniker nobody gladly accepts.

• If you perform an African Anteater Ritual at a High School dance, you’ll probably be made fun of.

• Shame is not the great motivator movies would have you believe.

• There is no great comeuppance that will make a bully change their ways.

• If you spend your summer bedding middle-aged women for money, there’s no way your college girlfriend takes you back.

• Unless you’re already good-looking, removing your glasses won’t suddenly make you attractive.

• A woman contacting a delivery man/male escort wouldn’t order pizza with anchovy. Obviously she’d request extra sausage.

Unanswerable things

• Why is Booger so popular with the Omega Mus? The movie would have us believe the girls are starved for attention. But it boggles the mind. Booger is physically disgusting and also a pig. The girls could do so much better even among the Tri-Lambs.

• Why do the two boys in Weird Science shower together? Is it a “strength in numbers” arrangement? Were they hoping to double-team Kelly LeBrock? Do they just want someone to wash their back? We’ll never really know.

• What laws of physics does Lamar’s javelin follow? We’re told the javelin is designed to mimic Lamar’s running style—which could generously be called prancing—but I just don’t buy the flight pattern.

• Ronald Miller drops a $1000 in cash—that’s roughly $2800 today—in an attempt to woo Cindy Mancini. What’s the upper limit on what a dork would spend to infiltrate higher society and win the girl of his dreams? I’m not actually sure there is a limit.

• Was life better in the 80s? In general—a big fat no. Especially not if you’re female, some kind of minority, or socially awkward. However, staring the down the barrel of climate change, fascism, and a crumbling American empire, it’s not hard to feel wistful for days when our problems weren’t so existential.

All of these movies fell out of rotation by the time I started High School. Consciously or not, I moved on. I’d imbibed all their lessons and moved into the next phase of life with the questionable wisdom I’d acquired. And made my way the best I knew how.