Gas Pump Girls (1979) Cannon/Comedy RT: 86 minutes Rated R (nudity, mild language) Director: Joel Bender Screenplay: David A. Davies, Joel Bender and Isaac Blech Music: Leigh Crioze Cinematography: Nicholas von Sternberg Release date: December 1979 (US) Cast: Kristen Baker, Linda Lawrence, Sandy Johnson, Rikki Marin, Leslie King, Dennis Bowen, Rob Kenneally, Paul Tinder, Demetre Phillips, Steve Bond, Ken Lerner, Huntz Hall, Dave Shelley, Joe E. Ross, Mike Mazurki, Morris Buchanan, Jack Jozefson, Cousin Bruce Morrow. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
The comedy Gas Pump Girls is good clean T&A fun. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it’ll make perfect once I explain what I mean. There are plenty of naked boobs on display here, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a dirty movie, not like I would Porky’s or any of its sequels or imitators. It’s not obsessed with sex. The guys aren’t always looking to score. The girls aren’t mindless sex objects. It’s not crass, vulgar, sleazy or mean-spirited. It limits itself to one humiliating prank involving public exposure. It’s all rather tame and surprisingly good-natured. It’s a “teens just want to have fun” kind of comedy.
June (Baker, Friday the 13th Part 2) and her friends have just graduated high school. It’s summer and time to cut loose before college. All that changes when June’s beloved Uncle Joe (Hall of The Bowery Boys) suffers a heart attack. He’s told he has to rest so she agrees to run his gas station until he recuperates. It’s been a sinking ship for a while with the super-station located right across the street. The nasty owner Mr. Friendly (Shelley, Midnight Madness) intends to put his competitor out of business by any means possible. June isn’t about to let that happen.
She starts by recruiting her closest friends- Betty (Lawrence, Death Dimension), April (Johnson, Halloween), January (Marin, ex-wife of Cheech of Cheech & Chong) and Jane (King, The Great American Girl Robbery)- and outfitting them in short shorts and tight halter tops reading “Regular” or “Super Duper”. They would be the gas pump girls of the title. June also gets the guys- Roger (Bowen, Van Nuys Blvd.), Hal (Kenneally, Ride the Wild Surf) and Michael (Tinder, Another World)- to sign on as mechanics. She even makes friends out of foes by hiring the local motorcycle gang The Vultures- Hank (Phillips, The Hollywood Knights), Butch (Bond, Massacre at Central High) and Peewee (Lerner, The Exorcist III)- as tow truck drivers.
Joe’s Super Duper (changed from Joe’s Service Station) quickly becomes a hot spot for lecherous guys who love the idea of nubile young women pumping their gas. They set up a PA system so they can lure in customers with double entendres. It’s such a happy place, spontaneous outbreaks of disco dancing become commonplace. Across the street, Mr. Friendly is fuming. He’s losing business to these “broads”. He opens up his bag of dirty tricks in hopes of (forcefully) steering them back in their lane. He even sends a couple of lame-brained goons, played by Joe E. Ross (Car 54, Where Are You?) and Mike Mazurki (he was the villain Splitface in 1945’s Dick Tracy), to intimidate them. It doesn’t work. It turns out muscle is no match for naked boobs.
Things finally come to a head when Un-Friendly manages to cut off their gas supply by stopping all petrol deliveries to their station. No gas equals no customers. The gang thinks they’re licked until June delivers an impassioned speech that inspires them to keep fighting the good fight save for a dirty trick or two. They bring their fight all the way to the top by posing as Arab sheiks so they can get in to see the president of the oil company (Jozefson, The Buddy Holly Story) and plead their case.
Directed by Joel Bender (Rich Girl), Gas Pump Girls is the kind of silly teen comedy meant to be viewed on warm summer nights at drive-in theaters. Either that or after hours on one of the cable channels, Skinemax most likely. It’s light, amusing and inconsequential. It doesn’t revel in sleaze or perversion. It’s more like the 70s teen comedies from Crown International than the Porky’s wannabes from the 80s. It’s pretty good right up until the final few minutes. The ending (the very ending) feels rushed. It’s as if Bender didn’t want to exceed the 90-minute mark and just wrapped things up as quickly as possible. I wish there had been more to it, something like the strip football game at the end of H.O.T.S. (1979).
It’s always fun to see old Hollywood vets pop up in cheap B-movies- e.g. Phil Silvers (Sgt. Bilko) in Racquet (1979), Farley Granger (Strangers on a Train) in The Prowler (1981) and Cameron Mitchell (The High Chaparral) in Raw Force (1982). Ross and Mazurki, who actually both appeared in Some Like It Hot (1959) although never together in the same scene, are funny as the thick-headed hoods bested by busty babes. Huntz seems to be having fun as good old Uncle Joe. The young cast members are pretty good too. I love that it includes a couple of horror movie victims, Baker played the CIT (Counselor in Training) who goes skinny-dipping in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and Johnson was the ill-fated older sister of Michael Myers in Halloween (1978). In a bizarre twist, Baker gets to show off her pipes when June sings an out-of-nowhere number called “All of My Friends”.
I’m not going to pretend Gas Pump Girls is a lost classic or a shining example of filmmaking. It’s just a dopey teen comedy with gorgeous gals who occasionally display their goods. It’s something I would have watched multiple times as a high schooler with no social life. I watched it for the first time this past weekend with a nostalgic smile on my face. I wish they still made comedies like this, ones that don’t rely on cheap laughs involving bodily fluids and characters that use the f-word in every sentence. Like I said, it’s good clean T&A fun.
