Furdell Classic Cinema Theatre, Vol. I: Stewardess School

The Film: Stewardess School (1986)

Genre: Bawdy sex comedy, unless that's redundant

Can the entire film be reduced to one animated gif?:

Who are we ripping off?: It's just a more sexist Police Academy, which released its third entry ("Back In Training") a few months before Stewardess School came out.

Made-Up Slang: Stewardesses often refer to themselves as "stews" and to the title institution as "Stew School," much like how newsies talk about selling "papes."

Recognizable cast members:
a. Conan the Barbarian's girlfriend as Wanda, whose primary function in this film is to comically lift and throw people out of things.
b. Veronica Mars's mom as Cindy, the most miscast biker chick in the history of the medium, unless the script called for extreme cognitive dissonance. If you dressed up the girl next door in leather, that would be Cindy. In one scene, she mischievously swaps the tape of boring classical music at a stuffy party with...a tape of slightly more up-tempo alto-sax music.
c. Jack Tripper's wife from Three's a Crowd plays Kelly, unthreatening love interest for protagonist Philo and chronic klutz. Her best scenes often involve accidental scrotum injuries.
d. Marty McFly's sister is Jolean, the obligatory fat stewardess. In one key scene, she sneaks to the fridge for a snack.
e. Ralph Malph plays Philo's idiot horndog friend Bunkle. We're all familiar with the idiot horndog friend character, who drives much of the action with his comical failed attempts to get laid.
f. I don't actually recognize the actress who plays former hooker Sugar DuBois, but according to Wikipedia she attended Julliard. To give you some idea of her range, she once played "Dan's Date" in an episode of Night Court.

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Plot Synposis:
Legally blind Philo and his idiot horndog friend Bunkle are thrown out of pilot school because they're legally blind and an idiot, respectively. Bunkle somehow convinces Philo that Stew School is the next best thing, because they'd still be in airplanes. This is inherently wacky because it's 1986, so all stewardesses are either women or very, very gay.

(Seriously, why is nobody this gay anymore?)

We're treated to a series of vignettes in which each member of our ragtag group of misfits decides to enroll, usually due to parental coersion or legal obligation. Next we meet the school's authority figures. The school is run by Roger Weidermeyer (no, really), who only seems to be interested in the bottom line and will thus accept even the most misfitty of students; our main antagonist will be instructor Miss Grummet (again, really), who quite reasonably thinks Weidermeyer's low standards are ruining the school's credibility. Before this film is done, she will faceplant into a toilet.

The first half of the film is devoted to Miss Grummet's gleeful attempts to expel as many students as possible. In one scene, she challenges the gang to a stewardess simulation excercise in which they must serve a planeful of professional "passengers" -- and if you thought the stewardesses were wacky...!

Ultimately, Miss Grummet is overruled by Weidermeyer, who sends the entire crew off to a new, family-owned airline called Stromboli Air (after Carl Stromboli offers Weidermeyer a bribe in exchange for a full crew). Even though they're mostly inept and completely unprepared, they immediately set off for their first flight. The stakes are high, because Miss Grummet is there for some reason, and also one of the passengers -- it could be any of them! -- is an FAA inspector sent to evaluate the crew.

Our heroes are doomed from the outset, though, as one of their passengers is a very twitchy lunatic with a large bomb. In this scene, he drugs the passenger next to him in order to cause a distraction.

To calm that passenger down, the entire stewardess crew holds him down while Sugar Dubois administers a soothing blowjob. Meanwhile, the mad bomber sets a timer on his explosive device, knocks out the pilot, and jumps from the plane. Bunkle fails to defuse the bomb, so it blows a hole in the side of the plane; luckily, Jolean plugs the hole with her fat ass.

(Notice that in the preceeding scene, the plane appeared to be empty of passengers. Very sloppy, makers of Stewardess School. Very sloppy.)

Philo, whose contact lenses were knocked out in a turbulence-related mishap, lands the plane with help from the rest of the crew. But our heroes aren't out of the woods yet. For reasons I don't care to remember, Stromboli Air ends up on trial. (Some of our loyal lawyer readers might be able to help me out here.) Will the stews keep their jobs? It all rests on the testimony of the secret FAA inspector...and it's...the freaked out guy who got the blowjob! Case dismissed!

Final analysis: I first saw this film on "USA Up All Night" in my youth, and it's possible that my love of Stewardess School is steeped in nostalgia. On the other hand, this is inarguably one of the greatest films of all time. It's a master class in boob reaction shots (see animated gif above). Best of all it's under 90 minutes, which -- thanks to the inverse relationship of film quality to duration -- makes it more than twice as good as Lawrence of Arabia. I give it my best rating yet: Eight Suitcases to the Crotch.

The Female Perspective^TM with Julia Katz: Who was this movie made for, is my first question. Was this movie made for really horny guys, who could relate to the horny guys in the movie? I don't know. Just, why? Why make this movie? I don't know. I guess I liked the scene where the fat chick dove into the floatation device and it exploded, and then they were all wet. That was classic. Oh, you know what was funny too? The scene where, I don't know if you'd call him the dean, where he introduces them all to Stewardess School, and all he could do is stare at that chick's boobs. Remember that? Oh yeah, and then he had an erection and he couldn't step away from the podium. How many more sexual antics could you put in a movie? (Note from Andrew: Julia stayed awake through this entire movie.)