Personal taste rules when it comes to talking about movies such as this treasured little gem. Way back in the eighties, the early eighties, i discovered this movie, like so many released at the time, "Night Patrol" "Bad Manners" or even "King Frat" the artwork and blurbs on the back of the covers tempted and teased
you.Of course being of an age, movies like that i have already mentioned as well as stuff like "Screwballs" and the many others, captured the imagination, and thankfully many years later i still remember some with fondness and some with disdain the many movies that help maintain my love of such genre as parodies or pastiches.Made many years after the huge success of "Animal House" and having seen how it had fared down through the years, I now know that there would be no way this movie would ever eclipse the box office bucks obtain aforementioned nor would it linger in the memory, much like that of National Lampoon's Vacation.To be honest, not everything that has carried the National Lampoon Logo has been a wild success, however to me Class Reunion remains one of my all time favourite movies, with instantly recognisable characters, such as the aloof Bob Spinnaker played to perfection by Gerrit Graham, so good in Charles Band's "Terrorvision" still lingering in the past glories of his youth. Or how about Stephen Furst's brash and ballsy turn as the high school lazy drunken sex crazed bum Hubert Downs.Sweet as. Which makes me ponder. As i already said, personal taste not withstanding. People can be so cruel, so it will never win any awards or be compared to the like of its's peers within the comedy world. It does have some merit. Being one of the earlier scripts penned by John Hughes, who would later go on to do one of my own favourites of his work "Weird Science" as well as having a wonderful theme title sung by the great Gary U.S Bonds.What more can i say, it's a movie just waiting to be rediscovered, time and time again.
August 8, 2009
