{"id":11547,"date":"2025-03-26T23:47:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T03:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11547"},"modified":"2025-03-26T23:47:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T03:47:31","slug":"gas-pump-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/03\/26\/gas-pump-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Gas Pump Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Gas Pump Girls<\/strong> (1979)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 86 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Joel Bender\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David A. Davies, Joel Bender and Isaac Blech\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Leigh Crioze\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Nicholas von Sternberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 1979 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0The comedy Gas Pump Girls<\/strong> is good clean T&A fun. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it\u2019ll make perfect once I explain what I mean. There are plenty of naked boobs on display here, but I definitely wouldn\u2019t call it a dirty movie, not like I would Porky\u2019s or any of its sequels or imitators. It\u2019s not obsessed with sex. The guys aren\u2019t always looking to score. The girls aren\u2019t mindless sex objects. It\u2019s not crass, vulgar, sleazy or mean-spirited. It limits itself to one humiliating prank involving public exposure. It\u2019s all rather tame and surprisingly good-natured. It\u2019s a \u201cteens just want to have fun\u201d kind of comedy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0June (Baker, Friday the 13th<\/sup> Part 2) and her friends have just graduated high school. It\u2019s summer and time to cut loose before college. All that changes when June\u2019s beloved Uncle Joe (Hall of The Bowery Boys) suffers a heart attack. He\u2019s told he has to rest so she agrees to run his gas station until he recuperates. It\u2019s 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\u2019t about to let that happen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0She 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 \u201cRegular\u201d or \u201cSuper Duper\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Joe\u2019s Super Duper (changed from Joe\u2019s 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\u2019s such a happy place, spontaneous outbreaks of disco dancing become commonplace. Across the street, Mr. Friendly is fuming. He\u2019s losing business to these \u201cbroads\u201d. 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\u2019s Dick Tracy), to intimidate them. It doesn\u2019t work. It turns out muscle is no match for naked boobs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Things 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Joel Bender (Rich Girl), Gas Pump Girls<\/strong> 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\u2019s light, amusing and inconsequential. It doesn\u2019t revel in sleaze or perversion. It\u2019s more like the 70s teen comedies from Crown International than the Porky\u2019s wannabes from the 80s. It\u2019s pretty good right up until the final few minutes. The ending (the very ending) feels rushed. It\u2019s as if Bender didn\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s 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<\/sup> 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 \u201cAll of My Friends\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not going to pretend Gas Pump Girls<\/strong> is a lost classic or a shining example of filmmaking. It\u2019s just a dopey teen comedy with gorgeous gals who occasionally display their goods. It\u2019s 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\u2019t rely on cheap laughs involving bodily fluids and characters that use the f-word in every sentence. Like I said, it\u2019s good clean T&A fun.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gas Pump Girls (1979)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 86 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Joel Bender\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David A. Davies, Joel Bender and Isaac Blech\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Leigh Crioze\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Nicholas von Sternberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 1979 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kristen Baker, Linda Lawrence, Sandy Johnson, Rikki Marin, Leslie King, Dennis Bowen, Rob Kenneally, Paul Tinder, Demetre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Gas-Pump-Girls-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11560,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11547\/revisions\/11560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}